American Institute of Indian Studies Podcast
American Institute of Indian Studies Podcast
AIIS and Tech: Languages, Code, Design, and Careers with former AIIS language students
In this episode, we look to the world of tech and the bridges that AIIS students create between Indian and South Asian Studies and successful careers in technology fields of all kinds. The stereotypical careers that stem from the study of Indic languages and South Asian Studies may be in the humanities, but many AIIS language students have made the jump from South Asian Studies to STEM fields. They have used their diverse language and humanities training to make themselves stand out in a crowded applicant field and have also applied their AIIS study abroad experiences directly into their daily work to allow them to bring fresh perspectives to traditional solutions in tech, whether it is coding, design, or leadership and management. Join us today to speak with three former AIIS language students as we chat about study abroad experiences, how they switched careers from South Asian Studies to tech, and tips on making the leap to a non-traditional career track.
Joining us in this episode is Nicole Hemenway Bratz, former AIIS Sanskrit and Urdu student and current Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Capsle Stories: www.capslestories.com; Tyler Neill, former AIIS Prakrit student and currently a software engineer and Sanskritist living in NYC: tylerneill.info; and Rachael Hyland, former AIIS Hindi and Bangla student and current Senior Content Designer at Intuit. Rachel's blog post on Hindi and product design was a major catalyst for this conversation. You can read her thoughts on combining study abroad, language learning, and product design on the Intuit Design blog.
The AIIS Language Program offers nine-month academic year, summer and semester courses at elementary to advanced levels in many languages, including several that are rarely taught outside of India.
Produced by AIIS
Intro and Outro music: “Desh” by Stephen Slawek
The American Institute of Indian Studies was founded over 60 years ago to further the knowledge of India in the United by supporting American Scholarship on India. The programs of AWS foster the production of and with scholarship on India and promote and advance mutual between the citizens of the United States and of India. AWS seeks to provide access to scholarship about India to wide and diverse audience. Welcome to the May 2024 installment of the American of Indian Studies podcast. My name is Anandi Silva Kaneple, and I'm the Strategic and Project Specialist for AWS. Through this podcast series, we hope to explore various AWS initiatives and engage with our current and former students, instructors, and researchers. In this episode, we look to the world of tech and the bridges that AWS students create between Indian and South Asian and successful careers in technology fields of all kinds. The stereotypical careers that stem from the study of Indic languages and South Asian studies may be in the humanities, but many AWS language students have made the jump from Asian studies to STEM fields. They've used their diverse language and humanities to make themselves stand out in a crowded applicant field, have also applied their AWS study abroad experiences into their daily work to allow them to bring fresh to traditional solutions in tech, whether it's coding, or leadership and management. Join us today to speak with three former AWS language as we chat about study abroad experiences, how they careers from South Asian studies to tech, and tips on making the leap to a non-traditional career track. Joining us today is Nicole Hemenway Bratz, a former AWS and Urdu student. Nicole began her tech career in 2018 at TeachFX, a voice startup for teachers as a junior-level front-end engineer. Currently, Nicole is co-founder and chief product officer Capsule Stories, where she leverages Voice AI to help record and preserve their most cherished memories. You can check out her work at www.capselstories.com. Tyler Neal is a former AWS Procrit student. Tyler is currently a software engineer and Sanskritist in New York City. You can learn more about all of his Sanskrit and tech on his website at TylerNeil.info, with Neil spelled And Rachel Highland, a former AWS Hindi and Bangla student. Rachel is a self-described Hindi file and a at Intuit. She lives in Central Texas with her miniature Australian Teo. I just want to say thank you all for being here today and your experiences with us about AWS language programs and how that helped you or impacted your experience and getting tech. Can you all introduce yourselves a little bit and maybe which AWS programs you've completed, a little bit about your academic background or area of research, and then what your role is in tech now?
Speaker 1:I can start just to get the ball rolling.
Speaker 4:Yeah, thanks, Tyler.
Speaker 1:Okay, so my name is Tyler Neal, and my background is in uh Sanskrit. I studied it for about 15 years and uh did a PhD, which uh it in 2022 at the University of Leipzig. And then somewhat early on in 2013 is when I did just my AAAS summer program. It was in Prakrit and it took place at Deccan College in Um so I was sort of taking a little detour from my main which was Sanskrit philosophy, especially Nyaya and philosophy. And during that summer program, I was exploring Prakrit and exploring Jainism, and um didn't end up panning out as my main direction, but it was a really, really nice experience as of my overall language learning adventure in academia. Uh so right now I am working as a software engineer in a biotech firm called Benevolent AI. We work in the drug discovery space, so doing discovery for or in collaboration with pharma companies. And my role involves me managing uh data pipelines and then APIs, um, so these bits of software that can talk to each in the system, and then we help our specialist users uh use these systems to help discover drugs in a better way. Um, and I started that job right at the end of my PhD in
Speaker 3:So my name, my name is Nicole Hemenweight Bratz. I went to UC Berkeley for undergrad and I majored in South languages and literatures with a minor in history. My focus was on Sanskrit and Urdu. I did AIS Sanskrit for summer and fall of 2013. I did AIS Urdu for summer 2014, summer 2015, and the academic year of 2015 through 2016. And so I graduated college in 2015. I did a full year of Urdu in Lucknow. Um I ended up doing the sort of uh equivalent program in in Lahore, um, studying Urdu through AIPS. And then I transitioned into tech. I was at an early stage voice AI startup building uh voice product for teachers. It was called Teach FX. I was there for six years. I was the head of product and I did engineering management and project and product management there. I um am now trying to get a startup off the ground, um sort of a voice AI product for families.
