Irma Olgin Jr. turned a lot of heads when she raised $27 million in Series A funding,

an incredible amount of money, and the largest ever for a Latina.

Her company, Bitwise, trains people to work in tech. It develops software and invests in real

estate. The whole concept is inspired by parts of Irma's own incredible personal journey,

and it offers a really powerful model for rebuilding and reimagining underdog cities.

Irma, so much of who you are, what you've built, goes back to where you come from.

Can you take me back to growing up in the Central Valley in the 90s?

I think when folks picture California, they think of palm trees, they think of beaches,

they think of Hollywood, they think of the Bay Area. What a lot of people don't conjure an image of

when it comes to Central California is like giant, magnificent swaths of produce and ag land.

They may not realize that the Central Valley inside of California is responsible for exporting

between 20 and 30 percent of the world's food. Agriculture has been the driving industry here

since these cities were born. I think that that

really is more what people think of like Heartland America. They think of cornfields and

buckies and I'm talking about grapes and almonds and peaches and cows. You know, it's just a different

image I think than what most people think of

is California. So when you imagine yourself there in the 90s or you imagine yourself there here

in central California, two things to know. Number one, that creates a system where it's almost

like modern day feudalism, where the folks who own and operate the land,

really that's where wealth is concentrated. And then I think secondly is that there's another

side of that coin, which is the labor that powers the land and gets that land to produce.

And you take all that together in the 80s and 90s, you've got this situation where it's a very

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