Karishma Borkar

I would attribute my success a lot to myself, personally, because being adaptable, curious, like, completely eradicating a lifestyle which you have built and moving to a completely different place takes a lot of courage. Transitioning into a completely different environment, balancing academics, leadership, and going for your professional growth all required me to continuously adapt and stay open to learning. I'm a first-generation international student, first-generational international student in my entire family, so my family definitely supported me a lot as well. A big factor in all of these decisions which I have taken is them, but another thing is my willingness to put myself out there, whether it was pursuing some position, networking with people, and learning that growth often comes from being proactive rather than waiting for opportunities to come to your way.

I think the advice I would give, especially those navigating career and personal growth, is to trust your own pace. Stop comparing your journey to others. It's definitely easy to feel pressured to have everything figured out at maybe a certain age, but growth is rarely linear, so the important thing is to keep moving forward, even in small steps. Every experience, including setbacks, adds to your long-term direction. Don't hesitate to take up space. Speak up in rooms where decisions are being made. Apply for those opportunities, even if you don't feel like 100% confidence, and do not underestimate the value of your perspective. Because as a woman, we tend to feel as if we don't belong there. We tend to feel, how am I going to speak in a room full of men? A lot of times, women start diminishing themselves and their value, so I would say definitely do not do that. A lot of growth comes from being willing to be seen, heard, and challenged. That is one thing I will want to share to the women who are navigating their careers.

I would say one of the biggest challenges, especially in product management and technology today, is AI, and how quickly AI is changing the way business operates and how users are kind of interacting with the product. Companies are also moving fast to integrate AI into experience, but the real challenge is also making sure it actually solves something meaningful, rather than just becoming a trend in the future. I think a major challenge is balancing the data with the human experience, making sure that AI is not taking over. Today, we have a huge amount of behavioral data or numbers that don't tell us the full story. Combining AI maybe to a deeper level to get that analysis is definitely helpful, but relying on it completely definitely changes that course. So, I think AI is one thing that is one of the biggest challenges our industry is facing at the moment.

One is consistency, being consistent. You won't really get results immediately. It often does demotivate you when you don't see the results, but that's how it is. So I would say consistency is one. Ownership is another value which is really important for me. I like taking responsibilities for what I'm working on. If you depend on someone else to get that work done, it won't get done. So, I really think that ownership is another core value. And empathy is the third one, which I think is really important, especially in roles such as leadership ones, because understanding the people you are working with, understanding your teammates, to be a people person, and basically help maintain that relationship with them, because you don't know what's going on with someone else, what's happening in their life, so it's really, really important to be empathetic.