Alumni Spotlight Feat. Lekha Jananthan, Engineering Manager, EverQuote
The Alumni Spotlight series will showcase the leaders of our growing Exchange community. Our first spotlight highlights Lekha Jananthan, Engineering Manager at EverQuote and Alumna from the 2017 January Exchange.

Intelligent.ly: How did you find yourself in the job you have today?
Lekha: I knew I wanted to do something in the field of computer science, but my parents had always wanted me to enter into medicine. I got accepted into MIT and took that as a sign to chase after my dreams. Haven’t looked back since.

Intelligent.ly: If you could have a superpower, what would it be and why?
Lekha: The ability to communicate fluently in any language.
It’s not an extremely overpowered superpower, but it opens up a world of knowledge and experiences that I currently just don’t have access to. I dream of the day that I can watch Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in its native Italian or read Homer’s Iliad in the original Greek. Plus, it wouldn’t hurt when traveling to new places!
Intelligent.ly: What do you love about working in the Boston Community?
Lekha: Unlike San Francisco and New York, I feel like I can work in the Boston tech community without having it rule my life. I don’t have to pay attention to the latest app fad or worry that I’m not keeping up with the stock market news. I feel like it’s okay for me to make time for ice skating or swing dancing instead. Plus, Boston is so much cozier — it’s really convenient having a bike instead of a car and being walking-distance away from a grocery store, hardware store, public library, yoga gym, sewing club, and 500 amazing restaurants.
Intelligent.ly: Talk to us about the importance of your profession network. How did you start building these relationships?
Lekha: Back when I was a professional computer science tutor, most of my students came in through word-of-mouth. Nowadays, I work at a start-up. Surrounding myself with people who can support me emotionally and mentors who can help me grow technically has helped me learn more than I could have ever learned in any college course.
The thing is — I met all of these great people completely on accident. Old college friends would reach out to work on start-up ideas, and I’d pick up new students to tutor while skating during public hours at the local ice rink. I didn’t spend huge amounts of effort trying to meet these people; I just chose to spend my time doing the things I loved. It was serendipitous when I ended up bumping into others doing the same!

Intelligent.ly: Throughout your career, what is the best piece of work advice you were ever given?
Lekha: Learn to manage expectations.
As a kid in elementary school, I didn’t struggle to complete the tasks I was given, so it was weird the first time I was on the job post-college-graduation and realized that I couldn’t actually keep up with all the work I was being given. I picked up so many new bad habits, such as working through evenings that I used to reserve for my husband and avoiding delivering bad news to project stakeholders. But nothing got better! Co-workers kept asking for tasks to be completed and I was burning out fast while failing to finish them on time. It took a long time for me to finally realize that I had the authority to push back on deadlines or to set more realistic goals. And that was all I had to do. It’s 100% okay to let someone know that a deadline isn’t going to happen, but you have to be willing to communicate that to the stakeholders as soon as possible. After all, they’re probably under a lot of pressure to get their own projects completed in a timely manner too.
Intelligent.ly: In your opinion, what is the most important aspect of leadership?
Lekha: Empathy. No, honesty. No, empathy. Gah! I can’t choose! All the people who I’ve loved working with and who I would be willingly follow wherever they went have always been both empathetic and honest. I think I need both.
Intelligent.ly: What is the most challenging part of being a manager?
Lekha: Delegating that really exciting coding project I wanted to work on to someone else. Sigh. It’s okay. There are always more around the corner.
Intelligent.ly: What advice would you give to new individual contributors on your team?
Lekha: It’s okay to fail.
We’re all human. I don’t want perfect. I want someone curious enough to ask the questions everyone else in the room is silently thinking and innovative enough to suggest the ideas that haven’t been considered before. I want to work on projects that you’re passionate about, and I want to build something new with you. And if a few things break along the way? Just fix them and move on.

Intelligent.ly: What is the most important lesson you learned during your Exchange program?
Lekha: While at intelligent.ly, I learned a lot of useful frameworks and tools that I can wield in tough or trying situations. But ever since Day 1, the thing that has been on my mind is the five practices of good leaders:
- Model the way
- Inspire a shared vision
- Challenge the process
- Enable others to act
- Encourage the heart
We took an assessment that evaluated how well we used each of these practices, and while I was strong in modelling the way and enabling others to act, I was weak in the others. Since then, I’ve been more mindfully working to take actions and develop habits in those other areas, and the results are amazing. I had never realized how important celebrating the small wins could be. Or that I had the authority to question the status quo and change what didn’t make sense. Or that my team felt a bit lost without an explicit vision. Over time, I can see how my team has grown, and I feel like a lot of it has revolved around focusing on strengthening my weaknesses.
