My career path to Google included bartending and working at a nursing home. Here's what it taught me.

"I've been working on building AI systems for Google Cloud customers for about three years, but my path to get there was a little non-traditional. I'm not one of those people who applied to Google 100 times. I took a lot of different routes along the way. My career journey has been wild. I improvised; I had moments when I was poor without health insurance; I had moments when I was lonely and helpless; I had moments when I messed up and was scared."

"I was born and raised in Serbia, and moved to the US when I was 18. Instead of going to law school in Serbia, I took a gap year, bartended, and then went to college and majored in math. After college, I moved to downtown Chicago and became a bartender. I love bartending. If I had time, I would do it now. Then I moved to New Orleans and worked as a shot girl on Bourbon Street for a while."

"Next, I moved to Columbus and worked as a caregiver at a nursing home, which was probably one of the lowest moments of my life. I moved to Columbus, where I knew nobody, and where it was hard to meet new people. Working in the nursing home exposed me to seeing people die for the first time. These experiences taught me that discipline matters a lot."

Milica Cvetkovic, 35, is a senior technical solutions consultant at Google in Chicago who has built AI systems for Google Cloud customers for about three years. She emigrated from Serbia to the US at 18, took a gap year instead of law school, bartended, and later majored in math. Her early work included bartending in Chicago and New Orleans and caregiving in Columbus, experiences that exposed her to hardship and loss. Those varied roles taught her discipline and resilience, and her nontraditional path, improvisation, and life challenges contributed to her current role in AI.

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