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2018 Success Stories of Lean In WiTI Members in their words

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Lean In Women In Tech India

7 min readDec 22, 2018

2018 has been a memorable year for Lean In Women in Tech India. In the span of few months, the community grew from 10 member team to 1235 members and 18 circles under the leadership of Preethi Guruswamy. The community launched event#Wintech series at Walmart and every event was huge success empowering many women in tech in technology business. Preethi believes women in tech India had great potential and she provided the platform to showcase their talent with various initiates like #Wintech Series, #WiTI Blogs and #ProudWiTI video series. The intentions of the initiatives was to showcase the women in tech talents and empower the corporate to bring in the more women by hiring and empowering the women .

Lean In Women in Tech India is the proud winner of “People First” Community award received by Preethi Guruswamy at Stanford University, California by LeanIn.org. It could only happen because Preethi believed in women talent in tech and the initiatives launched indeed benefited women across India. It’s the golden era for women and the community proves it with great talented members and their contribution to technology . A huge SUCCESS of the Lean In Women in Tech community.

Every woman has compelling stories to share. We are super thrilled to publish the 2018 success stories of Lean In Women in tech India members.

Read the stories of women in tech in their own words…

Rutuja Jadhav

2018 has been a great year of travel and experiences for me. I got an opportunity to intern at Cisco Systems India-Bangalore for my capstone in the first half of 2018. The industry experience helped me realize the importance of soft-skills, advocating for your work and skill-set. Bangalore is a city full of energy, opportunities and enthusiastic people. Being a WTM scholar, I was looking forward to scaling my local efforts on encouraging more female students in computer science and am very glad to have met role model as Preethi Guruswamy who not only recognized our effort but also encouraged and supported us.
I got admitted to the University of Washington-Seattle for my masters and moved to the US in September.

Vishakha Lall

2018 began with me challenging my imagination and technical skills for my submission towards ‘Anita’s Moonshot Codeathon. If I had to describe my 2018 in one word, it would be ‘rejuvenating’. At the end of the 3 month long hackathon, looking at the amazing solutions by several participants from over 98 countries I was inspired yet intimidated. To my pleasant surprise I won the title of the ‘Inspiring Innovator’. I couldn’t thank my friends and family enough for the ideas and vision that led to the impactful solution that I developed. This victory led me to believe in myself a lot more than I did, made me feel more confident in my skills and knowledge.

Being a strong believer of learning through sharing knowledge, I vowed to share all interesting learnings and experiences with others through Medium blogs. My writing was well received by the readers and Lean In Women in Tech India gave me the opportunity to publish articles on their platform.

By the end of May, I graduated from my University as a proud receiver of the Bachelor of Technology degree. I spent the next couple of months relaxing and spending time with my family.

Soon after, I joined Fidelity Investments as a Software Engineer in the Asset Management business unit in Bangalore. The college to corporate transition was a refreshing experience and the organization ensured that through the LEAP training program. The holistic training focused on technical, domain and professional growth. As a part of the program, I got the opportunity to personally interact with the leadership of the organization.

I now walk into 2019 with new goals to achieve, learning to complete, projects to innovate and heights to scale.

Dhana Lakshmi

2018 has been a very remarkable year in my career still date. I got an opportunity to travel to US twice in this year to attend Google IO conference for the very first time and attend Technovation World Pitch event. Got to meet lot of inspirational people and broader exposure make me understand immense value of networking, by listening their success stories and overcoming the difficulties etc., help me to face similar problems boldly and grow professionally. Being Regional Ambassador for Technovation, I’m volunteering for girls to empower and enable them with the help of technology in their career and glad to meet Preethi Guruswamy through Lean In — Women In Tech India, who is a wonderful person by heart, supporting and encouraging Women by providing a platform (Lean In) for them to grow in their career path. Looking forward for many successful years.

Sukriti Paul

2018 has truly been a fulfilling year for me, when it comes to outreach and technical achievement.

It began with the formation of ACM Women Manipal, to propagate research among female tech enthusiasts at college. My efforts, along with my juniors, lead to over 6 unique events with over 80 members; I was humbled to be the first Indian to win the ACM-W Best Officer Award.

Towards my last semester at college, intercollegiate interactions were stimulating experiences for me. I was fortunate to design a Women Empowerment Workshop where I hosted a session on my experience as a WTM Scholar and Chapter Lead, at CMRIT Bangalore. In addition, I can confidently say that I was one of the luckiest mentors to two persevering mentees,as a part of ReThink’s WIT Program. :)

I got a chance to attend several events like WTM IWD Bangalore and the WTM dinner at GHCI. These were pivotal in building connections and understanding the challenges that females face, from college students to senior managers and leaders in the corporate. Most of all,such sessions underscored the importance of self-branding and time management. Although I couldn’t attend the TensorFlow Dev Summit, the fact that I was selected for a fully funded trip to attend the event at CA, was rewarding.

Coming to my personal achievements, I successfully completed my final year internship at IISc with an outstanding performance certificate and a bonus surprise stipend because my work led to a collaboration with a Military hospital. Presenting my work in an hour long seminar, in front of PhD students and professors at IISc was one of the challenges that I successfully won over. I also received a special mention for the best undergrad thesis for research,at college.

Such milestones form an integral part of my journey. I’m currently looking forward to my MS applications. Alongside, I hope to give a concrete form to a personal venture, with one of my best friends.

Thank you, 2018! :D

Shailaja Priyadarshini Nanduri

2018 has been a good year . I could start my own business, think in a creative way and could come up with W2W weavers to women concept.
After 2 decades of IT experience, I could say goodbye to IT to my job and think of other options such as encouraging the skill of any field. That is where I could come with W2W concept

Anupama Itikirala

2018 has been exciting for me. I’m a technology enthusiast with over 22 years’ experience in Software field, predominantly into product development with Major Global MNCs in Senior technology leadership roles like Engineering Manager, Architect etc. and now an aspiring Entrepreneur. As I had a chance to work for a longer time in my career in the product development arena, that has become my DNA, and I am passionate about learning cutting-edge technologies and applying them for the product development. In my long tenure, I had a chance to be part of global leadership teams and manage teams spread across geography, which have enabled me with cross-functional and cross-cultural global teamwork culture, although I have been part of India Engineering teams. The year 2018 has been a fabulous year for me, which has given me confidence that I can try my hands in Startup Adventures. I am one of the top 20 finalists of INFINIT20 — Fintech Startup India challenge, in April’18 & mentored by RBL bank. In October’18 the product idea that I am currently working on also has won an INR 10,000/- cash prize from Gujarat Government, as I have won Vibrant Gujarat 2018 Grand Challenge Ideation category awards. The secret of these wins is that I am a “Technolgy Woman on Career Break”, but my passion towards product development & emerging technologies made me learn AI, NLP etc.. &apply them on my startup product development. The year 2018 has been exciting for me as I had enjoyed the best for volunteering for AI& HPC track in GHCI 2018. I am hoping that Year 2019, could boost me with new energies & wins. I am looking forward to building a good team in the form of Co-founders, team members, potential investments as seed capital for my startup etc. My experience tells me that breaking career (don’t have to feel guilty for breaking a most promising career with the top MNCs, because at times family is the most priority) does not mean losing career forever, but we as WOMEN should never forget that we are blessed with a GRIT. Behind my career change, the only mantra that kept on motivating me was “GRIT” and “PASSION”, and I wish to step into new Year to turn my dreams into realities. And I love to have a few women on career break joining me in technical roles in my startup team.
@ Vibrant Gujarat award ceremony in Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7xxuodnsRU.