Kalpita Raut

My journey into tech began with being fascinated with computers and just technology in general when I was a child. I saw technology not just as a tool, but as a medium for creativity and large-scale problem solving, and that initial curiosity has been the driving force behind my entire career. I began my journey into technology as a tech consultant with Infosys before working with Google. When I was a tech lead there, I was engaged with healthcare customers, and it truly inspired me that my work has an impact into patient and clinical care. One of my most notable professional achievements was my first project with Seattle Children's Hospital, where the solution was to come up with a better treatment plan for children as well as coming up with a strategy for early diagnosis for children treatment plans. As a result of it, we were able to not just solve a critical problem for Seattle Children's Hospital, but also help them to come up with additional products and services that they can leverage to improve the way that children receive treatments from nurses as well as their post-diagnosis treatment plans. I have a lot of certifications that are active, which are catered towards my industry. Most of them are professional certifications provided from Google Cloud, which include professional machine learning engineer, professional database engineer, as well as professional data engineer.

My biggest mentor is my current manager at Google. Her name is Ada Lau. She has been working with Google for almost 20 years now, two decades, and she has also been involved in a lot of women-oriented programs, like WAC. She was one of my inspirations to kind of find different forums and means to start contributing back to the society, especially to help women in this specific industry.

I strongly believe in the principle of lifting as you climb. My core message to all the young women aspiring to enter this field is this: your perspective is your superpower, so don't be afraid to challenge the status quo and lead with empathy. The tech world needs your unique voice to build a more better and more inclusive future.

I think one of the biggest challenges that we face on a day-to-day is just being able to exercise our voice and be heard, because in my experiences, I have been in rooms in which I am the only woman involved, and it's very hard to kind of be the assertive voice and have your opinion formulated in a way which is also strongly reciprocated by the rest of the audience and the rest of the forum in the team. So I think the biggest challenge as a woman that I face in this industry as of now is just having my voice heard, but I know that that's changing, and that changes a lot when you come up with expert points, as well as backed evidences and facts that help support your opinion.

I'm very actively involved with anything that includes women in technology. I have been a panelist for Johns Hopkins University, where I help students, mentor them and coach them for their career advancements in this particular field, especially in data science and technology. I'm also a part of Women in Data Science program. I'm on the active lookout to engage and contribute in any way that I can. Through TechWomen, a program by the U.S. Department of Cultural Affairs where we mentor emerging leaders from different countries, the most recent one that I was very lucky to mentor was an emerging leader from Kazakhstan, and she was trying to build a solution that would reduce fatal accidents caused because of road and traffic challenges. The project that we worked on explored how AI-powered speed detection technology can be used to build an application that supports real-time vehicle speed monitoring, or early warnings to prevent dangerous driving patterns, or also give data-driven insights for road safety authorities with a larger vision of nationwide employment by government and sponsor partnerships. Outside of work, I do enjoy singing, photography, just anything that's more in the creative space, and I like adventure sports a lot, so a lot of outdoor activities.