Ready Set Do

In this episode featured not-expert is Aashka Patel. Aashka is the founder of various initiatives all focused on AI regulation, including her podcast  @onairwithaashka  , while also being a freelance bug bounty hunter for Anthropic. The topic for today’s discussion is AI Safety and Regulation - what exactly it means, why its important and what the average person of the world can do to play their p...

In this episode, featured not-expert is Farah Fallah Toosi. Farah is an Engineering Mgmt student at Purdue with extensive experience as a program slash project manager professional in organizations such as Apple and Capital One bank - having many coveted certifications in her belt including Scrum, Safe and Agile Product Mgmt. Our discussion today is centered around the PM roles - product, project...

In this episode featured not-expert is Vishwas Shanbhag. Vishwas is the head of Revenue Strategy at VerSe. The subject of today’s discussion is AdTech. Vishwas takes us thru the fascinating and cash-strapped world of ad tech and the engineering marvels it takes to serve personalized ads to users within 200 ms. We also go over some innocent and otherwise things companies do to track and store your...

In this episode featured not-expert is Rohan Gautam. Rohan is the author of the book Romeo, Juliet and Hitler; an up-and-coming stand-up comic and is about to drop his first non-fiction venture as well. We discuss Rohan’s adventure of writing his first fiction book with over 50k words, and he takes us through his bias to action philosophy that got him there. We then discuss Rohan’s foray into the...

In this episode, featured not-expert is Nikhil Pentapalli. Nikhil is a Sr Machine Learning Engineer at Adobe, working with building cutting-edge Generative AI features on Adobe Acrobat. Nikhil references his experiences and learnings from working with document intelligence for almost 5 years to walk us thru the best ways for current students and professionals to get hired for their first job as ma...

In this episode featured not-expert is Ratik Dutta. Ratik is a Marketing Ops Assistant Manager at SEED Global Education, which is a role he recently started after returning to India - having finished his Masters in Marketing degree from Purdue University in the US. Ratik takes us through the realities of a move back to India after a Master’s in the US - the reverse culture shock, prospects of gett...

In this episode, featured not-expert is Tom Shannon. Tom is a co-founder at Omnia, which is a one stop-shop for deploying XR content at scale. Another way to think of Omnia is simply the YouTube for XR creators and brands. Tom walks us thru the specific problem Omnia solves, and showcases some stunning use-cases of Omnia that is currently used by realtors in Chicago. We also discuss what the next...

In this episode, my guest is Sanjeev Sharma. Sanjeev is a principle engineer at SpaceX and perhaps one of the most illuminative flag bearers of what the American Dream looks like in practice. We begin with Sanjeev’s time with the Indian Railways in the early 90s, and he walks us thru the extremely socialist hangover India was just beginning to recover from at the time and exactly what that was lik...

In this episode, featured not-expert is Trishita Recs. Trishita is an award-winning playback singer and songwriter whose work has been featured on Netflix, HotStar and Zee5 among other notable places such as live events and concerts. Perhaps like most of you all out there, one of my longest-standing loves in life has been my love for music. However, I’ve always been fascinated by what its like to...

In this episode, featured not-expert is Pritesh Jagani. Known more commonly as Yudi J online, Pritesh has built and grown his youtube channel to over 280k subscribers - leveraging his knowhow and lived experience to share amazing insights on how to succeed in the US during and after getting your Masters degree . Yudi J shares the exact blueprint he followed to amass such a huge following - coverin...

In this episode, featured not-expert is  @AdvityaGemawat  . Advitya works on Responsible AI at Microsoft as a Machine Learning Engineer 2. I am extremely stoked to present this incredibly nuanced discussion on the ethics and responsibilities that come with building mass-market generative AI tools. We discuss the technical foundations of Advitya’s career that brought him to this cutting edge of tec...

In this episode, featured not-expert is Hemant Pandey. Hemant is a Sr software engineer at Meta and has extensive experience as a SWE in companies like Salesforce, SAP, Tesla and Amazon. We go over a day in the life at Meta, Hemant’s career journey that saw him make timely jumps to bigger and better opportunities, tech stacks used at big tech, how to break into software development as a beginner,...

