Michael Duncan quite literally blazed his own career path by teaching himself how to code in high school.

When the programming class he was hoping to take his senior year of high school was no longer available, he created his own. He went to the principal and got special permission to teach himself. Then, he developed his own curriculum, and the school provided him with an office, an internet connection and an hour a day to learn the ins and outs of coding.

"I taught myself how to code … I learned algorithms and data structures. I think it really helped when I went to college the next year – it gave me a head start on some of the subjects I got into," Duncan recalled.