Vela Sivasankaran

I definitely attribute my success to the support of my family, because they take on workloads when I'm really busy. Having a really good, supportive community has been crucial as well, and being able to take help whenever needed is really useful. That's what keeps me going without breaking off completely. If I need a break, I'm able to take some rest and get back to work immediately, like within a week or something like that. So support from my community as well as my family, I would say, is really important to sustaining my career over these 28 years.

The best career advice I received was to be continuously upskilling myself, especially since my field requires that. I got this advice very early on in my career. Usually, I myself am a researcher who goes into finding out what's new and how it can be applied, but they did mention that I have to keep upskilling myself in this field to know what's the latest and how that can be used to solve problems wherever I work. I would say that is one of the best pieces of advice I received, and it's served me well throughout my 28-year career in technology.

I would definitely tell them to be research-minded and always trying to gain knowledge. Look for opportunities to provide solutions to people and think outside the box, so that innovation comes inbuilt in them and they're able to do something meaningful for society. The technology field offers tremendous opportunities to make a real impact, and having that mindset of continuous learning and problem-solving will serve you well throughout your career.

In terms of challenges, work-life balance is a big one, especially in Silicon Valley where we tend to overwork a lot. I tend to push myself quite hard at work, and after a while I become sick and have to take a break for a few days or a week. Another challenge is that there are a lot of companies working on different things and different products, and there's no one cohesive environment because it's all new. Unlike healthcare systems or education where there's a common platform, technology is new and its applications in various industries are also new, so you find a lot of disparate systems. Making things work together to provide a solution takes a lot of time, and there's no standardization because the computer field is pretty new. As for opportunities, there are plenty, especially in applied computer science. It's not just about working for computer companies anymore. Finding applications in other industries like healthcare, hospitality, government, military, and transportation (like Tesla) provides tremendous opportunities for people like me who come from computer science. We don't have to work only on computers and provide software or hardware. We can apply technological advances to other industries that are really wanting these advancements. I'll be doing work in the computer field and then see how I can apply it into other systems and platforms to bring new advancements to those industries.

I am motivated by the fact that I'm providing something that makes society better, something that's globally applicable and makes things easier for people to live their lives. For example, Alexa is a technology I worked on very early in my career, like 10 or 15 years ago, and now it's in the mass market. I see even people around me, like my father, benefiting from it. He uses Alexa to switch on the lamps at night to visit the bathroom and come back and lie down again, switching it off with his voice commands. My research was in voice technologies, so applying that into the real world and making those technologies come to fruition, with people finding it easier to live their lives and making it better for them, is what drives me. I've also worked a lot in healthcare, making things easier for people to not necessarily have to visit hospitals but do things from their home, like American veterans. To see that my work is really useful for humanity, especially at a mass scale and large scale, I find it really motivating.