I was five when my mother shared that “we would be leaving the comforts of Mumbai” to <x> - a village 200km away to start a rural school.
Growing up, I felt inadequate, but my mother showed me the possibility of learning from the best. The invitation to NASA space camp reconciled the notion that one can stay far away from the crowd but reach out to the best in the world if one is determined to do so.
When we pioneered Remote Operations in our offshore drilling, there were no ..
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In late-90s India, stamp collection was bigger than TV. I started a club with one condition—a rare stamp of my choosing from both participants. In just a week, I had accumulated stamps from over 70 countries. It was a win-win-win deal for all three players, but the limitation of the middleman was evident as a seven-year-old when the top collectors facilitated meetings outside the club.
When I started a Grocery Delivery ..
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Rami called me in panic. “I don’t know how to reach the school.”
The 20-minute car drive winded up in an alley where I saw a malnourished boy barely resembling the happy kid in our neighborhood.
I lost my father at 9. Rami lost both his parents to AIDS. His uncle couldn’t manage the financial burden of an additional child.
I side-hustled, selling software to fund my way through school and college. When my WordPress plugin became the most downloaded ..
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Doctor or Engineer – this was a question I used to hear growing up. I would annoy my parents with the answer ‘detective,’ but the answer ironically became a mantra in when I was volunteering to shift high-risk patients from homes to hospitals. The decision was based on diagnostic data, distance from home to hospitals, and, most importantly..
After four years of iterative development in AI diagnostics, I was curious to know how international machine-learning communities specializing in healthcare diagnostics were progressing...
I had seen hundreds of Facebook likes on Mental health Awareness. I kept ignoring them until, in 2015, a cousin succumbed to the ugliness of her thoughts.
Traditional government campaigns were ineffective in reaching the most vulnerable in low-income families. I founded <X>' - a non-profit to communicate the mental health epidemic in India.
First, we ..
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When I shared about the walk to reach school, the pitiful roads, and the fight for running water, my engineering friends at Stanford recalled similar stories their grandfathers would tell about rural America of the 1940s.
Joe's intervention through <Y_non_profit> by removing all distractions from the child’s daily schedule transformed our education. However, the government was caught in a catch-22 scenario—invest ...
From a middle-income home, in a year, we saw the square footage of our house triple. Coming from a culture where the privilege to talk was not equal for men and women, I kept small notes that turned into elaborate analyses on regulation, global competition, and sustainable steps to reduce the carbon footprint in family’s silver and zinc mining business. The strategic insights became the blog –
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“Will you succeed, Papa?”
I still remember his sincere smile. At one time, I saw him sleeping on the floor. In his mind, he was not worthy of any comfort without reaching a milestone.
The Hyundai deal closed. I saw him slowly & successfully build the auto parts brand ..
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When my cousins shared the horrors of neighbors falling dead to crossfires and mortars rumbling 30-year-old ancestral homes, my father would say proudly, “We are in heaven’s zone of a war.” He had a hardware business. Grandmother stayed with us. She was right to be worried. All except for one of her siblings were wiped out in bomb attacks.
My father’s ..
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The war in Afghanistan was in decline but I received the notice. On departure, my father gave a despondent look one sees in funerals. Since the destruction of strategic assets had relevance geopolitically, we were constant targets in Kabul.
Kids who barely made it out of high school were on a mission that ...
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My curiosity as a child drove the invention of a new game and opened my world to machines, math, science, and leadership in sports.
In an inter-school baseball tournament when I struggled to motivate my team, my father – a veteran of the Iraq War, advised to build camaraderie before leading. We met every day and took on ..
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Growing up as the son of immigrant parents had all the clichés of sharing a 1-bedroom apartment, lessons on frugality, and 20 years of hard work, culminating in owning our store.
When I tried to enforce contrarian strategies driven by maximizing order value, my father unanimously told me that number chasing is not how we build a business. I parted ways with my father and joined <X> – a co-working start-up. In just a year, we achieved 2nd position in the North American market. And then, the COVID crisis hit us in March 2020 ..
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I looked at wonderment on the two to four computer screens of American YouTubers. Even in a better-off African economy like Kenya, 70% of students don’t own a computer.
The government tried to subsidize computers, but corruption kept Kenya behind. My curiosity to find better learning paths that made computer the last mile of a child’s learning, encouraged me to host Sarah – an Education Major at ..
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As a two-year-old, I foot-tapped to the music of Hendrix, Beatles, and Led Zeplin. My father nurtured my talent by playing the biggest rock hits before every dinner. My mother insisted that I focus on my academics. A bit behind in the class, I didn’t pay much attention until my father shared the realities of making a career out of performance arts.
Competing with the best guitarist accelerated my guitar skills. I imitated the strategy and joined the Math club. By high school, I was at the top of the class in Math.
Things got worse when my mother was diagnosed with ..
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The innocent eyes, eager to be mesmerized, didn’t know the reality that the visually challenged market wasn’t profitable for the publishers of “Ship of Theseus.” My curiosity to learn pushed me to painfully decode each English word to the most authentic braille word. The children’s smile was my reward.
I hate ‘No’.
When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, I ..
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My mother worked in three jobs and didn’t show up for weeks. Finally, when I had the courage, I asked my grandfather about her erratic behavior.
His words still haunt me, “As an engineer, I had a comfortable life, but if I had just pursued my career, you would not have become a capable young man.”
In 1992, I lost my father in a ..
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Eyes closed, swaying to Tchaikovsky's score, I danced on the stage unassumingly. My friends were snickering at my poses. At 5, I innocently asked, “Is ballet dance only for girls?”
My father, without missing a beat, said, “Don’t worry about your friends. They will find their ballet dance.” The non-judgmental approach became my value in influencing project outcomes.
As a professional ballet dancer, I learned..
Immigrating to the land of the free was an escape from the sectarian violence that was plaguing the newly independent Nigeria of the 60s. The story of my mother’s ancestral home burned to ashes during the 1976 civil unrest was unsettling as our grandparents ...
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Did you sanitize? Did you wash your hands? Don’t allow that gap in your face mask? My father was rigorous with all safety standards when COVID-19 hit.
As a supermarket owner employing 30 in New York, my father couldn’t just shut down the business. Juggling between his sales falling by 80% in ...
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