In the fall of 2020, Jessica Reece sat in the front row of a classroom in Lehi, Utah, wearing a mask, surrounded by other moms. When the instructor asked everyone who identified as an extrovert to raise their hand, Jessica looked around the room. She was the only one with her hand up.

She didn't know what "fullstack" meant. She didn't know what "UX/UI" was. She didn't know how many different careers existed inside the word "technology." She just knew that doing occasional part-time gigs while her husband Sam worked full-time wasn't the life she wanted to build for her daughter — who was not yet two years old.

The program was called Tech-Moms. It was free. It met on Saturdays for nine weeks. And Jessica had just joined the very first cohort — so new, the organization still operated under a different name. She would later call herself an "OG Tech-Mom."

That first week, presenters walked the room through career paths Jessica had never heard of. Software engineering. Cloud architecture. Data science. UX design. She didn't understand half the vocabulary, but she understood this: there were doors she hadn't known existed, and nobody in that room was going to tell her she couldn't walk through them. For the first time in her life, Jessica wasn't just thinking about what came next. She was thinking bigger than she'd ever let herself think.

The Deal

After those nine Saturdays, Jessica went home and told Sam she wanted to go back to school full-time. Not part-time, not a class here and there. Full-time.

They made a deal. Sam would keep working. Their daughter — still in diapers — would be watched by friends, family, and neighbors who rotated childcare like a relay team. And the household would run on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pizza. For two years. Every dollar they had would go toward tuition at BYU-Idaho through their Pathway program. Every free hour would go to studying.

It was exhausting. Jessica wasn't tiptoeing into tech — she was sprinting through a bachelor's degree while raising a toddler on borrowed time and borrowed hands. But the Reeces had made their bet, and they were going to see it through.

In 2022, she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Applied Technology.

The Sprint

Her first role was a project management internship, where she learned Scrum and how software actually gets built from the inside. Then came her first real tech job: Junior Full-Stack Engineer. Then cloud engineering on government contracts, working across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Each role taught her something the previous one couldn't, and she never stayed comfortable for long.

Her company encouraged certifications, and Jessica didn't need to be asked twice. In under two years, she earned four — including the Microsoft AI-900 and the AWS Solutions Architect Associate. She studied on nights and weekends, the same way she'd studied during her degree. The habit of sacrifice hadn't gone anywhere.

Then her work took a turn she hadn't planned. Her AI certifications caught attention, and she was moved onto FEMA projects — building AI tools for the federal agency that responds to disasters. She was promoted to AI Engineer II. For the first time, her daily work was artificial intelligence.

And somewhere in the back of her mind, she kept thinking about a role she'd wanted for years: Cloud Solution Architect. The job that blended her love for people with her love for technology. The one that felt like it was made for her — if she could ever get there.

Toward the end of 2025, a Microsoft recruiter reached out. Not the other way around. They'd found her.

In February 2026 — five years after she sat in that classroom not knowing what "fullstack" meant — Jessica Reece accepted a position as AI Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft.

Five Years

Nine weeks of free Saturday classes. Two years of peanut butter sandwiches. Four certifications earned while working full-time. One family that went all-in on a bet that their mom could become something nobody in that first classroom would have predicted.

Jessica's motto, the one she repeated to herself through every late night and every exam and every moment of doubt, was three words: "Yes you can."

She's now part of the Women of Microsoft community, working at the cutting edge of AI, building relationships with customers — doing exactly the job she'd dreamed about for years before she had any business dreaming about it.

Tech-Moms — co-founded by Trina Celeste, Mikel Blake, and Robbyn Scribner — is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and a Microsoft TechSpark Fellow. Jessica is what their mission looks like when it works.

Can someone with no tech background really make it in AI?

Yes. You. Can.