The author, Matthew Gilliard, shares his personal journey of traveling and meeting people from different places, which sparked his interest in teaching English as a Second Language. He later returned to the tech industry after moving back to the UK with his family.` `Matthew initially found public speaking to be intimidating but discovered it was enjoyable when he started presenting at conferences and running workshops and meetups for the Java community.` `He eventually transitioned into full-time developer relations, joining Twilio's team as a developer evangelist, where he can focus on serving the JVM developer community and sharing his passion for learning and teaching.