Kopal Nema

I think my biggest attribute to success is my grit. Ever since I was a kid, I've always had the grit to either lead a school, or a class, or an organization, or an event. And sometimes, things just go everywhere possibly against you. I wear my emotions on my sleeve, it's just that's how I'm built, but I also know that deep down, my threshold of stress and pain, I don't think very many people compare to it. I think the closest people that come to that are women. I work in a man's world, I can tell you, and more than 90% men do not meet that bar. My ability is to just sit through intense, complex programs and projects and bring some organization to chaos. I think many of the men just give up and say, okay, I can't do this anymore, and I'll take it over. I think I get that from my grandma. She was a very, very gritty woman. I think a lot of it I've also found is the ability to be flexible at the same time. I generally don't carry any ego. I just tell them I'm a mom at home, and I'm a mom at work. What that essentially means is that you're dealing with adults, but you gotta keep your ego on the side, and you work on getting them to talk to each other to solve complex problems in a room where some may not get along with each other. It's the same thing you do at home, too, right? You have kids who fight, and you just have to put your ego aside, and it's like, okay, let's talk this through. Those two things have been very powerful. Just the ability to be flexible with no ego, and then just the grit.

Do not live your life according to the society rules. I think many of us have been brought up in a culture that's very like, oh, I must get to this, get a job, get married, have kids. Oh my god, that's so old school, I feel. I have joked with my daughter and I've told her a few times that marriage is a scam, and kids are overrated. I think the world has way more options today. I did not grow up in an optional world at all. I was literally given a roadmap. So, I think the biggest advice to a young woman is, know yourself. You're not bound by society anymore. You never were, it just they made you feel like you were. So now you live in a more connected world and an open world, so look, nothing is hidden from anybody, essentially. You can find out what the truth is. So, don't know yourself, because if you don't know yourself, you're permanently living in a confused state, which is not good. You're frustrated at home, you're frustrated at work. Know your core values. Know what makes you happy. Work your milestones of life based on those core values. Don't look back. Write it down. I think I made this choice to marry this man, because I absolutely love the feeling I get for being cared for. Or I chose to have two kids, so I could put more responsible citizens out in the world, so hopefully one day the world will change course and start to get better from where we started. Everybody has some different values, so think it through, write them down, never doubt, read them, write again, so you remember. And second, you are not in a cage, like, just don't listen to the society. You do you.

We love AI for the goodness it brings, but oh my god, the amount of stress it's created for people is just mind-boggling. I think humans are being expected to compete with artificial intelligence. We can't. We never will. And that is, unfortunately, the naked truth for most of the corporate companies, especially in Silicon Bay Area Valley. I have been in this stressful state subconsciously since 2022. So it's been a long time, 4 years. I've been just being on and off, like there's a quarter which is decent, but then the next three quarters are really crappy. The question I've been asking myself is I reach 50 in 3 years from now, what is my next 30 years going to look like? So I'm really starting to pen that down on paper. And that has helped me work on a backup plan.

Family is at the core of everything I do. That's why we do a lot of things, right? Inclusion is a big one for me. When you actually get deep into tech, it sometimes is even function-based exclusion. I have seen that I have been excluded, intentionally, sometimes, out of calls with senior leadership, just because my function is program management, even though the work which a product manager and a program manager would do to make a project successful is an equal 50-50 partnership. That is a horrible thing to feel when your contributions are 50% to a piece of work, but you do not get invited to some key calls, decision-making calls, because of that. This was very evident at Google. I am really grateful that at Amazon, I don't see that. It is a much more inclusive environment. A sense of belonging needs to happen at every layer. You don't feel any joy or motivation collaborating if you're excluded. I also value integrity, honesty, and authenticity in how I work and live.