📚 education
I graduated with a B.A. from Columbia University in May 2023 with a joint major in Computer Science & Philosophy. I built my major through the CS department, joining several classes from philosophy, computer science, formal linguistics, and the history of science and technology around “Language & Computation.”
I study how language shapes the imagination of the “self” in the context of the history of the computer and the internet. I am incredibly grateful for my time there. My classmates, friends, and professors changed and shaped me in ways I cannot even know or fully appreciate.
🧑🏽💻 work
Professionally, I value “People, Ideas, and Things” in that order.
In my junior year, I worked as a full-stack software engineer intern in Berlin at Airy, an open-source, real-time data streaming company for AI/ML. My contributions are on GitHub here.
I’ve worked as a Peer Writing Fellow at the Columbia University Writing Center. I helped over 75 writers in one-on-one, hour-long sessions using research-based writing studies methods move to the next stage in their writing process. I had no “official authority” but was an attentive and curious reader.
After graduating in May 2023, I worked as DevOps engineering team at 37signals, the makers of Basecamp and Hey. Every day, I learned so much: Ruby, Rails, Chef, Kamal, Docker, bash scripting, OS commands, general troubleshooting, and more. During our interview, I asked Eron, my mentor, manager, and the Director of Ops, what he thinks about declarative vs. imperative infrastructure tools. After thinking about and working on the team for three months, I answered my question through a blog post on the 37signals dev blog.
After a three month travel sabbatical, a stint of freelancing for some pretty cool start ups, I joined FiveOneFour as the first forward deployed (read: customer facing) engineer. In a year, I helped take the company from 0- ~1M in revenue making our early design partners (F45/Morgan Records & Loyalsnap) successful.
📃 Origin Story
I was born in Los Angeles in the last month of the second millennium. At seven, I moved to Pune, India. In Pune, I attended an International Baccalaureate school called MBIS. I played competitive squash on the Indian National circuit— starting in 2012 and reaching the top of India’s U-19 rankings just five years later in November 2017. I moved to New York to attend Columbia University in 2018. During the pandemic, I took a gap year between my sophomore and junior years, where, among other things, I worked on an ed-tech Conversational AI startup in India.
🚀 life
So much of this garden reflects how I aspire to live to: Creation & Community.
Creativity is anything but solitary. I am learning to enjoy sucking publicly to learn, grow and get better. First by asking better questions. I enjoy dancing and working out(doors). I exercise, read, and write every day.
Here are some ”rules” for sanity and happiness that I’ve created for myself. I am an essentialist trying to eliminate everything distracting me from what matters.
I love to travel light, cheap, and with a friend (or make ‘em on the way!). I lived in Berlin, Goa, and climbed a mountain 20,000+ foot peak in Leh, India. Parts of me are always in the mountains, underwater, with my friends and family, who inspire me every day.
August 2021. Third from the left: With my crew on top of Kang Yatse 2 in Leh, India, led by incredible Samir Patham and his team at Adventure Pulse
This is some of my more personal writing.
My “professional” image (about three years out of date!). Smile is as wide but shoulders are broader.
