Keeping Up with the Kineticans: Dipti Joshi

Welcome to “Keeping up with the Kineticans”, a casual interview series where we talk with some of our awesome teammates about life at Kinetica, their careers, and more. In this interview, I talked with Dipti Joshi who’s a Product Management Lead at Kinetica. You can follow her on Twitter @dipti_smg. Dipti’s interview is one of three special interviews for International Women’s Day. Check out Solongo and Irina’s interviews too!

How did your career path lead you to Kinetica?

I did undergraduate studies in electrical engineering and graduate studies in computer science. My Master’s thesis was in graph theory – specifically solution for location problems for network graphs. My graduate studies advisor Dr. Sridhar Radhakrishnan, at the time in 1992 told me that my master’s thesis research in graph theory will see practical use 15 to 20 years later – now I’m here at Kinetica in 2019 where graph theory is being applied for location analytics!

I started my career in software development in databases, and then moved to the telecommunication field as a software architect.  As a developer and architect, I always wanted to understand the end-to-end data flow and its impact on customer use cases. That’s why I transitioned into product management where I have a wide view of product and its impact on customers and can also leverage my depth of technical understanding. First, I managed products for network management and then products for a big data analytics database. Now I’m at Kinetica where both my analytics database background as well as graph theory experience is applicable.

What do you think is the best part about being a woman in the tech industry?

• Growing up I didn’t see a difference between women or men when it came to working in the tech industry. In 8th grade I decided I would study engineering and computer science. To me it was natural to pursue what you want to do, disregarding gender.
• Being a mother has given me natural multi-tasking and problem solving capability. The best part of being a woman is just applying this natural skill to work. And empathy for everyone else at a work regardless of their gender or whether they are parents or not.

What advice would you give to a woman considering the tech industry? What do you wish you had known?

• First pursue what interest you have whether it’s tech, art, writing, or healthcare. Follow your heart and follow your dream. Believe in yourself. Seek mentors and coaches who are inspiring, who believe in you, who help you leverage your strength and provide constructive feedback for growth.
• Growing up through grade school, undergraduate studies and graduate studies, I hadn’t experienced any resistance for women wanting to be in tech. In my early career as well – I didn’t see it. But once you reach certain levels, while not all but some, people at work consciously or unconsciously give women pushback when they wouldn’t do so to a man in the same situation. When initially I came across such pushback – I was surprised and shocked. Despite such resistance, I’ve grown in my career. I wish I knew early on to ignore non-believers as noise.

Who is a someone you look up to, has been a mentor, or has inspired your career that you’d like to mention?

• There have been many from throughout my career. Roger Bodamer was my manager at MariaDB and has been a mentor and coach, even after he left MariaDB.  I consider myself fortunate for having worked with Roger and have his guidance.
• Every day in my life since childhood – my four sisters have been constant inspiration for me. Harsha Vyas – is the most creative in art, tech and culinary fields. Dr. Parul Patel is a very respected research scientist in the field of remote sensing at ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization). Dr. Bela Bhatt is an OBGY and fetal anomaly specialist. Ruchira Patel is a go getter business operations professional.

 How do you feel Kinetica innovates for change?

Kinetica innovates through its product, its people and its culture. Kinetica’s diverse team has developed a platform for leading edge use cases for streaming, historical, location analytics and machine learning. Everyone across the organization in Kinetica is very good at their work, helpful and collaborative with the common goal of helping our customers succeed with their business use cases with our platform.

Kimberly is on the People team at Kinetica.