Every year, the Software People Stories dedicates the month of March to women guests, to call out their contributions and highlight some women’s perspectives.

Today, I am very happy to introduce our guest, Krishna Kumari, who is also a podcaster, hosting the New Indian Woman podcast.

In this conversation, Krishna talks about:

• Her first association with computers during her engineering student days and her first job
• Reflecting on the novelty and curiosity around computers and software that generated an attraction to this sector
• Being a campus hire at an IT organization and moving across various roles over the next 22 years
• Leaving the software industry and volunteering at various NGOs for about 7 years
• Getting back to IT handling the applications portfolio at a large university
• How programming languages were associated with an invisible class system among the developers with developers wanting to work only on specific languages
• Getting an opportunity to talk to one of her uber-bosses and complaining about not getting an opportunity to work on a language of her choice and how he could make a difference
• How she kept learning new technologies as they evolved, and as she moved from domain to domain
• Her tips on cross leveraging one’s experience when moving from one domain to another 
• How it is important to understand the user experience and design for that
• Seeking inputs from others as feedback, one gets opportunities to discover one’s strengths
• How it is important to nurture the quality of transparency to gain the trust of team members and how she discloses her strength areas
• How a mentor was instrumental in guiding her in switching to the social sector, by making her think what her contribution to the social sector could be
• Finding a niche to contribute, by bringing her experience in process management in the corporate sector, to the social sector
• How forming genuine relationships with people is very important
• She shares the reason for starting the New Indian Woman podcast, to share experience and perspectives with more women 
• Her career tips: the importance of the qualities that a person brings to the table

Listen on!

More about Krishna Kumari:

I am Krishna and I currently live in Bangalore.​

I have been interested in planning, productivity and time management related topics, right from my middle school.​

Over the years, this expanded to a journey of continuous improvement and learning from others and examining of how I can live my life in a better way. Better for myself and for the people I care.​

These learnings have helped me a lot, no doubt. I have been looking for ways to share the same with the larger community of people around me and learn more and more. And that is the genesis of this blog 'New Indian Woman' and many more things to come…​

And if you are wanting to know more about my background. I come from a small town called Alleppey(now Alappuzha, famous for its backwaters), in Kerala. My mother tongue is Tamil. On the academic front, I have done Engineering in Computer Science and then worked in the new IT industry. I started as a software developer, worked many roles in a leading IT organization. When I was performing the role of General Manager, I decided to leave the corporate world and explore. 

This led me to start volunteering for different causes . During this period, I have

• been a volunteer with NGOs and citizen groups involved in a range of activities from structuring and managing a variety of programs, translating ideas to project opportunities, interacting with partner organisations to facilitate IT implementation, creating visibility of organization's operations towards stakeholder agencies and so on.
• been a visiting faculty for Undergraduate students at a University for Data Management course .
• engaged at my children’s school for multiple activities including implementation of new library software using open source tools
• helped with teaching a Sewing course for Undergraduates at a University as part of their Creative Expressions programme
• launched my own podcast(yes, available in this site)
• pursued my hobbies - the ever common reading and of course, you guessed it right, sewing!​

My learnings come from the 2 decades in the IT world (after a simple small town upbringing), my current explorations and interactions with a wide variety of people from all backgrounds . My learning also comes from being a mother to a young adult daughter and teenage son.

Get in touch

Website : http://thenewindianwoman.com

Facebook : http://facebook.com/newindianwoman

Email : [email protected]

Twitter : https://twitter.com/thenewindianwo1

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thenewindianwoman