Joy Covey

Not having finished high school and having been fairly utilitarian in the way I went about college, I didn't have a deep liberal arts background. So we'd go to lunch and people would talk about their favorite seventeenth-century poets, and I'd be thinking, 'Could I even name five poets? From any century?'

I can't really speak to the other parts of the economy, but what I think is very true of the tech world is that it's easy for talented people - whatever their gender, age, or race - to rise up and succeed.

I didn't finish high school - left home when I was 15. I moved away to Fresno and worked as a grocery clerk. I went to college part-time at California State Fresno, and then ended up finishing in two and a half years because I wanted to get on with things.

The thrill of a photo-realist painter is if you get really close to the painting, it looks just like a photograph. Whereas in my case, if you get close to my paintings, they totally fall apart - so I'm about as far from a photo-realist as it gets.