Her Story
About Niveditha
I've been working in the wearable sensing world for the last 14 years, and it's been an incredible journey. I started my career helping people with Parkinson's disease for walking, which was my PhD research that I completed in 2022. After earning my PhD, I moved on to Apple where I worked as a Motion Health Studies Scientist in the wearable sensing space, helping design studies and working with data science. Most recently, about a year ago, I joined Nexens, a startup that does sleep with earbuds. I've transitioned from using wearables for walking to cardiovascular sensing, and now I'm focused on sleep-related measurements, insights, and interventions using sensors at home. As a Senior Researcher at Nexens, I lead data strategy and studies for all of our wearable product roadmap, making sure the data we get feeds into the product roadmap to create more accessible and more specific products that cater to the needs of people and is updated based on the feedback we get. I also lead the academic partnerships with universities, making sure how we could support with our product to research that's happening in the university. In addition, I support the algorithm development and overall support the product in terms of its current versions and its future versions. Looking ahead, I really look forward to leading data insights for a company, thinking far about what data sets we need to collect today so that we could support the diverse population, the demographic, the age, and different sets of people. I aspire to be in a head of data and insights role, doing an end-to-end data strategy and supporting the product roadmap very closely. Whatever accessibility-related expansion we could do in terms of wearable products that could help address neurodivergent as well as specific clinical populations is something I'm super keenly interested in working towards.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Niveditha
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've received is that it's not just you who's growing, it's the company of women that you grow with, also growing with you. I've been very fortunate to have a lot of women mentors through my time, and they've taught me the importance of lifting up other women. I've tried to hold mentors within the company as well as outside of the company to give me different colored perspectives, because it's always helpful to have more than one. This advice about growing together with other women and lifting each other up is something I've learned from my mentors, and I'm hoping to pass on.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I think taking your time to build a confidence and a voice in your team is really, really important, and that's something that comes with trust and the clarity in the work that you do. This builds quite a bit of trust amongst your peers. Always be open to lifting up another woman. It's not as easy as it's said, but at the same time, if there's any avenue where you can bring them along with you, at par with you, and walk together, that has always been something that's helped me in the past, and I look forward to paying it forward. During your job interview, it's important to be able to understand what the company composition is, does it resemble where you want to be and grow into. I've also grown to make sure my voice is heard, similar to or equal to my male counterpart, and that's something I'm actively working on, both internally and outwardly with my mentors, to make sure we also have the same influence in what we could move in our company.
03What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
It's super important to me to not just be doing the hard work within the company, but also making sure my hard work is seen out and about to make sure it helps me with the next one, and it also influences people who look like me, who want to do similar things, to kind of make a path to open up. I'm someone who always likes to say, this is what I did, and if this is something that you want to do, please, I'm here. I'm all here for you to talk about. I can give you the time, I can give you what I've learned, so that if there's a mistake I made, you can learn from it. If something that worked for me, that might also work for you. Always keeping that door open is very, very important to me. I believe in lifting up other women and walking together at par with each other, and I look forward to paying it forward.
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