Speaker 2:Um I'll go ahead and introduce myself. Um I'm Rachel Highland. Uh I got started um with AAAIS in the summer of 2011, feels like a lifetime ago. Um, and that was part of the CLS program, critical language scholarship uh in intermediate Hindi. Um, but it was it all like all the classes took place at Uh and then after that, I returned um from 2012 to 2013 to do a year-long uh program at AIS in advanced Hindi. And then my last stint um at AAAIS was in the summer of 2015, uh, doing a beginner Bengali course. Um that's kind of how I um, I guess that's my AAAS journey degree was at the University of Texas at Austin in um Asian studies and English. And then I also studied um at UC Berkeley uh kind of up to I was in a combined master's PhD program um in South um, but ended up, you know, pursuing other things from And yeah, so my current role in tech and pretty much I would say, yeah, I mean, this this is a role I've had for a while. Um I'm a senior content designer at QuickBooks. So it's owned by Intuit, which owns a bunch of companies you might be familiar with, Credit Karma, Mint, uh, TurboTax. So, but I I work for QuickBooks.
Speaker 4:Um that's awesome. And I have to say that the blog post that you had written like how studying Hindi kind of impacts your current role how you just approach it in general was one of the major uh kind of catalysts for bringing this group together. So I will definitely include a link to it in the podcast So a lot of times when I tell people what my my background is and that I do work in tech, um, but I have this history of in South Asian studies and religious studies with my area, I focus so much on language work. Um I went to uh three AAAS programs myself, and they're oh, those are really disparate things. So I want to ask each of you first, what brought you to the study of South Asian languages or want to research topics South Asia? And then next, I want to ask about kind of how how you found your affinity for tech.
Speaker 1:I grew up with very relatively little exposure to South culture, other world cultures. I went to college in 2003, uh, and already then I was in um Buddhist meditation just as a personal thing. And then somewhere through college, my good friend, my wife, uh, gave me a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, and that part of what got me interested to learn more. I took some classes during college, and one particular on Sanskrit philosophy really captured my imagination. I just sort of found my way toward it uh organically through that like personal interest at first and then through classes. And I dove in only after college to the language study. Uh, so I just audited classes at a couple of universities a couple of years. I was at uh Cornell and Vienna for the most of that time. And then in 2011, it was three years after I'd graduated from college, I thought I'm really enjoying this. I should I should try to go back and go even deeper as part of a grad program. Ultimately, I ended up doing two different PhD programs in process of figuring that out, but the AAAS experience during the first um part, which was the hard part for me, but it was, as I said, a really good experience in terms of my linguistic horizons. And it was the the first and only time I spent such extended time in India. Uh I only went one more time for a conference a couple years ago in 2019. So it's been really valuable for me as a memory and as a to return and to stay in the field.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, the way I was originally exposed to uh Hindi, I I would say Hindi specifically, but um I would just to, I guess, Indian culture and languages in general, actually when I was about 13. And I I go into this in the article that you mentioned, but um basically just kind of watching this um movie that my dad had playing, like kind of watching over his shoulder. Um, and you know, later finding out that that movie is which was um, it was nominated for an Oscar actually that And is an absolute classic. Yeah, it's it's a really amazing film. Um, I wouldn't even call it necessarily, I wouldn't say it's even a Bollywood movie. It's it's more of like a historical epic or historical drama. Um so much about cricket. I just yeah, it you'll you'll learn a lot about cricket. Um to be honest, that part kind of bored me. Um, but yeah, I I was really fascinated. I'm pretty sure that's what that was the first Indian movie I'd ever seen. The language, as you probably know, is not it's not Hindi. It's kind of like a a made-up um like amalgamation of like and Ruj and probably some other things, um kind of like or like regionalisms. Um yeah, so they just kind of became obsessed from there. I think obsessed is not even like an overstatement, uh, and just got really interested in learning more about um but then, you know, kind of explored uh Tamil as well as like Bengali, Urdu, like all of those, and you know, just got into the the culture, the food, the movies, the music, like everything. And yeah, I think I pretty much grew up um loving, I say necessarily learning languages, but just learning about other cultures. And to me, it just kind of made sense if I'm curious about cultures that I should approach it through the lens of Um, because language is to me like something so intimate to people. You know, it's kind of one of those things. If you're struggling to express yourself in another like you can always go back to your like mother tongue and just something so closely held, I guess, to your emotions and like your way of seeing the world. Um, and that just really kind of resonated with me as kind of like a, I guess I'd say like a sensitive kid. Um, and you know, I was always like looking at what other were doing and and thinking like, oh, that's Uh so that's kind of how I started learning Hindi on my own. And then I majored in it in college uh and started taking And it was pretty much all history from there.
