My Journey
We live in exciting times. AI is going to revolutionize every aspect of our lives (the opposite of a novel and revolutionary thought if there ever was one). Change is coming; what we have to decide as a society is exactly how we want that change to affect us.
I am a technology optimist, but here is one reason why I actually believe it. Technology, and the science behind it, is the reason I am alive as a person born 11 weeks premature (1kg at birth) with severe asthma. The incubators at Nairobi hospital have a massive part to play in my survival and the various asthma technologies (inhalers, nebulizers, etc) that have kept me breathing throughout my life. I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the individuals who have enabled me to live a long (still a youth) and comfortable life. I owe it to myself and to the world to try to live a fulfilling life.
Technology is most meaningful when it expands human capability while also improving human dignity, and I've spent my life gravitating toward solving challenging problems where both are at stake. How do we make cars safer and more efficient - in the process transforming transportation and our interaction with the automobile as we know it? How do we grow food closer to where the people who consume it live, utilizing technology to develop systems to create a more sustainable food ecosystem? How do we provide the people driving a lot of our technological change - engineers and their teams - with the tools to continue to innovate and collaborate?
Working for a Tier 1 auto supplier was an incredible first experience out of Purdue. I was exposed to a lot and was given significant responsibility early on, working on technology that made cars, the human passengers who would eventually occupy them, and the world around them, safer and more efficient. The machine learning vision system I implemented not only eliminated transparent-to-test items and significantly reduced rework, but it also allowed operators to be significantly more efficient, enabled people with vision issues to work the line, and allowed them some time to dedicate to other tasks. Technology should have this dual effect when applied to a business: improvements for the enterprise itself and the people it serves (employees and customers alike).
Delphi was where I first became exposed to the magical technology that is AVs - a technology that I believe will be almost as impactful as the invention of cars themselves. The automobile was a terrific invention. Transforming society positively (nuff said) and negatively (accidents, car-centric infra, pollution). Autonomous vehicles are going to allow society to reverse some of these negative effects (in combination with better urban planning, carbon capture tech, and EVs). 40,000 people a year die from cars in the United States, and thousands more every year. Driverless cars are the future of personal transport, and their (responsible) rollout can't come fast enough. Working on winning new business for ADAS systems in collaboration with the amazing folks in R&D made me a true evangelist for this technology…So much so that I stood in front of cars equipped with our AEB systems to prove they worked (in a very controlled environment). They did.
Startups. It's almost magical that someone can have an idea, convince capital and talent to take a massive bet on what is often just a vision, and have that turn into…something tangible and incredible. Working with incredible founders on important missions that improve society has been something I always wanted to do, so I joined an Agtech startup at the intersection of sustainability and technology. Square Roots was trying to solve a problem that has plagued modern society. How do we produce the food that the millions consume, close to or in those cities? Food in the U.S is usually grown far away from where it is needed, leading to problems in quality, freshness, and inefficiencies in production due to the long distances that it needs to travel. This problem is also one of sustainability. Flying or trucking produce from California to New York, for example, is energy-intensive and emissions-heavy. We were trying to solve those issues. Urban Vertical Farming. Cities do not have land - let's grow produce in the sky. Cities cannot grow enough produce or grow produce year-round - let's grow produce in climate-controlled zones. Agriculture can be unpredictable - let's use technology, science, and ML to automate and regulate this process. It was incredible to be a part of. A parking lot in a major metro could become a high-tech facility that grows perfect produce. It was challenging work. But it was an incredible testament to the potential for teams to harness technology. Seeing Italian Basil grown on towers inside a facility in the middle of the freezing winters will never not amaze me, and it tasted delicious! It was also an amplifier for the community: consumers got fresh food, retailers got local sourcing, and we hired locally, giving people tech jobs that didn't require backbreaking year-round farming.
Wharton. I left tech to get my MBA right as my career in startups was maturing, and coincidentally, in the same year that set the tech world on its current trajectory. I wanted to understand not just what it took to build great products from a technological and operations standpoint. But also what it took to get a product across the finish line. Marketing, financing, legal, strategy, fundraising. How to build companies and not just products. Learning not only from classroom lectures, but from global immersive experiences and especially from my classmates. Many of whom have become amazing friends. There have been some tradeoffs. I left the workforce right as LLMs and AI began their boom - GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini were all released in 2023. At Wharton, I got to examine AI from multiple angles: its market-level implications in finance classes, legal frameworks in law seminars, economic impacts, entrepreneurship applications, and real-world case studies from corporate and government visits. That breadth of perspective was valuable. But at the end of the day, it is quite different from being in a company, wrestling with AI implementation as part of an enterprise strategy. Lucky for me, I didn't have to wait long to experience some of that, and there are not many better places to get back into the thick of things than GitHub.
My MBA gave me the great opportunity to work at GitHub during my summer internship. Technology rests on the backs of builders, and here I was helping serve those agents of technological change, developers. There was another lofty goal the company had - how can we make everyone a developer? Before vibe coding became mainstream, the company was already thinking of ways to improve its products to enable 1 billion people to develop technology for themselves. Democratizing development to increase users' capability.
SAAS Product Management taught me a lot about iteration, about customer pain, and the challenging but rewarding work of solving users' problems - the custodian of user dignity. It also taught me a lot about the pace of technological advancement with AI. Prototyping was faster, deriving customer insights from data was easier than ever, and personalization could be done at an incredible level. I had many conversations with experienced developers who would talk about their work with such infectious pride and excitement. The conversations left a lasting impact on me - building a product that invokes an emotional (positive) reaction from individuals, building a product that gives people the ability to collaborate and work on the things they love, is the goal.
I have experienced a lot and learned a ton. Made a lot of mistakes. I am grateful to have had such an enlightening and varied career. As I look toward the future, I'm excited about AI and technology as a force multiplier. AV's will save lives. AI will speed up drug development and cures. Robots will allow us to tackle our toughest problems in the physical world. Technology will give us back time. Time that should enable more people to pursue what they love and enjoy.
I am focused on where technology and AI can impact us in the physical world. Robotics, hardware, manufacturing, energy. I have angel invested in startups solving challenging problems and continue to lend advice and capital to impressive founders home and abroad. The person who was saved by incubator technology, technology that gave me time, is now focused on building technology that does that for others.
Excited about what is next!