I am a farmers child. Climate change resulted in draughts which in turn pushed my family out of the village into nearby city. They say when god shuts one door he opens another, you just have to find it. During the same time, industrial revolution was in full swing, automobile manufacturing was establishing its foothold in India. TATA’s, the multinational conglomerate that now owns Jaguar and Land Rover, had a technical collaboration with Daimler Benz.  My Dad was one of the first 15 founding engineers to be hired for the Pune Plant in Maharashtra. I had an humble upbringing. How humble you ask? we didn’t have running water, reliable electricity, sewer systems, refrigerators, Television or even Telephones until my middle school years. I get super nostalgic thinking about our first TV, Phone or the fridge.

My introduction into the world of technology was learning to develop games on a 48KB ZX Spectrum+ developed by Sinclair Research group out of the UK, our first ever television set acted as a monitor and cassette tapes as storage device. To put 48KB machine into perspective: that’s a 3 sec long MP3 file. I was hooked, this love guided by schooling into a Bachelors followed by a Masters in computer Science.

Leaving behind everything I knew back in India into a new culture, country and continent was daunting as a young girl. But opportunities led me to work for big name companies and innovative projects such as autonomous car project for Motorola, writing device drivers for Ricoh printers, scanners and GE Voluson ultrasound machines. I was building classifiers for Motorola’s autonomous car project when companies were scared to use the word “autonomous” because of liability issues. We have surely come a long way. It was a thrilling ride to experience the unlimited potential of the innovation economy. Technology was yet to be part of everyday life, and here I was building the future.

Early 2000’s was the time when being part of an early startup that sees the light of IPO was a proud badge of honor to wear on your resume. It still is. This is where my dream came true of joining a startup as a early formative team that IPO’ed

As an immigrant the only way I could work in this country was through corporate sponsorship. Requesting and at times begging for renewals or Green card Application takes a huge toll on personal stability, safety and security. It’s a long arduous road to Permanent residency in this country as an Indian born. But as soon as you achieve the green card milestone the sense of relief and feeling of freedom is inexpressible.

If you’ve ever searched for an App on Apple’s appStore, a song on Apple music, a book, podcasts or any other media on any of apple’s devices such as Mac, iPhone, iPad, AppleTV, Watch etc, then you’ve already interacted with my code. Building Apple’s Media Search and Discovery Engine was another proud milestone of my career.  I spent seven intense and incredible years at Apple.  I was able to immerse myself in Apple’s infamous culture set forth by none other than Steve Jobs, I saw firsthand the level of creativity and innovation that can be unlocked from passionate people when you focus on building multifaceted holistic human beings. 

I received a unique opportunity to join Reddit and head building their anti-evil organization. An organization whose sole responsibility was to use technology to protect good users from bad experiences. As you can imagine the dark side of social media includes harassment, violence, racism, homophobia, abuse, terrorism, content manipulation, bullying, sexualization of minors and the list goes on. The transition from a behemoth like Apple to Reddit was a learning experience like none other. It gave me the opportunity to really understand the depth of unlearning and relearning to maintain agility in the style of my leadership.

Sometimes the only way to really understand how a company is built is to build it yourself. I have had the good fortune of being a Founding member of 2 companies so far, one of which went through a successful exit via acquisition in 2022. Startup struggles are challenging yet fulfilling. You need pure grit, determination and lots of patience.