Her Story
About Kinjal
I have been in my industry for a little over 4 years, and the journey has been really rewarding and challenging at times. Being a woman of color in STEM is something that is still not normalized, especially for those who pursue higher education - it's less than 10% of women that pursue education beyond a bachelor's in the United States. I feel there is more awareness and motivation now, and the scope we consider for tech should be broader because there are a lot of implications and applications to impact the real world, which people are still discovering in the age of AI. A day in my life includes going to classes as I am a student, working on pitches, and collaborating with my team members on ideas, brainstorming, writing code, testing code, and building applications. I'm really passionate about animals, so I try to volunteer whenever I can and look after my cat, who is a rescue. I always try networking, using my resources like LinkedIn to find more people and learn more, and at the end, I just want to have a productive and fulfilling day. Recently, we won the uPitch competition at UMass, and that gave me access to a lot of resources that many entrepreneurs would love. Coming from a STEM background and still being active in entrepreneurship and wanting to pursue projects, it's filling a lot of gaps in my knowledge that otherwise would have been really hard to pass. The support and winning that early validation on our idea and our application has been really helpful - the monetary aspect will help, of course, but the fact that now we have investors and professors who are helping us and guiding us is one of the most important milestones in my opinion.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Kinjal
01What do you attribute your success to?
There are a lot of attributes and a lot of people have helped me throughout my journey. There are professors at UMass that have supported me, my mentors, and my family has always been very supportive of me. But I would say that if I had to attribute one person or thing, then I would say the biggest contributor is always going to be my own passion and motivation. The biggest change is always coming from inwards, and that's the force that is driving me to do all of this, and that's the reason why I'm able to spend this many hours and be so passionate about it.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice would be do not fit in a box. Any box, whether that is your career, your major in college, your current job, whatever you want to do, always think beyond, always know that you can always branch out, you can still try new things, and you can never be too sure that this is all and this is everything. There can always be something new, something innovative that challenges you, that you're passionate about, so you should always be open to new things.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Stay confident. There are going to be some people who do not take you seriously for whatever reason, for whatever bias that they have in their mind. It's not your responsibility to change them, and it's not your fault. So don't ever feel demotivated because of that. You have to be your biggest cheerleader, your biggest motivator, and you have to keep pushing.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Both of them are rooted in being a young, professional woman in tech, especially in computer science around the age of AI. This is both an opportunity and a challenge. For opportunity, the bar has been lower than it has been before for a lot of things, and it is easier now to learn a lot of concepts, so a lot of that education is not being gatekept. Meanwhile, I feel that that can also be a challenge, because it's hard to find authenticity in the age of AI. Everything is being replicated. So, it can also be hard for younger professionals to find some channel that rewards their authenticity, and not necessarily extremely polished work.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
One value that helps everywhere is being true to yourself and knowing what's the reason why you're working behind something. You have to be passionate about something, whatever cause you care about, whether that is the environment, sustainability, or human rights, anything that you are passionate about. Once you start engaging with that on a personal level, then work is no longer just work. You start seeing that difference in the world, and that is a really important point, because if you want to succeed, then you are going to have to work beyond the set few hours, and you're going to have to be very passionate about it. And when you can see that work reflected, your efforts reflected into the real world, that is when it starts making a lot of difference.
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