Her Story
About Neha
I started my journey in the data field around 2020 back in India, where I spent two years understanding data, data visualization, and Power BI. During COVID, I was watching YouTube tutorials one random day and fell in love with Power BI because it allowed me to combine my creative side with the tech world. I've always been a very creative child with all sorts of hobbies and love for colors, and Power BI was a tool where I could use my creativity while still helping people with data. I knew coding, but it didn't really get me passionate or fired up, so this was perfect because I could include my coding skills, be in the tech world, but also be creative and have fun with my job. In 2022, I came to the U.S. to do my master's in business analytics, and then I landed a job in Austin with TRS, one of the government agencies. I've been working as a Business Intelligence Analyst at TRS since June 2024, and I'm loving it so far. I work on the internal-facing side, building dashboards for different departments within TRS. In two years, I've built dashboards from scratch, handling everything from talking to departments, gathering requirements, creating documentation, developing, testing, and publishing. I'm really proud of this because English is not my first language, so being upfront in front of executives and different business unit directors was a big achievement for me. Those projects were a hit and our business units are still using those dashboards. Currently, we're transitioning into Fabric, so there's a lot of research involved every day, watching tutorials, learning how to make things more efficient. I'm also working on my DP-900 and DP-600 certifications so I can become a fabric analytics engineer and climb up to a senior role where I can lead and mentor more people, because I love sharing my knowledge and experience.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Neha
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I think just making the first move is so important. Since I come from a very small town in India, I didn't have a lot of experience or resources, but women who were abroad in places like Canada and the U.S. told me to just go for it. I was always someone who thought I could never be good at coding, I thought I could never go into the tech world because I come from a management background. But these women told me, just go for it, just take the first step, just take that one workshop, just take that one class, and you will figure out your way. And that's what I did. I think stepping out of my boundary and just filtering out the outer world and listening to what I want is key. Just not being fearful of making mistakes and being a failure, because what comes out of being the best? What do you learn more? I think just not being hesitant to start from scratch, failing, and disappointing some people around you, and just being fearless and looking out for yourself and making that first move. The world is really cruel, and there are always going to be people that tell you that you won't be able to achieve it. So many people told me back in India that I won't be able to make it to the U.S., but I still did, and look at me, I've been here for four years now. That is something that I would tell all those younger women out there.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think with AI, a lot of people are scared, and a lot of people around me, even in the agency, think that AI can take over their jobs. But I don't think that's true, because if you learn how to use AI for your own advantage and keep upskilling yourself, if you keep learning how to use AI, whether it's just prompting or creating agents out of these AI models, that is how you be fearless and face the reality that AI is going to be with us. You should not be scared of that. You should learn how to upskill yourself and use AI for your own advantage. A lot of people that work with me are like, we don't know if we can work with AI, if we can learn how to do all these prompts, but I think that is not going to help us out in any way. So I think just learning how to survive with AI, because that's the booming area on LinkedIn and YouTube. It's just making a big hit right now that AI is going to take over, but I don't think that's true. That's why I started learning how to do prompting, how to talk to AI, and how to use AI for my own advantage. That's why I was like, I gotta get those certifications and learn more about it and upskill myself, because I can't let AI scare me away. So I think that's the biggest challenge that I'm facing, but I'm also using that challenge as one of the opportunities for me to upskill myself and let my team know that I got it figured out and I'll help you out and not be scared from AI.
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