Speaker 3:So I grew up in Palo Alto and grew up sort of around Stanford, had a lot of friends whose parents were professors at I was like very much in the Stanford community growing up. And so I arrived at college with this. I I loved so many subjects. I loved like I loved school. And I came to college knowing, just knowing that I wanted do a PhD program and become a professor. And then, and then I was just like, okay, now I just need to find a subject to do a PhD in and to be a professor of. And um, so after my first year of college, I had sort of it down to I wanted to do a PhD in in the humanities. I loved poetry, I loved religious literature, I loved Um, I uh in looking into what like how to prepare yourself a PhD somewhere in that area, uh learned that learning a would be a good foundation for PhD studies. And so then I just spent the summer after my freshman year a bunch of languages, like what is the sort of literary offered in different languages, different world I was like very open-minded. I was like, I'll any world language will do. What language should I learn? And um, just naturally with what I was interested in, like religious literature, I was really into like mystical um, really into history. And so like having a deep history was really attractive to me about Sanskrit. Sanskrit was the like made a lot of sense. I've really, I just like started taking Sanskrit and just with it. And um it was really when I took my first trip to India um uh AWS for AWS when I did my my first um I did my first AWS program in summer 2013. I did Sanskrit there and it like I was just blown away by how big the world was. I it it was like a really profound experience for me that I was like, wow, I I want to study South Asian history. Like I would look around and just like see how people would interact, see how people buy things, see how people live lives. And I'm just like, I have no historical foundations for what is going on around me. It was like, I was just like in this world of newness. And so it was it really was for me my my 2013 AWS summer, Sanskrit program that um led me to uh feeling firm that I I wanted to do a PhD in history. Um and I just really uh dove into it from there.
Speaker 4:I love that we're this is a a podcast that was you know out of the idea of talking about, you know, how AWS language led into this really different career path than what you assume for folks who were studying Sanskrit and Hindi and and spending all of these summers and years, academic years, um, focusing on this, on these intensives. None of us here, myself included, ever really considered a linguist necessarily or a quote unquote language person. It seems like this particular group kind of all found really attracted to the study of language for from different for different reasons, and that that itself was kind of and transformative. So reflecting on the language programs themselves, so AWS a number of language programs. We have a set few that we offer every year, and then some of the less commonly taught languages from India and we we run on an as-needed basis, kind of like by request. They have summer and academic year programs as well as semester programs. And I found my experiences to be amazing and unique. And so I wonder if we could just take a minute. Um, what was your biggest takeaway from that experience?
Speaker 1:Uh again, I just had a single summer experience, and I we haven't uh acknowledged this yet, so I can go this. Um, so Nicole Anandian and I were also we're all together the same place um in Pune that same summer. Um so as one of two people who was uh studying the uh Prakrit that summer, they had you know arranged for this more um you know ad hoc uh course for us because it doesn't every year. We had two teachers, two students, and we were upstairs in same building. Sanskrit was happening just below, and so we would all, of you know, share um experiences during lunchtime, and other you know excursions that we did together. It was uh definitely really challenging for me. It was my first time being anywhere uh in Asia, in South in India. And of course, I got sick. I remember that, I reflect on that, probably more often the other parts of the experience, uh just day-to-day. My roommate uh during that summer in Pune was uh John who went on to become the South Asian uh librarian at the of Congress. So he and I have recently been working a little bit together. So we did form a partnership, even though we weren't same program, we were rooming together. He was studying monastic at the time. It's funny that the content of the course isn't what in my mind. I mean, I can definitely come up with um my favorite parts. The main thing was singing, I think, reciting uh meters. Um that was continued in my second program I did that summer in Germany, and part of my uh tech work has been to maintain some Sanskrit software programs, uh, one of which is meter detection and features audio files that I play to the user. And you know, I actually have some recordings from that that I thought about including in the software, but you my my recording equipment was terrible at the time. Um, but it's something that's really stayed with me and something that I want to keep connecting with even 10 years later.
Speaker 4:I have to say, Tyler, like when I was putting us all the Sanskrit hegemony was thick because I had a I had put you in the Sanskrit group in my memory.
Speaker:Yeah, that was.
Speaker 4:Obviously, he was in one of the Sanskrit like groups. Um because you know there were different levels of Sanskrit, right? So, like, you know, I'd I assumed you're in one of the ones. In my memory. I may have been correctly at the time. Okay. Uh Rachel and Nicole, is there uh something about the AWS program experience uh that you'd like to reflect on, like favorite program or just like a method that you really or something about just being on the program itself? Um I know Nicole, you already mentioned that it was kind transformative, just being there as well.
