My Story

It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up! magazine….

Every story has a beginning. Mine starts with my parents.

For Indian immigrant parents, getting their child into an Ivy League school is the equivalent of winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

I wasn’t that child. Not even close.

I tried to honor them by being a role model child who could be proud of and praise others. But role model child didn’t last long. It only took me one year of college and $18,000 of tuition money to figure out college wasn’t for me.

Outside the culture barrier at home, I freely roamed the streets of the Bronx. Like my parents, the ghetto had its own set of expectations imposed on me but the opposite. Doing the right thing seems wrong, and doing the wrong thing seems right.

Soon enough, after (sorta) dropping out of college and hanging out in the Bronx, I wasn’t happy, and I was stuck in a rut. Until I found Apple…. or Apple found me.

I like to think Apple was my informal liberal arts education. At Apple, I discovered and practiced UX. They judge the success of their work not by everything they put into it but by everything the user gets out of it. Apple has given me some of the most important people in my life, and I’m literally a better person because of them.

After gaining some success at Apple, I became self-aware of what I’m good at. I decided to adjust my actions to match my ambitions, put in the work, and position myself in the right place to succeed.

The concern with the world has isn’t a lack of scholars, but a lack of self-aware people, possessing emotional intelligence.

I enrolled myself at a UX Bootcamp then abruptly realized I couldn’t break into the tech industry without knowing code. Being ambitious and overzealous, I enrolled myself in a 12-week Full-Stack coding bootcamp at UCF. The course was challenging, bridging logic and computer science concepts at a fast pace. I learned more code than I needed to know for design work.

Within 3 weeks of completing the coding bootcamp, I received an offer from Launch That as an intern developer. As an intern, imposter syndrome dawn upon me, but I trusted myself through the process and moved up the ranks to Front-End Developer, Product Designer, and now Design System Lead.

When I’m not designing…

I volunteer my time to give speeches to recent bootcamp graduates to help guide their career paths.

Bootcamps create a significant shift in mindset all at once. And frankly, it starts with an audacious goal of becoming a full-stack developer, where graduates are most likely to fail to do all the code. I instruct graduates to lean into the frameworks they are good at rather than spending time being anxious and demoralized because they have to know everything.

I encourage them to have the humility to scale back to a well-defined role, work on the thing they are best at and enjoy the most. I hope to stimulate graduates so that their ambitions aren’t to sell out to a hefty paycheck.

I give speeches to young students at elementary schools as well. I urge students to use computer science to amplify their impact on the world ethnically. Indeed, “learn to code” has become part of a larger trend whereby education (K–12 and college) is reduced to job training. The rationale for computer science education is mainly about employment or entrepreneurship, it seems.

Learning to program a computer is a valuable intellectual pursuit, a powerful way to “think about thinking.” It’s a way of having agency over an increasingly complex and technologically sophisticated world. I hope to encourage them so that their ambitions aren’t a deception to a high-profile company because of their fancy perks.

My self-awareness is predicated on the “keeping up with the Joneses” environment I grew up in - the expectations from my parents, and the rash “hood life.” Being honest with myself is one of the most important traits to master when it came to making my success, and I feel a huge responsibility to share that lesson.

Self-awareness never ceases to exist, and there is always something to be learned about the depth of our own capacity.