From immigrant outsider to tech lead

I moved to Berlin from Eastern Europe 6 years ago. I barely spoke German and my English was rough. My first tech job here was fixing bugs nobody else wanted to fix. I kept my head down, wrote good code, and slowly earned trust. But every time a lead role opened up, it went to someone who grew up here, went to school here, had the right network. When I joined Bannister I found other immigrants building tech careers. Seeing their wins made me realize I wasn't aiming high enough. Last month my VP asked me to lead a new payments integration project. Team of four. My name on the architecture docs. Presenting to stakeholders. I called my mom in Romania and she cried. She still doesn't fully understand what I do, but she knows her son is doing something important.