Speaker 3:Because I I went there for the summer 2013. I was really taken by it, and so spontaneously sort of decided um to take a leave of absence for the fall and then to for the fall as well. Um, so it was not planned that I stayed there for summer and fall, but I loved the summer so much that I did. I think the parts that stick out the most to me are one, I just loved the people in the program, the teachers, the students. I just like felt so like it was a really vibrant, curious, intellectually rigorous, um, just like such a wonderful to get to be a part of. And I like really fed off of that energy of the group. I really loved the people who I met through my my AIS And also an aspect that I I loved about the programs was the diversity of the materials we got to study. I think that when you're when you're studying Sanskrit or when I was studying Sanskrit or Urdu at UC Berkeley, you have it's one class among many. And so you really would work on like one text at a time, and you just it there's there's only so much diversity of that you can touch on when you're meeting for a few hours week for a semester. But the AIS programs really allowed me to read a wide of Sanskrit material. I get to read the poetry, the drama, the like different time periods, the different like famous writers. I like very distinctly remember reading um Kalidasa towards the end of my Sanskrit AIS program and just being like, why haven't I been reading this the whole time? Like, because you'd get to have these one-on-one sessions a teacher where you'd get to pick any text you want, you bring the text to your one-on-one sessions with them, and get to work on it with them. And I only got to work through a handful of pages of towards the end of my Sanskrit program. And I was like, I I want to come back just so I can keep Kalidasa with Minal. So those are just a few um highlights for me about the AAAS programs. I really Sanskrit was just like really took my heart. I really loved my Sanskrit experience. Um, Urdu was wonderful too. It didn't have the same sort of life trajectory altering that the Sanskrit program did. And so that's why that one really has a really soft spot in my heart.
Speaker 4:The Sanskrit program, just the Deccan College vibe of the that were there, because as you mentioned, Telia, it was Prakrit, and Marathi were all there kind of hovering. That was a particularly great group. I don't know if they're all so awesome, um, but it was a group of people. Um it was a very sweet program. Like I really enjoyed it and had like really fond memories of it as well. And Rachel, do you want to share um some of uh some of your memories or takeaways from your programs?
Speaker 2:Sure. Um yeah, I think if I were to pick like a favorite, that's of uh hard. Um I'd say it's probably like a tie between uh the first one I did, which was just a summer in Jaipur, and then the the program. I think um it was good, you know, like in hindsight, I this um to kind of dip my toes in for the first time just with a summer because uh I hadn't I'm from a small town in in and I had really never been anywhere, you know, outside of outside of the US before I went to India. So like India was like my literally my first uh overseas experience. And um yeah, I meant I I remember mentioning that to some in the program. They're like, you've never even been to Europe. You know, like Europe seems like something you should have first and then and then India. But I was like, yeah, India's the first time. So they're like, okay, well, that's interesting. But yeah, I think, you know, once the initial kind of shock wore off, it was good being there just for a summer. Um, and it made you kind of crave more. Um, so kind of like echoing what other people are I would say, you know, takeaways from those two programs is just like, I don't think I've ever in my entire life had such passionate, dedicated, devoted teachers who are literally, I probably would say like the foremost experts in their field. And they are, it's hard being a teacher. You you can see it. Like it's it's um that's that's a sometimes a thankless job. But some of the best teachers of my entire life, yeah, I remember, you know, some of those teachers at AIS Jaipur, I would say specifically. And it's actually funny because um my first Hindi teacher at UT Austin, he was um a former AAAS teacher. So, you know, I kind of told him, like, oh, I'm gonna do CLS program. And, you know, he gave me tips, and that was great to kind of already have that connection before I even went there. And yeah, I think what I really enjoyed about it was just the window into another culture that you can only really get through language, because I noticed, you know, some people I would meet in Jaipur, like Americans or Europeans who who know Hindi or they didn't know very much Hindi. You know, people say, like, oh, you know, Indian people they speak English or they speak a lot of English. But um that really just depends on who you're talking to. And I think your experience is a lot, it's a lot don't have that ability to talk to people. You know, there's some countries you can go to and you try speak the language of the people there and you might be like ridiculed or like laughed at because maybe your language aren't perfect. Um, but I just remember in India, like people being like you know, when when you speak Hindi, they didn't expect it. And just having those like like a warm, welcoming smile on face just because you tried, you tried to speak, even if speaking is not perfect. I just remember like feeling so welcome by that. And just, you know, any anytime I would try to go to a or like temple, just being like super welcome inside of space, even though you know I'm not I'm not Hindu. But yeah, one thing I would shout out about the Bengali is that the food there is phenomenal. Um, it's so good. I mean, the teachers are amazing as well, but the food, like uh the cook, I don't know if he still works there, but um, shout out to him because his fish curries were amazing.
Speaker 4:I love that. And it's really an important detail for those who who might be listening or who might get you know curious to know about the details of the language program is like which one has the best food? But we we I don't want to pay any program against each other here, but it's it's important details. Um so now switching gears a little bit, um, a little bit or a lot, I guess, um from languages in in India, the study of of South Asian cultures, languages. What drew you to your current tech role?
