Women Who Inspire Us! — Pritha Upadhyay

We know it’s already Sunday and we are one day behind our usual schedule. But, trust us this wait of one day is going to be worth this week’s story.

Today, we have with us one of the strongest, most empathetic, soft-spoken, and bold women; yes it is possible to be soft-spoken and be bold at the same time. Let’s give her a warm welcome: Pritha Upadhyay

Like all of us, she is passionate about her dreams and goals and has achieved a great deal in her career as well as her personal life. Usually, she is very shy and humble about her achievements, so it’s a great privilege to have her here with us, today.

Welcome, Pritha!

Pritha: Thank you so much guys for helping us get our stories out.

Pleasure is all ours. Let’s start with your introduction, shall we?

Pritha: I’m Pritha Upadhyay, recently completed my graduation in 2020 from the Indian Institute of Information Technology Vadodara in Computer Science and joined Amazon Development Center as a Software Development Engineer.

I believe in sharing knowledge and am always involved in activities that involve teaching and mentoring people with the best of my capabilities.

I started working as an Educator with Unacademy when I was a sophomore, where I taught Computer Science to the CBSE students. After that, I started working in Open Source and got the opportunity to mentor students in various events including Google Code-In 2019 with JBoss Outreach by RedHat, GirlScript Summer of Code with SHE Endeavours community, Google Code-In 2020 with TensorFlow Organization and recently, I have started contributing to Udacity as a Knowledge Mentor for SQL Nanodegree.

Other than tech, I am a trained Bharatnatyam Dancer and have been involved with the Cultural and Organizing Committee of IIIT Vadodara. I always tried to grab each and every opportunity coming my way. Sometimes I get overwhelmed with the amount of work but just envisioning my dreams coming true gives me all the energy required to do so much.

Wow! That’s truly fascinating. Chasing your dreams! Doing so much at such a young age. We are really proud.

Let’s go back a little and talk about your story. How did you start your journey?

Pritha: I was born and brought up in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. I completed my schooling from Kendriya Vidyalaya Jabalpur. I was always involved in cultural as well as sports activities which sometimes made my parents worried about my studies but planning and proper time management always helped me in achieving good scores as well as excel at my extracurricular activities.

Computer Science was not into the picture until class 11th. Before that, I just wanted to become an IPS Officer and do something for our society rather than just blaming the system. Having Computer Science for Higher Secondary gave me a great insight into the vast world of opportunities in Tech and I decided to combine my love for CS with my dream of doing something for the society. In order to get my plan into reality, I started preparing for IIT-JEE.

Everyone works really hard for JEE and I was no different. I tried but couldn’t get into an IIT which was a so-called dream at that time. I was demotivated but I just said one thing to myself: Any exam will not define my future. It’s my life and I will build it.

So, I joined IIIT Vadodara. Surprisingly, the institute is situated in Gandhinagar and I can never be grateful enough for this location. Being in Gandhinagar gave me the opportunity to get in touch with GDG Ahmedabad, GDG Gandhinagar, and WTM Ahmedabad. I still remember the first meetup of GDG Ahmedabad that I attended in 2017. On meeting the community, I could see my dream of serving the society with Computer Science.

During my engineering, I actively worked with the Cultural Committee and Dance Club. I always kept my technical involvement separate from my love of Dancing. I believe everyone must have some interest in life to keep you calm, relaxed, and happy.

As a sophomore, I started working as an Educator at Unacademy where I taught Computer Science to CBSE students and this is when I realized my interest in teaching and mentoring. I had a vision and a dream but we just can’t decide every part of the plan. I believe that one should be an opportunist but with a vision and this will help them in carving out the way to their dreams.

In the same year, I got to know about Google Code-In Mentorship and I started working with the JBoss Outreach Organization for mentoring the young minds of 13–17 years and introducing them to the world of Open Source Development. Grabbing these opportunities along with Engineering and my personal Technical learnings kept me busy most of the day but thinking about the contribution and impact to the society always kept me motivated. Later, I got the opportunity to mentor in GirlScript Summer of Code as well.

After this, in 2019, I was in my junior year and was supposed to do a Summer Internship. I applied in multiple companies, got rejected by many, even received demotivating comments from a few interviewers but finally, the hard work paid off. I got selected in Amazon for an Internship.

Amazon was a very different experience for me. I learned a lot of coding practices, scalability considerations, and optimization approaches. At that time, I was already done with a lot of interviews and rejections for internship and I didn’t want to go back and do all of that hustle again for job opportunities. This is one of the reasons I worked more than I ever could to show my skills and get the Pre-Placement offer. One of the other reasons was that I wanted to mentor GCI once again for the last time and getting an offer would give me enough time for this. Luckily, I got the job offer.

