Her Story
About Harshada
Harshada Jivane is a Machine Learning Engineer and AI Engineer based in San Jose, California. She began her work in the field after completing her undergraduate degree in 2017, starting with machine learning at Microsoft. She later earned a master's degree in AI in 2021, with a specialization in data science, and completed an internship at Walmart Labs in Sunnyvale before working with the TurboTax team. Currently at an AI-based startup, her expertise centers on document understanding through natural language processing and vision-based models that enable AI to interpret human language and process images such as uploaded documents. Harshada attributes her success to her curiosity, the support of her family and university teachers, and a commitment to never giving up. She values integrity and responsibility in her work, particularly in maintaining customer trust and ensuring AI systems produce accurate results without hallucinations or errors. Among the career advice she has received and shares is the importance of communicating accomplishments to a broader audience beyond immediate peers to support professional growth.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Harshada
01What do you attribute your success to?
My curiosity is one. Another is like my family and then my teachers in my university and everywhere where they always motivated me they always wanted me to get a better version of me every time and just never give up. So it would be the people around me and also my curiosity to just learn.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
Just communicating more to a broader audience. When we work the most impact is known to your immediate peers or your manager but when you want to grow in a company it needs to be reached out to a company-wide audience. My manager had rightly said it out like I should be more vocal of what I have done in my work.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Hang in there. Most of the problems people suffer is they're overwhelmed by the competition. But once you know you have found your niche space like you know the most in this specific area of work or even AI a specific area of research in AI or something I think you should just be very deeply in that and then make sure the next time you go and interview related to that area you're gonna grab it. Always finding something about what your capabilities are and just focusing on that rather than getting overwhelmed by competition.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Challenges would be really keeping up with all these changes that happens. How do you even communicate with AI what's the best way to get the result out of it what's the best way to make sure it's correct answer and it's not hallucinating. Making sure it makes less mistakes making sure I evaluate the AI's response myself or have a better workflow to evaluate the AI response again and not blindly trust it.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Integrity and also having responsibility. AI we are responsible and integrity is like when you know you really value our customers like you don't want to misuse anything you want to keep that trust alive. Even if I'm not looking even if somebody's not looking I'm still doing the right thing.
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