Varshaben Ahirwal

I would contribute it to myself and how I have been raised. I know for a fact that many women lose their interest or are not able to pick up with the kids - they're not even motivated enough to grow up the ladder. They are just fine staying where they are, adjusting and making peace with it, but I did not want to have satisfaction or completion at any level. I just made myself more stronger and tried to match up both my motherhood, my own personal life, and my career. So I think that is where the upbringing came from - from my parents, I would say. That's what it came from, from my upbringing.

I think setting yourself a few goals helps us to reach and achieve a few things. If you do not have any goal, like 6-month goals, 1-year goals, they do hold an important place in your life, because when you don't set any goal, your mind doesn't know, your body doesn't know what it is supposed to do. Once you set it, even if you just think about it - that you want to reach a certain position in one year - your actions tend to change towards that direction. You start doing many things in that direction. You start talking around that corner. I've been focusing this year on how to improve in my career and how to network more with other women. I wanted to focus this year with other women because many times I have seen in my groups and any other community that women don't talk about careers as much as men do when they're meeting in a public gathering. They don't even share, or maybe they are less confident about their point. They're usually comfortable talking about their life around the kids or family. I try to make a point that women should also be discussing more about their career, whatever issues they are facing, because that is how you will come up with the solution. The issues or blockers that women face are different than men, so women should be discussing more.

I would not say there's an issue or kind of a hindrance, but the emergence of AI held me back - like, am I going to be able to keep up with the AI evolution? But I'm so glad that post the State Bar, recently in January I joined Microsoft, where this is a place where I have been given all the exposure to the AI. It's an AI-driven project, and I am creating an AI-native data warehouse on top of it. I have all the experience of building a data warehouse in a traditional way, and I'm able to integrate all that knowledge and use it here to create using AI. So I do not think it as a blocker, but it's just a great opportunity to work with AI.

I do believe in work-life balance, and I try to hit it for sure. I am not a person who believes you need to work 24 hours a day to complete your job. Rather, I do a few hours of focused work blocks, and then I go out for a run, do my workout, do the house chores, and I come back again in the morning during the time when the kids are asleep. So it's more of focused work when my mind is more focused and concentrated, and I'm able to achieve what I want to do. I just prioritize my work in a set of blocks.