Later in my final year, I again chose to mentor for GCI but this time I got selected for TensorFlow Organization. After that, I again joined Amazon as a 6 months intern for my final semester BTech Internship. I also got the opportunity to become a Knowledge Mentor at Udacity for SQL Nanodegree. Every day I worked for my internship but I spent my weekends completing the Nanodegree and finally, I am a freelance Udacity Mentor too.

Recently, I completed my internship and have joined as a Software Development Engineer at Amazon.

This was my journey so far but it is just the beginning…

And as Jeff Bezos says: “It’s Still Day 1!”

Woahhhh! Firstly congratulations on your job and not giving up on your dream and on yourself. We agree it takes a lot of hard work to achieve your dreams but hard work always pays off. And we completely agree, it’s still day 1 and today is the first day of the rest of your life.

So, what’s the inspiration behind all this hard work, except your dreams?

Pritha: I just believe in one thing, the result we get today is based on the work we did in the past but the result we will get tomorrow depends on the work we will do today. So, just don’t waste your present crying about what happened. Design your future the way you want to see it.

I still remember, I had a notebook with this quote: “The best way to predict the future is to create it”. In my childhood, this line gave me some true understanding.

I never thought one day I will be sharing all this with these many people but now, I just want to share my story and inspire each and everyone who has a dream.

My life was not as smooth as it might sound but I always treated challenges as opportunities and kept learning from them. Not necessarily did I succeed all the time, but I learned from my mistakes and kept moving forward to the next challenge with more experience.

There are many people I admire for what they have accomplished but I believe that everyone has a different path to success and that is why I try to learn from their experiences but follow my own ideas and decisions when it comes to my life.

Yes, we agree, our future is in our hand and it even matters how we turn challenges in opportunities. Such wisdom at such a young age, Pritha. You are definitely going places if you aren’t there already :)

Q: Going further, What is your vision for your life?

Pritha: I want a purposeful life where I will continue working for the big goal of fulfilling my dreams of serving the people, achieving the planned milestones, and being happy on the way.

I feel that we are lucky to get one human life and we should invest this life in doing something fruitful for humankind. Serving people doesn’t always mean becoming a doctor, police, or scientist. Every person who tries to educate or inspire some more people is bringing a change and is serving society just as much.

Q: Who or what inspired you to start your journey?

Pritha: At a very early age, my mother encouraged me to become a financially independent individual as a grown-up so that you are not just someone’s wife or someone’s daughter. One should always have an independent identity and in our society, financial and mental stability can give you that.

This was the first major impactful inspiration in my life. After this, when I started mentoring and educating school students through Unacademy, I received a lot of emails and messages from students and finding these many views on my videos made me realize the power of e-learning platforms. This experience still inspires me to work more in this field and try to create some positive differences in people’s lives.

After this experience, I have got involved with a lot of different mentoring programs and I am still exploring more ways of spreading knowledge to the best of my abilities.

Maa, everyone’s first inspiration. Yes, being independent in all ways is very important. We need to have our own identity in society despite of the fact it is still frowned upon in many communities. But that should not stop you, us, or anyone out there to have a mind of their own.

So, apart from dancing, which simple pleasures in life do you enjoy?

Pritha: There are many things that make me happy and one of them is Stargazing. I really like spending time with the open twinkling sky and observing all the stars and planets shining bright in the dark sky. This is a lazy and scientifically correct idea for being calm and relaxed.

Other than this, the one thing that can make me happy, relaxed, and de-stressed at any point in life is Dancing. It can be just some beats and dancing while sitting but those musical beats just take all the stress away and I get re-energized.

We love us some stargazing too. Puts everything in perspective and how small we and our problems are.

Q: Last question, What is your message for young girls/women trying to achieve their dreams against all odds?

Pritha: I want to ask every young individual to believe in themselves. Always be optimistic about whatever is happening in your life and trust your capabilities. It is just self-belief that can motivate you to continue the journey and keep up the dream.

Blaming the circumstances and crying about the situation will surely give us excuses and sympathy but who are we giving excuses to? Ultimately, success is for our life and only dedication can get us there.

Everyone is born with some skills and they can be as basic as speaking while most of the skills are developed with time. The important part is to recognize the basic skill and use it as your strength.

Dream it → Plan it → Work on it → Share learnings

Thank you so much Pritha for your time and for inspiring us and thousands of others with your journey.

Our key takeaway:

What seems hard right now will look like a tiny speck on a huge canvas that is your life. And you are stronger than you think you are. If you ever feel stuck, just take the next small step and go with your gut or flow. Things have a way of connecting and taking us to our destinations.

Always keep your dreams alive. Also, it is never too late to have a new one.

That’s a wrap for this week! We will be back next week with another inspirational woman and her journey.

Till then let us know your key takeaways from Pritha’s journey in the comment section or tweet to us at @romaamarnani and @hiralthaker12

Writer’s note: This story is written in collaboration with Roma Amarnani

If you want to share your story with the world, reach out to us at hiralthaker37@gmail.com or romaamarnani@gmail.com! We would love to learn about your story and help you inspire others.