Speaker 1:So when I was trying to find the research topic within Sanskrit that would hold my attention for at least as long as a PhD, uh, I was struggling. And I actually wanted to do something that was more closely aligned with pedagogy and potentially also sort of the digital humanities, although at the time I didn't know that term, was just not as motivated by, you know, just reading, just about scholarly literature and trying to come up to say myself in that space. It was actually, you know, a bit of frustration that led to notice when there was a project, uh, especially that was coming out of Europe, that had a bit more of a component to it, that I resonated with that. And when I decided to stop my first PhD program, I didn't have you know a great alternate plan. Uh, but I was lucky that within a relatively short time I got a chance to try out doing some more tech things. Uh, what that meant at first was teaching myself uh modern language, and fortunately I had exposure through my friends who were working in the same uh industry that I mentioned AI assisted drum discovery, and so I was advised to Python. So I taught myself using some. Kind of you know, self-starter materials that I could And then I just started doing projects on my own, uh, seeing if it clicked, and it did. It just felt right. Like I started really enjoying engaging with Sanskrit with the idea that I could apply these methods to it that more kind of constructive or the kind of thing that I wanted to make. I continued that through what ended up being the second half of my PhD experience, which was at a different university. I got hired to be part of a project team and was empowered to work both part as part of the team and as a PhD student on my own tech projects in connection with Sanskrit. And that was basically my playground. I got to learn how to do not super elegant programming, but functional working uh software in that context. And I gave myself enough exposure, sort of luckily, to the methods. So, you know, managing fairly large bits of data, trying some basic like machine learning methods, building a interface to interact with a system, and incorporated that my dissertation work. And through that process, and again, still talking to my who are in the tech space, realized this is the kind of I think I want to do next. I'd like this work. Uh, even if it ends up being not Sanskrit entirely for the phase of my life, I think I can live with that because this is the thing that I am excited about learning next and the of work I want to do. And I promised myself I would just do my best to continue my Sanskrit interests on the side. So when the time came, I you know, fortunately had a pretty good experience finishing the PhD and was submitting that and was searching for jobs at the same time. So I had already found the job. Um, fortunately, through you know some personal connections, helped, and was able to pitch myself as someone who could you know, both technical things and then thinking more uh you know, with the humanities skill set, and ended up discovery in the you know, pharma-adjacent space, not I had a particular affinity for that, but because it sort of role that needed that kind of mix of talents. At least that's how I saw it. Um I also thought it was not a terrible like motivation to to make new medicines, cure new diseases, things like that. And again, my friends were in that space. It was really helpful to have those personal connections to show me what a different lifestyle outside of academia was And it helped that I could manage to develop this new set within academia, within a more flexible uh PhD in Europe as it happened. Um, and then things were able to dovetail fairly well after that because the role that I landed basically had me doing same sort of thing, managing data pipelines and software interacting with that data and then presenting it to the drawing certain insights from it. It ended up being pretty continuous with my PhD work.
Speaker 4:Very cool. So you actually have like a direct link via language study to the work that you did in tech, which I think is a pretty experience. And although you've left Sanskrit behind in some like in a like day-to-day work sense, um, it's kind of what got you tech. So that's uh awesome. I love that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I think it's actually kind of similar to what said for me as well. Kind of uh when I left uh academia, you know, because I I had the sense for most of the time that it just wasn't, it wasn't really the place for me. It wasn't like my path. Um, and I I was kind of just wondering like what would what would life be outside of academia and like uh you know, how's the job market, that kind of thing. So um the first job I got kind of, I don't want to say by it was kind of a fluke, um, was working for Apple Maps. Um, and they had a need for a lot of uh different languages. So anything from like Spanish, um, German, you know, Canadian, Hindi, Russian, like all of those. So they had a need for a lot of that just to um do some data analysis on their um on the data they had for for various around the world. So someone like me was kind of um a good fit for that, uh, because you know, I could work on the the South Asia side, specifically uh Pakistan and India. Yeah. And I just remember, I guess through that experience that I felt like um I wasn't putting my language skills to full Like I wasn't engaging enough with it. And at the time I was still like very engaged and like in doing that. Um, so I ended up switching to a different team at Um, it was the like localization department for uh Apple and you know, other um, I guess like music-related apps that they have, and basically just you know doing translations and like localization work from English to Hindi. Um, you know, there's a little bit of a bias in the field toward um like native speakers. Um, and you you can understand why, because they're kind clued into more of like the colloquial or like idiomatic of speaking and and translating. And I kind of felt like, you know, I was kind of at a dead at that point because there's there's really no path for someone who is not a native speaker necessarily. Um, or it, you know, it's it's a little bit, it's a lot So I think actually from that, you know, just doing like QA testing, that was another part of the job. Um, I started noticing, you know, there's the elements of screen in front of me. We did a lot of uh testing of like UI, like user like um UX issues, so user experience issues. And then I became interested in uh UX UI design from I decided to do a boot camp in that it was all online. And um, yeah, tried to get a job as a a product designer or UX UI designer. They they mostly call it product designer these days. And yeah, I think anyone who's familiar with the design world will know it's it's pretty hard to break into that as a junior or like someone who doesn't have um direct like job Uh so from there I learned about like content design, then realized that that was more of a a match for my skill And it was a little bit of an easier transition for me. And it also kind of gave me a leg up over, you know, other content designers who don't have a design background. So that's kind of how I got my current role. It was, it was a very, I guess, yeah. I mean, you think about it, it's it makes logical sense. Um, it wasn't like something crazy, but yeah, that's how I found my current role in tech.
