From Kigali to Capital One: A story of quiet determination, strategic choices, and the courage to keep going when nothing feels certain.
Published: October 11, 2025
From Rwanda to Capital One: Mike Manzi's story of quiet determination and strategic growth
Entry.One was never meant to celebrate perfection. It was created to honor beginnings, the uncertain, unpolished moments when someone chooses to keep going, even without knowing how it will all unfold. From the start, I knew the first story shared here had to reflect that kind of courage at the starting line.
That's why this opening entry belongs to Mike Manzi.
Before titles like software engineer, before Discover (now Capital One), and before corporate recognition, there was a young man navigating continents, expectations, and questions of belonging. His journey is not loud or dramatic. It is steady, disciplined, and rooted in something deeply human: the decision to bet on himself.
I've known Mike personally, I've seen this quiet determination firsthand. In our conversation, he never spoke like someone who believed he had "made it." He spoke like someone still becoming and it's that honesty, not arrival, that defines Entry.One.
When I asked Mike what song he plays when it is time to lock in, he mentioned Tems - "Avoid Things". That song now lives on the growing Entry.One playlist.
At 22, Mike Manzi is a software engineer who still carries the interests that shaped him early was his love for anime and a growing fascination with house music. But long before career titles, his journey began in Kigali, Rwanda.
He moved to the United States in sixth grade, after three formative years in the U.S., he returned to Rwanda to complete high school at Green Hills Academy. He never planned on becoming a software engineer. He once imagined a future in politics or international relations, a path rooted in diplomacy rather than code. But, as life often does, it redirected him toward something unexpected.
It was not passion that first drew Mike into engineering, it was practicality. He entered university believing engineering offered stability and global opportunity. But he quickly found himself in unfamiliar territory. In his first semester at Oklahoma Christian University, a required project demanded that he build a robot from scratch.
It was a two credit course, but it consumed him.
He spent late nights debugging circuits and reworking mechanics, overwhelmed, but refusing to surrender. It was not effortless. It was not natural. But something began to shift.
Beneath the frustration, he discovered a quiet satisfaction in solving complex problems. He began to see difficulty not as a barrier, but as a puzzle. And that shift from confusion to curiosity would change everything.
Still, engineering posed another reality: many post grad roles were exclusive to U.S. citizens. Rather than waiting for doors to open, Mike chose to build a path he could grow in.
So, he made a deliberate decision. He transitioned from Computer Engineering to Computer Science, not out of retreat, but out of strategy. It was not a flawless leap. It was a calculated move, guided by clarity. Computer science would allow him to build with it.