Yamini Pradeepika Rathamsetty

Curiosity, stubbornness, and the people who gave me chances before I felt ready.

I'm curious enough to take on problems I haven't solved before. I'm stubborn enough to stay with them until they're solved. And I've had people at key moments who said "you should be in that room" when I was still waiting for permission.

Now I try to be that person for others. That's the part I'm proudest of — not what I've built, but who's building because I opened a door.

The best career advice I ever received was to stop waiting for the room to notice you, and build a different room. I learned that I don't have to perform confidence, but I have to be intentional about making my work visible - send the pre-read with my name on it, volunteer to present my own design, follow up with written summaries of decisions so the trail leads back to you. Don't wait to be ready, and being right isn't the job - being effective is. That advice made me influential, because now, because of me, someone else's path actually changed. I'm not talking about one or two people - I'm talking about hundreds of practitioners who benefit from what I did, not in an abstract, inspirational way, but in a concrete, measurable way.

Stop rehearsing your readiness. Start before you're ready.

I waited two years before I volunteered to present to a customer. Two years of being "ready next quarter." You know what made me ready? Doing it badly once, surviving, and realizing the bar was lower than I'd imagined. The confidence came after the action, not before. It always does.

Your technical skills are not the problem. Your visibility might be.

Nobody told me this early enough: being excellent in private is a hobby, not a career strategy. Send the pre-read with your name on it. Volunteer to present your own design. Follow up with the summary email so the decision trail has your fingerprints on it. The work doesn't speak for itself — you have to introduce it to the room.

Find the person who opens doors. Then become that person.

Somewhere in your career, someone will say "you should be in that room" before you believe it yourself. Pay attention to that person. Study what they did. Then do it for the next woman behind you — because she's waiting for the same permission you were.

You don't have to be loud. You have to be undeniable.

I grew up in India where the expectation was: work hard, don't boast, let merit speak. That doesn't fully work in corporate rooms — but it doesn't mean you have to become someone you're not. Find your version of visible. For me, it's publishing what I learn, coaching others publicly, and making sure my name is attached to what I build. Quiet and strategic beats loud and scattered every time.

And finally — eat well, sleep enough, and call your mother.

I'm serious. This industry will take everything you give it and ask for more. Guard your energy. The woman who shows up rested and grounded will outlast the one running on caffeine and imposter syndrome every single time. Talking to my parents has solved more career crises than any mentor ever could.

AI is at a crossroads for women in tech. The risk: we staff AI projects the same way we've always staffed — "5 years experience required" — and lock out an entire generation of capable women before they start. The opportunity: AI tools democratize access to expertise, remove the "confidence performance" penalty, and create entirely new entry points for women from adjacent fields. The question isn't whether AI will change things for women. It's whether we'll be intentional enough to make sure it changes things for the better. I'm building that intentionality into everything I do — inclusive staffing, AI-powered mentorship, and public knowledge-sharing. Because the time to shape who builds AI is now, not after the patterns are set.

At work, the most important value for me is democratizing knowledge. I publish my work, internally or externally, so that others can benefit from patterns that are proven, because access to knowledge shouldn't just depend on who you sit next to or which hallway conversation you overheard. I also believe in excellence through inclusion - the best work comes from teams where every voice is heard, not just the loudest. I've been in that boat. Inclusion isn't separate from quality, I believe it is the quality. Personally, family is a foundation for me. I also value leaving the doors open - once I figure out something, like a career path, a technical concept, or the way to be heard, I write it down, teach it, or build a system so that whoever comes behind me doesn't start from zero. They can take up from what I've built. And I always think that presence over perfection is a core personal value - whether I'm reading my daughter a bedtime story or coaching a teammate before a customer call, I choose to be there fully, even when I'm really tired.