Speaker 3:So I decided that. So after I did my undergrad and I did um some language in South Asia for a year and a half, then I decided not to go the PhD route. And I was sort of at this place where I was like, well, that I'd been doing leading up to that was all for a PhD history. And so not doing a PhD in history, I was like, well, I have a blank slate now. What do I do? Um, and again, being from Palo Alto, being from like the heart of the Silicon Valley, the tech industry, I was very with the random background, does a boot camp and in tech pipeline. Like that was a very um, I had witnessed that happen for many of my peers. And so I really was like, well, I don't know what I'm doing, so I might as well do a coding boot camp and just like there are good jobs in tech, and so let's just get one of the jobs while I figure out what is next for me. So I did a full stack software engineering boot camp in Francisco. I um when I finished that, I wanted to the it's which is for getting your first junior level software engineering Um, but sort of the I I was really curious to have a foundation in computer science. And so when I finished the the boot camp, I took a few science classes at Stanford as a visiting student. I did some of the like intro courses to the computer major. And then I landed at Teach FX in um 2018. I was the first hire after the two founders raised their round. And I came in as a front-end engineer, uh full stock but but mostly focusing on the front end. And I I really just stumbled my way into it. It was like I just, I was like, I was mostly just looking for people who I wanted to seem like good colleagues to work I was, I was very of the belief that people are everything. And so I was really looking for good people to work And I loved the two founders, and so I decided I wanted with them. And the the product that they were working on just ended up being such a beautiful fit for for many of my interests. Um, they they're building a voice AI product for teachers. Um, so language was like core to the product that we were for teachers. And so there's like, I I love school. And so um I got to think and work deeply, think deeply. I I got to think deeply about schools and classrooms and um the discourse in classrooms. The product that we were building um takes uh audio from analyzes the discourse patterns in those classrooms, and provides the teacher feedback on their use of high-impact strategies. Um, so education research um has a lot. There's a lot of education research that points to instructional strategies as leading to more equitable or student outcomes. And we are building a product that automatically detected of um those high-impact instructional strategies in discourse and provided teachers feedback and nudging. So, like imagine sort of like a Fitbit for teachers that you towards these um instructional moves that improve engagement. So that was the product that we were building. I really just stumbled into it and then it ended up being a really, really neat product. And so I stayed for six years. Obviously, I wouldn't have stayed for six years if I sort of taken by this product. And in that process, I really came to love early stage I love the scrappiness of it, I love building a project from scratch. It's very intimate. You work really closely with a small team of people and you have to be really agile. You have to have a lot of um, like you end up using a bunch of different skills. Generally, like early stage startups are really good for more like a generalist skill set. So someone who can pick up marketing tasks, who can pick up customer success, who can pick up product design, who can pick up software engineering. Like if you can sort of dabble in all of those things and work in them competently, early stage startups are a great, a great place for that sort of generalized uh skill set. And so I I really found through this through the experience at TGFX, I have come to love working in early stage I I could speak to like what is interesting about it for So I'll I think I'll I'll stop there.
Speaker 4:Did the language study or AWS language program experience or any part of that impact the way that you work in in tech? Or was it helpful at all in the job hunting process? I know when you're listing things that you've done or on a resume or a CV, or you know, as you're in your or anything like that, you know, your experience, you know. So on the one hand, was it was it helpful at all in getting a job? And then does it impact the way that you approach your work?
