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Can you tell me a little about your childhood and growing up in India?

I grew up in this small town called Jamshedpur, located in the northeastern part of India, about four hours from Kolkata. It was the first planned city of the famous Tata steel company. My father was a mechanical engineering professor, so we lived on the campus of an engineering school. It was like a balloon where everyone knew your ticket to a better life was a good education, and it was a huge impact.

Both my parents were very ambitious for me, which was unusual. Growing up in India in the 70’s and 80’s, it was boys who needed to be educated to be good housewives and girls who needed to grow up. But my parents never thought that I should be raised differently from my brother. My father always said, “The first thing you have to do is learn to stand on your own two feet. After that it doesn’t matter. Everything else is a little easy.” So I studied and was exposed to the wider world, mostly through books. I always knew there was a bigger and more interesting world to check out.

You were one of the only women in your class at IIT. Was it a pleasant environment or were you discriminated against?

Yeah. I was the only girl in my class of 80-100 boys. I almost quit my job in the first week of landing there. There were stadium seats where 20 people could sit in a row and I would go and sit in the middle of the first row and then everyone would walk away from me because no one wanted to sit next to me. My lab partner wouldn’t come with me to their lab.

And I was like, “How am I going to get around with this? Nobody wants to talk to me. Will I live for four years?” And a girl a few years older than me said to me, “If you’re going to resign, who else is going to lose? Gather your courage and go and figure out how to get out of this.” And I did.

How did you get to Ohio State for graduate study?

After graduation, I returned to my hometown and got a job in a steel company. As a female engineer in India, I realized that the opportunities for me would be limited. So I worked for a year, saved money, and saved $800 a year later, and on a very, very cold night, I took my first plane trip of my life to Columbus, Ohio. I didn’t even know where I was going to sleep that night.

What was the first type of job you got after graduating from Ohio State?

He was at an aerospace engineer manufacturing company in rural Pennsylvania. I was the first female engineer they hired, and I was the first foreigner to process their H-1B visa. This is how I met Corporate America.



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