Neha Kumar on choices, authenticity and the power of the collective

Neha Kumar is an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech, with a joint appointment between the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. Her research area is human-computer interaction for global development. In this conversation she discusses the circumstances and choices and people that contributed to her path from India to Germany to the US, where she studied at Stanford and UC Berkeley, with time working at Microsoft in between. She then talks about her current faculty position and setting up her own research lab. She also talks with great generosity and reflective insight about the penalties and privileges of always being an underrepresented voice in every room and respecting difference. She brings a similar capacity to take perspective and see the bigger picture in talking about her tenure process, her service roles and how she looks after herself in the middle of all this. Notable bites:I started to feel that this is a product that the top 1% of the world uses, and it's not really driving my passion and I don't know what to do about it. I call it my quarter-life crisis. I was 25. [14:48]Everything could be a blessing and a curse. It's just a question of molding it in that way. [31:56]We're so tied to this performance that we always feel this pressure to be right. That's something I've been thinking about—how we don't give ourselves room to be flawed, but we are... We are inherently flawed, except we want to make it look like we're not. [45:53]It's about what's liberating. I think it's tremendously liberating to feel like I can grow in this moment, as opposed to: "I'm just going to stay put and not move.” [47:54]I hope we can think a little more about each other and a little less about ourselves alone. And if there was one thing that I would hope for, it would be that--to really believe in the power of the collective, to believe in solidarity, to believe that we're stronger together, and that we cannot really do better by putting other people down. We have to rise up together. To me that's super important to remember in the minutest of things that we do. [01:03:18]Overview (times approximate):02:00 Preamble03:10 Neha’s path and career choices towards a PhD13:00 Finding her own way and the value of good friends and supervisors22:50 Getting a faculty position and running her own lab, TanDEm Lab36:10 The experiences of always being an underrepresented voice in every room and respecting difference48:25 The tenure application experience55:00 Service roles and self-care1:02:10 A call to the power of the collective, being stronger together01:05:54 EndTranscriptFull Transcript available hereRelated LinksTanDEm Lab, Georgia TechACM Future AcademyACM SIGCHIMichael Best – Faculty mentor at Georgia TechBook: Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, 2013, Crown.Photo credit: Susan Dray

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