(Head Boy-batch of 1996. Product Manager in the Amazon Web Services Machine Learning team)
I run Amazon Comprehend, which can read natural language text like tweets, legal contracts or news articles and extract insights from it. Earlier, I was at Yahoo as the Ad Marketplace data lead, and was an Associate Scientist doing cancer research. As you can see, I have a lot of diversity in my areas of work and I was able to do that because of the solid foundation laid by Utpal Shanghvi. My experience in school was very well rounded. As Head Boy I learned to lead, the various debate and elocution competitions set me up to pitch to customers and present to senior leadership, badminton, tennis and football taught me about teamwork and perseverance. The academic rigor prepared me to focus and follow through with whatever I took on in life. Our teachers, supervisors and principal have always demanded the best from us and this is how we learn to demand the same from ourselves. They instill self-belief and give us the confidence we need to achieve our potential. My closest friends today are folks I met in 5th standard. They are my support structure, especially since I’m so far from home in the US. If I were to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change anything. I would take the time to enjoy it even more.