Open Source Summit Europe + ELC Europe 2017

Some things are under our control. And some things aren’t. Life’s like that for every one of us. For those belonging to an underrepresented demographic however, age-old societal beliefs about money, family and responsibility often manifest into unconscious biases which make the goalpost elusive. So how do you swim upstream and get to where you aspire to be? Where do you seek inspiration from? What tools can you leverage? Nandhini took charge. She decided where she was headed, and did not succumb to setting invisible barriers around herself. To Nandhini a successful career meant being happy, which translated to pursuing her heart and her dreams. Her conviction in herself led her onto a relatively unconventional path: starting with her pivot from a hardware engineer working on 64 nanometer chips to building large scale distributed systems as a software engineer. Nandhini’s eventual transition to a leadership role afforded the opportunity to not just build great products, but also build diverse, high-performing teams. In this session, Nandhini will share personal anecdotes about her professional choices. She will present her perspective on driving her career bus, and how that helped her plough through and not back off. Her perseverance, self-belief and confidence have been the sharpest tools in her kit. She hopes to inspire others to find their own toolkit to have a successful and rewarding professional career.