This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Ditching the Degree series, where women who have built six-figure careers without a bachelor’s degree reveal the secrets of their success. Got a story to tell? Let us know! Email us at [email protected].
De’Audra Ansley didn’t dream of working in tech until 2000 when she watched her older brother De’Arcy tear down a computer on the floor of their den.
It was part of a homework assignment that De’Arcy, a computer science major at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, where their family lived, was sprinting to finish.
Computers were still a rarity in her neighborhood at the turn of the millennium. Ansley, then 10 years old, marveled at the neon wires and beaded microchips that lined the hardwood.
“It looked like a puzzle to me, I wanted to know how every piece fit together,” Ansley, 33, recalls. “That’s when I fell in love with tech.”
Ansley followed in her brother’s footsteps and enrolled as a biomedical engineering major at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2008, but left midway through her freshman year after feeling burned out and uninspired in her classes.
“I felt like I wasn’t getting all of the practical skills or hands-on experience I’d need to work in tech from my classes,” says Ansley. “At that point, I was like, ‘Well, how far can I go without a bachelor’s degree?'”
Now, Ansley is a product manager at a real estate firm based in central Texas.
She works remotely from her home in Houston and earns over $100,000 a year, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. Ansley declined to share the name of her employer and exact salary so she could speak freely about her work situation.
Here’s how Ansley built a six-figure career in tech without a bachelor’s degree:
‘I didn’t let the ‘no’s discourage me’
Ansley landed her first corporate job after college as a production assistant at BMF, a creative marketing agency in Austin, by highlighting the soft skills — communication, leadership and time…
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