Her Story
About Fatema
Fatema Patrawala is a Conversation Designer at Natomi, a conversational AI company based in Atlanta, Georgia. She began her career in IT procurement and the IT industry in 2014 and later worked in the IT and marketing departments of a real estate company. In 2020, she transitioned into conversation designing for AI applications, including voice bots and chatbots, and now works on projects deploying conversational AI solutions for clients across industries while also handling requirements, workflows, generative AI integration, demos, and deployments. Fatema holds a post-graduation in marketing and has earned a conversation design certification from the Conversation Design Institute, a generative AI practitioner certification, and NetOMI product certifications. She is a member of the Conversational Collective, where she has organized events to promote the field. She attributes her success to the support of her family and especially her husband.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Fatema
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to my family and especially my husband who has supported me day in and day out, even in my worst days. Only because of his support have I been able to continue with my work and my career journey over the last few years. My family first, and my husband first, for sure.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I have ever received is to keep yourself updated regularly with the market and what's happening. If you're updated, you can definitely be ahead in your journey. Rather than just doing the same old work, keep updating yourself and experimenting with new technologies and new platforms and new systems. That also shows a level-up version of yourself within your team members and within the company.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
One piece of advice I would give to young women entering this industry is not to go blindly into it. First learn the basics from the ground up and get yourself into a comfortable position before jumping in just because everyone else is. Get your basics right because it is not very easy and can be a rocky road. Also keep learning and stay updated with the current industry happenings and market, and that will help you go a long way rather than taking shortcuts.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge is that the field is evolving leaps and bounds, and keeping up with it is difficult because even in a product company the product changes daily. Learning and unlearning is a challenge. But that's also a good spot to be in because you have to do that to stay in the industry. The opportunity is that you are never bored; you are always learning new things and surprising yourself with how much you can evolve. There are so many opportunities across the industry even for non-technical roles like business analyst.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The values most important to me are to respect everyone around us and across us, to see everyone as a different person or personality. If you're expecting something from someone it might not come across as that, so just respect everyone and have the same respect for everyone across your community.
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