Speaker 1:I think for me, language study, philosophy study, which was the other part of my grad studies, uh per se didn't translate into me um applying for jobs. I didn't end up managing to land a role that had a strong component, which was sad for me. Uh that said, I think the other skills that I got in the of you know sticking around in academia for like, you uh definitely 11 years officially in programs and being to, you know, do research, organize information, uh, present myself, all those things I think helped me to the process, uh, present myself well. I think if something specific in my studies transferred it was that the reason I liked doing classical Sanskrit was that it's uh a systematic study on the one hand, you need to master a certain system with rules, and then on the other you have to apply it well to a lot of gray areas in Uh, in my case of doing uh tech projects, you have to you pick your uh goals right, you have to pick the domain that working in uh in a way that it will work well with the you've you've chosen. So I think working at the intersection of something more and the humanities as part of my grad studies was helpful. It definitely helped me to be brave and confident in to a wide range of things, even if it didn't have the component that I was actually most excited about. Um, but again, I was looking to just develop my technical set above all and have a stable, well-paying job after the of being in academia for so long. Uh so things also like traveling, um just meeting lots of people as part of the academic journey, I think also me to be comfortable talking to people and comparing what did. If anything, I think this is a little side note, having language has made me, you know, persnickety about languages in fun ways. Um, someone who always brings up etymology at a dinner and I try to be tactful about it uh and share what's to people, but it made me sort of allergic to industry jargon. So when I started my new role and I heard the way that they were using terms, there's tech terms, and then there's the the biology level working within a biotech firm. And I was just like, why do you use words these ways? These aren't logical, helpful ways to communicate. But of course, you know, there's just sort of some idioms that arise. That's what jargon is. So I had to sort of relax my academic standards for how should be used and be a little bit more normal to fit in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I sympathize with that. Um tech jargon is a thing. And then individual companies, like Intuit is a good They have like their own um acronyms and like I don't I don't think they're like made-up words, but they use words in really weird ways. Um I won't get into the details, but yeah, yeah, I sympathize with you there because um there's a lot of things, you know, if you're like a language person or you've studied language in any capacity, you do become like hyper-aware of these things when maybe other people are taking it for In terms of yeah, the language study being helpful in a job or in the job hunting process, I think it you know, when you put um like the things that I put on my you know, my previous jobs and that kind of thing, it does, it has that kind of uniqueness factor and it does make you kind of stand out from other applicants, at least some the time, you know, when an actual human is looking at your resume, um as opposed to uh just an applicant processing or something like that. And I think, you know, in the interview process, like if you can, you know, mention something like that, that will kind make you stand out and people will be more likely to you. I also had the experience where I would be interviewing at a job and you know, I was interviewing, I think, at Dell once, and they have a lot of overseas teams in India that you actually be working directly with. So I think, you know, bringing that up and just saying, I might be able to communicate more effectively with you know, some of the time, even though the the language business is of course English, but you know, there's like being able to connect perhaps on a more personal with people because they might not be speaking speaking all of the time. So I think that does kind of differentiate you from other if you're able to say, okay, well, you know, I have to work with uh overseas teams in India and I studied in India and um I know Indian languages. I think that that can make a difference. I mean, it's it's sort of like a nice to have though. Like if you if you don't have the technical skill set, then of course you're not you're not gonna get that job. But um, it's definitely kind of uh frosting on the cupcake, so to speak. I would say in terms of like impacting the way you work, the the empathy that you gain by learning another language, as an adult, is really powerful. It's something I would say probably your your greatest as a human, and then also like as a designer, that's kind of a superpower that you know a lot of people talk about. Um, if you don't have empathy for the people you're for, then you're just gonna produce designs that don't serve anyone.
Speaker 3:Well studying Sanskrit, it's sort of inescapable that you studying history and that you are like you it studying broadens your historical perspectives in ways that I uh was not expecting it to, and it was is just a natural part of Sanskrit, is that you are um sort of confronted with history and historical consciousness. And that that has hugely impacted the way that I think about product development and uh starting sort of ideating on what a new product could be or what new products are needed on the market, are missing on the market, that it's very natural me to situate the present moment within historical trends and therefore to design products for the trajectory that I societal trends and technological advances going. And so, like as I as I look out at the market, as I look at how society is changing, how uh how society is uh like climate change, how it's adapting to this post-COVID reality, like how is society changing around us? Um, it's really it's so foundational to the way that I think about product development to situate the present moment within a historical trend. Um, so that's like probably the biggest way that my studies background impacts the way that I work and see in my, in my tech world. I'll also just say that I am so grateful for the writing that I have. I, especially in a remote first world, having strong written communication skills shouldn't be taken for granted. I think that it's really easy for people who who have strong writing skills to sort of dismiss them as skills. Like they're really good skills to have for communicating across distances and time, which is a big part of working tech these days. I will say though, that that because Sanskrit, South Asian humanities generally is so unique. It's like it's really a generally a small cohort of people sort of go this path. You have to do some mental gymnastics to figure out how it and communicate it to people, to interviewers in the job hunting process because people really don't know how to it. They don't know what it means, they don't know what to do it. Um and so it's all just part of part of the game is just figuring out what your self, what your narrative is around it connects.
Speaker 4:To wrap up, and I think Nicole, like the last thing you said was really it kind of ties into how I wanted to wrap up like awesome conversation is that at the end of the day, um if you're working in one area in school or if you're doing learning, South Asian studies and you want to go into a like tech, or if you were focused in academia and are over to tech in general, like you are in charge of this you have to create the through line as part of the job process, right? What's one tip? I know that there are loads, but just each of you, if you me one tip for transferring from one industry to from academic to tech space, what would that be?
