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.
