My Unexpected Journey to Silicon Valley as a Woman of Color
How I almost didn’t make it and why this story matters
Two young fish swimming in a river encounter an older fish. The older fish greets them, “Morning, boys, isn’t the water great today?” The two young fish continue onward in silence, when suddenly one of them looks at the other and says, “What the hell is water?”
I started my tech career in the late ’90s, first as a developer for Citibank in India, then as an engineering manager in Singapore and, later, Wall Street. I wrapped up a part-time MBA at New York University’s Stern School of Business while on maternity leave, then pivoted to product management on the West Coast. At Walmart Labs, I drove the digital transformation of several verticals and delivered seamless customer experiences, which included patented mobile app improvements. At Atlassian, I now lead a talented product team that is building the next-gen B2B e-commerce experience.
My career as an immigrant female leader in tech is nothing out of the ordinary compared with that of the many denizens of Silicon Valley. On recent reflection though, I was reminded that my journey into tech is unusual in many ways. Just like the fish, what I now take as the ubiquitous and the obvious isn’t so for others nor was it for me when I first got started.
