📚 education
I was born in Los Angeles in the last month of the second millennium. At seven, I moved to Pune, India. In Pune, I attended an International Baccalaureate school called MBIS. I played competitive squash on the Indian National circuit— starting in 2012 and reaching the top of India’s U-19 rankings just five years later in November 2017. I moved to New York to attend Columbia University in 2018. During the pandemic, I took a gap year between my sophomore and junior years, where, among other things, I worked on an ed-tech Conversational AI startup in India.
I graduated with a B.A. from Columbia College in May 2023 with a joint major in Computer Science & Philosophy. I built my major through the CS department, joining several classes from philosophy, computer science, formal linguistics, and the history of science and technology around “Language & Computation.”
I study how language shapes the imagination of the “self” in the context of the history of the computer and the internet. I modified my major every semester since junior year in response to changing interests and to study with the best professors teaching that semester (much to the annoyance but kindness of my academic advisor, Luis Gravano).
I am incredibly grateful for my time there. My classmates, friends, and professors changed and shaped me in ways I cannot even know or fully appreciate.
🧑🏽💻 work
Professionally, I value “People, Ideas, and Things” in that order.
In my junior year, I worked as a full-stack software engineer intern in Berlin at Airy, an open-source, real-time data streaming company for AI/ML. My contributions are on GitHub here.
In my senior year, I worked part-time as a Peer Writing Fellow at the Columbia University Writing Center. I helped over 75 writers in one-on-one, hour-long sessions using research-based writing studies methods move to the next stage in their writing process. I had no “official authority” but was an attentive and curious reader. This was some of the most gratifying work I have ever done. Being a small part of bringing writers’ ideas to life was an honor. Finding the right words to express yourself is both empowering and world-shaping. I want to thank the best bosses, Sue Mendelsohn & Jason Ueda, and my incredible friend, Isabelle Pride, who introduced me to this world.
After graduating in May 2023, I worked as DevOps engineering team at 37signals, the makers of Basecamp and Hey. It was immensely challenging and rewarding. I joined the team at the tail end of an exciting migration off-cloud. The intensity was palpable. Every day, I learned so much: Ruby, Rails, Chef, Kamal, Docker, bash scripting, OS commands, general troubleshooting, and more. During our interview, I asked Eron, my mentor, manager, and the Director of Ops, what he thinks about declarative vs. imperative infrastructure tools. After thinking about and working on the team for three months, I answered my question through a blog post on the 37signals dev blog.
In addition to learning an immense amount about Ops, I was mentored by the 37signals crew. From design to security, finance to customer service. Because of how 37signals uses its flagship product Basecamp, I could see the other teams working. I set up 1:1s across the company. I met some of the kindest, most intelligent people.
Travel Sabbatical. After an intense senior year and summer internship at 37signals, I took four months off to travel and explore Europe. I was taken most in by Italy. I immersed myself in the world’s shared history, culture, and art. Traveling solo taught me how to fix things when they inevitably broke, meet different people, and ask for help — all with a massive grin on my face and a feeling of adventure.
Product & Design Engineering I’ve decided to hone my skills of writing and talking to people, with my love for art and design. Especially looking for positions that will challenge me in product and sales.
I’m building a social mapping app that brings the experience of “cafes near me” to events: “live jazz after 8” or “market in Soho on Saturday morning” by creating a data pipeline for the events in NYC, using a mapping from Mapbox and Maplibre, with geospatial and temporal search.
🚀 life
So much of this garden reflects how I aspire to live to: Creation & Community.
Creativity is anything but solitary. I am learning to enjoy sucking publicly to learn, grow and get better. First by asking better questions. I enjoy dancing and working out(doors). I exercise, read, and write every day. Why? Because, in the words of the Mandalorian, this is the way.
Here are some ”rules” for sanity and happiness that I’ve created for myself. I am an essentialist trying to eliminate everything distracting me from what matters.
I love to travel light, cheap, and with a friend (or make ‘em on the way!). I lived in Berlin, Goa, and climbed a mountain 20,000+ foot peak in Leh, India. Parts of me are always in the mountains, underwater, with my friends and family, who inspire me every day.
August 2021. Third from the left: With my crew on top of Kang Yatse 2 in Leh, India, led by incredible Samir Patham and his team at Adventure Pulse
This is some of my more personal writing.
My “professional” image (about three years out of date!). Smile is as wide but shoulders are broader.
