Growing up a single child, my life and belief system has been heavily impacted by the women around me. My mother being the greatest example of a strong and opinionated woman who never let others govern her life choices.
I was a very studious kid and engineering seemed like a viable choice of career. Candidly speaking, I was not drawn to the idea of being an engineer for a long time because I had this notion of a person sitting at a desk clanking away his life at a keyboard every day from 9 to 5 and it terrified me to no end. Soon enough, I discovered that the skill set of an engineer is not limited to learning a bunch of coding languages but to actually designing solutions to problems in real life. It made me feel powerful in away.
I joined the Google Developers Group (now Developer Student Circle) in my college. Whilst, I was enjoying my newfound love for coding, I faced this absurd and rather unusual feeling of loneliness while being amongst so many engineers. Nobody was explicitly making me feel that way but there was no sense of familiarity owing to merely a handful of women in the group.
I decided to address this underwhelming ratio of women in tech and went on to represent the community as the Women Techmakers Ambassador for my college at Google’s Annual Tech Conference in Mountain View, California where I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Sundar Pichai.
I took to pageantry to voice this cause after winning the title of Campus Princess finalist 2020, which is essentially a sub – pageant to Miss India. Besides giving me a platform to talk about my cause, it has morphed me into a more confident version of myself.
As I prepare to participate in national pageants, I find it extremely enthralling to be a part of two starkly different worlds of pageantry and Software Development and redefine myself each day.
I say don’t let others define what success should like for you, be fearlessly ambitious!
