I do my best thinking in transit. I can see my life at a distance–  detached, away from an end point or a starting point. To be in transit is to be in the middle, at an in-between, caught between two states, transitioning, transforming. In fact, truly entrepreneurial, innovative processes never have a beginning or an end, they seem to be infinite loops, circular in shape, constantly spiraling forward…or backward. I have always been in transit, belonging to nowhere and no one, but also everywhere and everyone. 

My family moved to the United States from India  when I was nine, living across from a trailer park in New Jersey before moving to Philadelphia in the first 6 months of living our American dream. We lived in flux, in a state of in-betweens, mixing American mannerisms with an immigrant lifestyle, along with the culture we left behind. We lived on an income of less than $40K during those first few years, but my sister and I never felt the pinch of tight pockets. Our parents were always able to provide us with adventures and excursions despite a limited budget.

We travelled together as a family on road trips and camping trips, exploring as much as we could. When I was nine, my parents bought a second-hand silver Honda Civic from California and we drove it back to Philadelphia, passing through all types of landscapes along the way and taking old country routes as opposed to the main highways, making for perfection with my mom’s anxious over-planning and my dad’s exhilarating spontaneity. 

My family is built on both conservative and liberal tendencies. We have never been traditional. My mom is South Indian and my dad is North Indian. They grew up speaking different languages and eating different types of food. And yet somehow, found themselves building a life together after meeting at work, quitting their day jobs to start a small business. My mother worked as the technical lead while my father moved to the United States to market the software product they developed in India. Three years later he moved our family to the U.S., all while chasing an entrepreneurial dream.

I founded UX Woman, and previously co-founded Ideate Labs, built upon the principles of innovation, inclusion, objectivity, humility, integrity, hard work, and the entrepreneurial lifestyle my parents instilled in me— that ability  to go far on a tight budget. The educational services I provide to women, immigrants, BIPOC and LGBTQ folks are  built upon that drive to keep going despite the obstacles or challenges that we face daily. 

We've grown our community to 75K learners and I've personally mentored and coached hundreds of students, helping them get six-figure UX jobs at corporations like Reddit, CVS, PNC, Capital One, Truist, and more. Our educational curriculum spans both qualitative and quantitative UX mixed methods that help our students create compelling business and design case studies that justify the impact of their work and their startup topics. I build curriculum from an inter-disciplinary approach, influenced by my quant skillsets developed from a B.S. in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, as well as my qualitative UX research skillsets expanded by my M.A. in Integrated Product Design at the University of Pennsylvania.

My professional background spans 10 years of UX design & UX research work across brands like Disney+, Hulu, Marvel, ESPN, J&J, Ford, Meta, Chase, & Squarespace, improving digital experiences for these companies. Today, I love to help other women break into tech and earn six-figure salaries, getting them into rooms and roles  they never imagined they could be in—rooms and roles I never imagined myself stepping into once. 

Instead of drowning in the chaos and negativity of the world today,  l  try to remind my students to remember their roots and passions, go step by step, putting one foot ahead of the other to get to where they want to go. I tell them it’s always okay to be in transit— that there's beauty in those in-between transformational moments that get us from point A to point B. And I want to be there for them in those times.

I’m incredibly proud of my students who choose topics that go beyond a scope and impact that I could ever imagine– they have chosen to create digital user experiences focusing on BDSM education, managing grief, therapy services for immigrants, postpartum depression in women, sex education for teenage boys, polyamorous dating, domestic violence, financial literacy for women and the LGBTQ community, and work productivity for neurodivergent minds. 

I have the incredible privilege of witnessing them work through their pain, their shame, their fears, their failure and their insecurities, in choosing project topics that can be deeply personal, while also packaging these problems into actionable, mission-driven, impactful startup solutions that help them land six-figure jobs at Fortune 500 companies.

My vision for UX Woman is to expand our consulting and educational services globally, creating design teams and educational programs for mission-driven startups and corporations. I’ve been working on making updates to our design process, considering co-creative processes, localization, niche market research, and expanding the pie for clients, helping them consider broader perspectives that can drive greater product or service adoption worldwide. And it starts with really digging into the emotional pain points of market segments and audiences, truly understanding the nuances, complexities, and contradictions that come up around certain pain points.