In this episode, featured not-expert is Mayya Perova. Originally from Moscow, Russia, Mayya recently graduated from a Masters of Arts degree from DePaul University but for the purposes of this episode - we’ll be deep-diving into how Mayya kickstarted her DJ career from scratch. We go over the onset of Mayya’s musical pursuits, how she learnt mixing - which is the fundamental skill every DJ must le...

In this episode, featured not-expert is Unnati Deshwal. Unnati is a fresh MEM graduate student at Cornell University, which is an Ivy League school. She also got admits from Purdue University, University of Illinois, and many others! I always thought that its borderline impossible to get into an Ivy League program unless you have the top 1% profile and/or a ton of work experience from a flagship n...

The job market is broken. Applying online feels like throwing your resume into a black hole. But what if you knew exactly what the person on the other side of the screen was looking for? In this episode, we sit down with Melissa Grabiner , a Global HR Leader and one of the Top 1% Career Coaches in the World (ranked by Topmate). With over 350,000+ followers on LinkedIn, Melissa has seen every resum...

Is an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad really worth the hype? What actually happens inside the classrooms of India's most elite business school? Today’s guest is Prof. Viswanath Pingali , a leading voice in Economics and Game Theory at IIM Ahmedabad. He pulls back the curtain on the "Ivory Tower" to reveal how future CEOs are trained to think, strategize, and solve complex problems. We go beyo...

In this episode, featured not-expert is Sai Kumar. Sai is the Lead Data Analyst at Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina. Coming from an electrical engineering background, Sai managed to not only get into a top Data Analytics program at University of Connecticut, but also break into his current position without having any prior work experience whatsoever. I believe anybody who is currently in t...

In this episode, featured not-expert is Soundarya Balasubramani. Soundarya is a founder at unshackled.club and the author of two books - Unshackled and Admitted. Today’s discussion is for anyone who wants to write and publish a non-fiction book today, although we do briefly touch on Soundarya’s next novel which falls into the realm of some fiction as well. We go over the steps to write your first...

In this episode, featured not-expert is Maya Mishra. Maya is a Masters student at Purdue University that has cracked the internship code. She secured offers from Amazon, Tesla (Engineering Program Manager), Walmart (Product Manager), HP (Summer), ABB (Fall) & Unilever (Fall) - and got interview call-backs from: Rivian, Volvo, Eaton, AMD, Schneider, Teksystems, Accenture, Eli Lilly, Honeywell,...

Is it possible to build a massive content career while studying for a Master's degree in the US? Most international students are told to keep their heads down, study hard, and get a corporate job. Parth Vijayvergiya did the opposite. He started documenting his journey from India to Thailand, Sweden, and finally Purdue University—and turned his "vlogs" into one of the most trusted res...

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Aditi Paul.  Dr. Aditi is an ex-tenured professor, published author, and founder of Dr. Paul & Co., where she helps Indian immigrants take charge of their immigration journey - by means of securing the EB1 visa, which she holds; and other talent visas. We discuss:- Aditi’s journey moving from STEM field to non-STEM field for higher education- Getting her Doctor...

In this episode, featured not-expert is Tushar Gupta. Tushar is a Senior Product Designer at Microsoft, having over 3 years of experience working on Microsoft AI capabilities for Edge browser. We discuss: - Tushar’s reasons for studying MS in Human-Computer Interaction at Georgia Tech - HCI Curriculum at GA Tech and what one can expect to learn there - Experiences with Product Design at Google and...

In this episode my guest is Prateek Behera. Prateek is a co-founder at gradCapital, which provides funding for college students in india whose projects can change the world. If you’re a student and have an idea you’re building towards, gradCapital will invest $40k for 4% in you. We discuss: -How Prateek and his co-founder started gradCapital. -The journey so far across multiple rounds of raising i...

In this episode, my guest is Melissa Weinmann. Melissa is a huge travel enthusiast, with her current tally of countries and territories visited being 44 at the time of recording. Having explored most of this by herself, over the years Melissa has learned a multitude of travel hacks and tools that anyone can leverage while planning out their next trip.  We discuss:  -Melissa’s experiences in Europe...

In this episode, featured not-expert is Sohan Sethi. Sohan is a data visualization aficionado and loves effective story-telling using data. He’s also been Top Data Visualization Voice on LinkedIn on numerous occasions, spreading the knowledge and empowering others to excel at business analytics and data visualization. We discuss: General tips for job-seekers seeking employment as business analysts...