Speaker 3:Well, what comes to mind it's actually was really funny, uh, like hearing Tyler and Rachel, you talk about the the of tech. It's my my advice that I would actually the advice that I is to embrace the jargon in a sense. My tech worldview is very early stage startup focused. So I'm I'm particularly speaking to that space. And to me, so much of being effective in the early stage space is about language acquisition of early stage startups. All of that, there's just like you can't be effective in early stage startups if you if you aren't conversant in what is what is product market fit, what are the funding cycles of startup, what is what does it mean to be seed stage versus A versus series B? Like what do startups look like at different stages of life? Um, and this is it's knowledge that you must know, but also so much of it is is language. Like I am highly conversant in the dialect of early And that is a big part of why I'm able to be effective in it. And so my advice is to understand that like if you feel by this space, that intimidation is to my mind, a lot of is about dialect acquisition. It's like, yeah, if you're not conversant in the dialect it, it's it's a really intimidating space to be in. Just like if you're trying to speak, if you're if you're in this conversation where everyone's speaking in Urdu, you're like, well, I I only understand part of this. And so there's a lot of imposter syndrome that comes with being fluent in the language that is being spoken around And so my advice is to approach it like language study, you you read the canonical books, you follow the and the Twitter accounts, and you converse with others who are conversant in these topics. You watch the startup giants on YouTube, you listen to the and you just keep going with that until you're comfortable in this dialect.
Speaker 2:Uh yeah, I really love that point. That's a really powerful point, uh, Nicole, that you just Um, another, I guess if I had to give someone um my one piece of advice, it would just be, you know, to maybe an earlier me or a younger me who was like switching careers and felt I would just say, you have transferable skills. You might think, you know, that academia, like those skills are not transferable to other industries, just absolutely not the case. I think Nicole mentioned this earlier. Writing skills. Um, that has helped me so much in my job. Like I'm a content designer. I write uh pretty much every day, whether it's, you know, or it's, you know, a research brief or like research anything like that. Those writing skills are are really valuable. Uh, not a lot of people have them. Um, and academia is training you pretty, you know, in that. So I would take advantage of that. Also, just like the research skills. So, like in my job, a lot of the research methods we use are almost directly borrowed from anthropology, from psychology. So it's really not a stretch if you're talking about like going from academia or like the study of South Asian to the design world or even like product management, for That's a that's a pretty uh that's a pretty logical path, And you already have, like as an academic, you already a lot of the sought-after skills that will make you successful in that industry. So yeah, for sure, not getting trapped in the imposter I know that's that's something a lot of us struggle with, in tech, but just realizing that all of those skills put into your academic career and your academic life, much all of them can be um transferred to another career and another company will see that as incredibly valuable and and don't let it stop you that, oh, maybe you don't have a background right now. Okay, but this is just the beginning. So yeah, I would remember that all of those skills are
Speaker 1:I have to start by saying I think just so many of your answers um are so insightful, both of you. So really appreciate uh being part of this conversation. I feel like I have something that's more um specific big picture to offer. I definitely agree with what was said already about you know embracing the language learning task and also being about the skills that do transfer very well. It's just we don't often know of enough uh role models who we can follow the same path of, um, but we're out there. So for for me, I think in my case, because what I wanted to do next was to uh really get nitty-gritty about software The important thing for me in the academic process was to settle for hyper specialization, which I think is a that academia will naturally push you in, right? To be really, really good and to secure tenure. One day, you know, you're going to have to be really focused on your field, publish a lot. And I'm not saying that people who feel that that's right them shouldn't do it. Uh, in my case, I knew I needed something else. And I didn't want to not have this extra component of my and my career path if that's what felt right. So I think my advice is if you know that you want to develop some other technical skill set, or you know you want to, know, for example, become more conversant with the world of tech and the language of it, just start early. Even in the academic years, um, there's no reason these can't overlap. Again, there's pressure to only do one thing when you're in academia. I understand that. I was there. But in my case, I feel really lucky that I was able to find a second half of my PhD experience that allowed me to the technical skills concurrently while I did the It went deep into a particular humanities topic. So not everyone can have that experience. Again, I was also lucky in uh getting the job I did. Having a personal connection definitely helps. But yeah, starting early with developing the parallel skill set that you actually want to be doing in the future, and just having patience because it does take time, just like a language. It's not going to be one year that you're going to feel and really powerful with this new skill. It's going to take some time. So be kind to yourself. Make the time early enough on, um, as soon as you know there is something else that you think you may want to do. And it can dovetail. You can you can do both to some extent. Maybe it's someday you have to make a choice about what job you want. But I, at least in my case, again, there's some luck but I think you don't have to settle for only doing one if you genuinely feel like there are multiple skill sets want to exercise during those years.
Speaker 4:Thank you all. Those are all really um insightful tips. I feel like, apart from the conversation about AWS language programs and language learning, just for folks who are in whatever stage you're thinking about going into industry, that segment alone would be extremely helpful. Um in general, I want to say thank you to you all for this conversation. It Was a lot of fun, some good reminiscing, um, some great um, and some fun stories. So thank you all so much. Thank you, Anandi. This was awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had a really great time too. Thank you.
Speaker 4:Thank you so much. A grateful thank you to Nicole Hemenway Bratz, co-founder chief product officer at Capsule Stories, Tyler Neal, engineer and Sanskritist, and Rachel Hyland, senior content designer at Intuit for sharing their experiences and with us today. And thank you for listening. For more information on all of the American Institute of Studies programs and fellowships, visit