Four Applications and One Ask. Guess Which One Scared Me.

Waitlisted once. Applied again anyway.

TL;DR: In one day I sent four applications: three AI fellowships and programs, plus a state government interest form. The next day I reapplied to a program that waitlisted me last cycle, knowing it could happen again. The scariest part was one message asking someone to vouch for me. It worked because of something I built in public months earlier.

On Wednesday I went through my inbox for fellowships. I had been saving them for later, and later had arrived. I ranked them, cut the ones that did not fit, and applied to the rest.

By the end of the day I had four in:

That is a lot of forms for one person with a full-time job.

The form wanted a reference.

CAIDP asked for one. I did not want to ask anyone at work. The people there know me as a manager, and they are not connected to my AI work. I wanted someone who knows me as the person behind clewlabs.org.

That made the list short. Every reference I have ever asked for came from a close friend or a close coworker. Asking someone outside that circle was a first for my adult life and an unsure and scary feeling.

I thought of Annie Liao. She founded Build Club, a global community for people building with AI, and she ran the Women in AI Accelerator I joined this spring. That is where I built Themis Lex. Then the questions started. Would she even remember me? She had already given me an opportunity this year. Should I really ask her for more?

At 5:07 PM I sent a LinkedIn message to Annie Liao, the founder of Build Club. The subject line was "Themis Lex update, and a quick reference ask." I put the update first.

She answered at 5:10 PM. "Yes of course!" Then, "Congratulations."

I am still a little shaky about it. In a good way.

The build did the introducing.

Annie did not know me from a networking event. She knew me because I built Themis Lex during Build Club's Women in AI Accelerator this spring. Themis Lex is an AI readiness self-check for California court staff: a short set of questions that helps a court employee see where they stand before anyone hands them a new AI tool.

I built it in public, starting with my week one post from the accelerator. Then it kept going after the program ended. I demoed it in my talks this year, including at Los Angeles Superior Court, and it became a way to start conversations with court leaders about AI readiness for staff.

That is what my message to Annie opened with. What Themis Lex turned into after she last saw it, then the week one link, then what CAIDP is, and only then the ask. She was not vouching for a stranger with a resume. She was vouching for a build she watched start.

I think that is the part of building in public that never shows up on a scoreboard. Placements and stars are easy to count. A trail of work someone can say yes to in three minutes is harder to count, and it is the thing I needed on Wednesday.

Waitlisted once.

The next morning I reapplied to the Fair Chance Futures AI Lab, a Columbia University and USC program. I applied to the summer cohort earlier this year, made it to the interview, and landed on the waitlist.

That one was scary in its own way. Applying again means I could land on the waitlist again, for reasons that have nothing to do with how good the application is. I applied anyway. I do not want to give this one up.

Even that one had a smaller ask tucked inside it. I live in Ventura, and I was not sure it counted as Greater Los Angeles for this cohort. So I emailed the recruitment lead and asked. She said yes.

The application ends with a problem-solving task. You answer the first step alone, with no AI. Then you work through the rest with the program's own AI assistant, and they review that conversation. The assistant pointed out something I had missed: I was jumping straight to solutions and skipping the causes.

Still scary. Still doing them.

Most of the answers come in January. Nothing to decide yet. Just a lot of seeds planted.

If you are sitting on an application because it needs a reference, or a portfolio link, or a second try after a no, I get it. I am not going to tell you it stops being scary. For me it did not.

What is the ask you keep putting off?

Mine took one LinkedIn message. Annie answered in three minutes.

Quick context if you are new here. I work in the California courts, running court operations for the county. I started building with AI in July 2025 and I have been learning in public ever since. I do not write the code. I direct, the agents generate, I validate and decide. I build the Clew Suite, a set of civic tech tools for making complex systems easier to inspect. That is the lens I am writing from.

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