Sunday 20 July 2014

Paying it forward with WeTech

I woke up on Saturday to the sound of my mother screaming. I had overslept without regard to the fact that I had to accompany my mom to the Ritz Carlton. She along with her company Goldman Sachs, Qualcomm and Google have been working with the Institute of International Education (IIE) on a program called Women Enhancing Technology (WeTech). This was an initiative of getting more women into the Technology pipeline and to grow them.

One of initiatives was to make high school girl students ready to participate in an International App making challenge called “The Technovation Challenge". The girls were to be trained in MIT App Inventor for 12 weeks so that they could create their own app.  I came to know of this initiative through my mom.  From the very beginning she was a part of the team that helped design and structure the program.  Lead by Trish Tierney, Executive Director of IIE, they decided to rope in a number of corporates to carry this out. They scouted for schools all over Bangalore and brought in the participants. Unfortunately for me this was during our pre-boards, so 12ths were excluded from this event L .  The girls from each school formed their groups and they were each assigned a mentor either from Qualcomm or from Goldman. Though none of the teams from Bangalore qualified for the international competition, they competed amongst themselves at the final pitch event in Bangalore.

My mother informed me that these girls were going to be pitching their apps. What I failed to understand from the word “pitching” was that it involved marketing strategy, business plan and their future plans for expansion! From the moment I started listening to their pitches I was awestruck. Their ideas were backed up with so much research that I found it hard to believe that this was not the work of professionals. Moreover I was impressed by the enthusiasm of girls and by the incredible support shown by their teachers and parents apart from the dedication shown by the mentors. Definitely takes a community to bring about change J.

I had a few personal favourites in the pitches as well. One being an app designed by the team called “Transformers”, which aimed to keep women safe. They used heat maps to locate safe areas, GPS to track nearest police stations and so much more. They called it the "Be safe" app which they based on the maxim that “prevention is better than cure”. This idea went on to win the first place.   Others including the one on helping autistic kids, one on improving the lives of Artisans in Karnataka called "Kala”, one on storing the medical history of patients called "Medistory" and an app called “Study Buddy” wherein students can learn from their peers, were very relevant to real life problems.


Apart from the pitches I had the opportunity to listen to and meet some really inspirational people at the event. The IT Secretary of Karnataka Mr Srivatsa Krishna completely floored us with his compelling story telling and a beautiful mash up of facts and figures. He really introduced us to a Bangalore, we weren’t truly aware off. I hadn’t known that Bangalore was No.1 in terms of the hub of  Bio-Tech companies!
That was not all, I got to meet Ms Kumud Srinvisan, President , Intel India. She is an inspiration to all us girls out there, showing us that being a woman doesn’t limit you to dream big, but in fact makes you dream more J. Ms Srinivasan was actually one of the three judges of the competition. The other 2 judges were equally qualified and inspiring women- Ms Pradnya Karbhari of Google and Ms Kavitha Santhana Lakshmi of SAP with whom I had the opportunity to discuss a lot about technology over lunch J.

There were 2 panel discussions which were very interesting. One which my mom Lalitha Ravisankaran, moderated wherein 4 of the mentors shared their experiences while working with the girls. It was so nice to see that they became curious students along with the girls :). The second panel discussion was one which really opened everyone's eyes.  The people in the panel were Shaun Covell, Vice President, Government Affairs, Qualcomm , Mr Raheel Kursheed , Head of News, Politics & Gov, Twitter India , Mr. Krishnamurthy Vaidhyanathan, MD, Goldman Sachs, Ms Sushma Chakkirala, Head of  Mobile Platform Group, Intuit India and Ms Tanushree Deb Barman, Director IT, State of Karnataka. Trish moderated this panel.  The story of how Ms Deb Barman, the once District Collector of Tripura, overcame all obstacles and implemented policies was very encouraging to hear. Mr Khursheed, "the story teller", as he would like to be called, really motivated us to "find our voice".  I really learnt about “designing with delight" from Ms Chakkirala.  My belief that we must ask "why" before we do anything was astutely confirmed in the discussion by Mr Vaidhyanathan.  What was really interesting to hear was how “gender stereotypes” or the whole “you can do only engineering or medicine to be successful” impacted the panelists in their lives. I was truly amazed by the way Ms Covell, broke  all the boundaries for her almost all women team, leading them believe that they can achieve anything.

Meeting all of them, learning about their views on life, was something that really got me thinking. I am going to pursue Computer Science along with Math in college. What I learnt here has made me even more steadfast to pursue my goals. I have realized now more than ever that we must be the change that we wish to see.  There are so many different opportunities out there waiting for us to knock on them. We can’t just let them slip away that easily.  We have to “Live as if we were to die tomorrow and learn as if we were to live forever”.  As Mahatma Gandhi rightly said -  a man is but a product of his thoughts. What he thinks he becomes. We need to believe we can and we will. Thank you WeTech for further strengthening this belief in me. As I pursue my academic and career aspirations, I would like to continue to pay it forward, just as how the mentors have done in this program.


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