Working first as a regular member and now as the Director of Product for Bits of Good has been an incredible learning opportunity. When I joined in Fall 2017, I was part of a team working to develop an event and volunteer management portal. I had never worked with the MERN stack before and this made the initial learning curve quite steep. The scope of the project was large and by the time I started understanding the stack, we had just a few weeks before we had to deliver the entire thing. It was a mad rush to the end and I ended up learning a lot in the process. So when I got a chance to help manage teams and ensure they delivered their projects on time, I was determined to improve the overall experience for teams. Over Spring semester I implemented changes like having teams demo directly to clients to try and ensure sprint deadlines were used meaningfully, as well as having team leads use product development documents to track how their progress and discussions with clients. Helping us identify teams which needed additional help as early as possible. I joined this organisation just as it was starting out, and I'm so excited to see how it grows over the next 4 years.
I've been a part of Startup Exchange since Fall 2017, initially as a member of the Tech team, but eventually as Director of Technology for Startup Exchange. The idea was to learn more about the startup environment at Georgia Tech. So far though, my experience has encompassed a lot more than just that. I was incredibly lucky to join a very tight-knit group at Startup Exchange. I saw first-hand how much of a difference that makes to the kind of discussions and engagement levels of people in an organisation. It was also a different style of management, far more loose and independent. It felt extremely empowering, and I was able to use this freedom to try getting people like Paul Graham and Brook Byers to come talk to the startup community at Georgia Tech, something completely out of the scope of what I was technically responsible for. It’s been an amazing journey so far at Startup Exchange and as the Tech Team slowly comes together, we’re planning on bringing some really exciting projects out for the startup community at Georgia Tech.
I’m going to be honest, I joined UWCSEA because they said they gave a MacBook Air to every student. Luckily though, this turned out to be one of the greatest experiences of my life. UWC is a movement started by Kurt Hanh on the back of the second World War, as he saw how bringing young kids from different cultures together helped break those pre-conceptions and barriers. UWCSEA Dover is a school in Singapore where I lived as a boarding student for my junior and senior year of high school. The community was incredibly diverse, people from all over the world, different cultures, different socio-economic levels, different perspectives on life lived together. Living in that environment, with that community, it’s only when you leave do you realise how unique and incredible that experience truly was. Some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, were during those 2 years at UWCSEA. This is a school that believed that you could go ahead and change the world. It fostered that belief and encouraged kids to try things out. My time at UWCSEA deeply influenced who I am today and what I want to do in life. Not bad for a decision based purely out of getting a new MacBook Air.
©krishdholakia