About Me — Reena Gupta
From small-town girl to technopreneur
A friend of mine was completely freaked out by my ridiculously calm demeanor in this photo. I feel it sums up a deep-seated belief I have always had that if you have a strategy, taking that leap is not scary, in fact, it can be an amazing experience.
Though I have accomplished a great deal in my 51 years, being a high achiever was never the plan. This was not what was expected of me as a young girl growing up in India.
When I look back on the trajectory of my career, I can trace all of it back to my childhood in India. Certain experiences and values were imprinted early, and they have taken root and grown stronger over the years, anchoring me in a way for which I will always be grateful.
Though I only had two siblings, I grew up in a blended household of 21 cousins, representing my immediate family, my father’s stepbrother, his two cousins, and all of their children. We were nine girls and twelve boys ranging from toddlers to twenty-two-year-old.
In this communal household, there was very little emphasis on “me” and “mine.” There was definitely much more of a sense of “we” and “us” in terms of wants, needs, and desires. What is good for the group, the family — you thought about this first and foremost.
The proverb, “a rising tide lifts all boats,” perfectly expresses the sentiment in our household. This is very much a stark cultural difference between my upbringing in India and my children’s upbringing here in the US. I loved my brothers, and I also loved having such a big family. One of us would be teaching the other how to knit, while another taught math or helped her cousin understand a school assignment.
In some ways, I think in my 20’s and 30’s, after having emigrated to the States I was always looking for a way to recreate that ecosystem that I experienced as a child in our large, extended family. And I was very lucky to find that support I yearned for in my life. It happened in two places, first at home with the man I was fixed up with — yes, by my parents.
In Danapur, in the state of Bihar, where I grew up, you were encouraged to study in order to get married into a good family. You are then expected to do as per your husband’s and his family's suggestions.
But my husband, Rajeev was different. He respected my individuality and encouraged me to follow my talent and passion for coding and software development and he opened me up to a world of possibilities.
Rajeev was my mentor and my champion, always there in my corner encouraging me. Seeing his belief in me sparked my own ambition because on some level I think I always knew that I wanted my father’s life more than I wanted my mother’s life. I saw the passion and the fulfillment my father got from his work and I knew I would never be satisfied being a homemaker.
Later in life, I was lucky again, finding the professional ecosystem to take me and my idea and my ambition on, and take my business to a level I never could have achieved on my own.
Interestingly, after my first child was born, I dove into entrepreneurship when most women take a career break. In 2002, I started an IT staffing and consulting company, Avankia. In 2008 I founded my second startup, TargetRecruit — the first ATS for staffing companies in the Salesforce ecosystem, and decided to relocate to Silicon Valley in 2011 to be more fully involved in the entrepreneurship culture. In 2018 I sold TargetRecruit, and that same year founded Mom Relaunch.
Ever since selling Target Recruit in 2018, I had a burning urge to write a book. Not to make a bad pun, but I felt this was the next chapter for me. I had so much to say about my entrepreneurial journey that I wanted to share with the world.
In March 2020, moments before the pandemic became a global reality, I reached out to Rebecca Cullen on LinkedIn. I was looking for a ghostwriter and I loved her style so I sent her a message. The rest, as they say, is history.
As we began a discussion about the book I wanted to write about bootstrapping a business, Rebecca looked into Mom Relaunch and was kind of blown away by the work I was doing relaunching women back into the workforce.
“Why aren’t we writing about this amazing work you’re doing?” She wanted to know. “It’s a much more interesting niche and you are an expert in your field.”
Then, as we began discussing this idea, the pandemic was creating a massive tectonic shift in the ground beneath our feet. The entire world was experiencing a career interruption. That seed that had been planted about writing a book became a call to action.
That was how my partnership with Rebecca began. We started writing Career Interrupted. It was my first book, Rebecca’s second, and it was an amazing journey of learning, growing, and also bonding with each other as writing partners.
After working every day for a year, interviewing over 40 experts, consulting with designers, developmental editors, designers, and marketers, we published the book! We were pretty ecstatic when the book debuted at #1 in the categories of work health, vocational guidance, and unemployment.
If you hung in this far, thank you so much for reading my story! I’m very excited to say that I got my first story accepted into Better Humans this week, so please follow me as I write about careers, workplace health, success vs. happiness, and work-life balance.
Apart from building on the teachings of this book, our Career Interrupted workshops are a place to further connections, share leads, share frustrations, ask for help, and discover actionable resources so you can transcend your career interruption and shine.
