Scene one: the pivot. She wrote about the conference where she’d failed spectacularly—slides that refused to load, a demo that ate its own data. The room had been polite, then puzzled, then forgiving enough to ask questions afterward. That failure had been a hinge; it taught her to build for resilience rather than perfection. She described the smell of burnt coffee backstage and the way the microphone hummed when she laughed to hide nerves.