Paving my own Career Path

I can compare my early days working with Sharda to a lyric from  a favorite Alanis Morrisette song “ Y ou were the best platform from which to jump beyond myself”. Here I was, starting my job as a Program Administrator in Radiation Oncology, with no experience in healthcare and minimal formal experience in management. Under normal circumstances, I would have suffered from a serious case of imposter syndrome . But Sharda didn’t give me any time to do that . Within the first few months of starting this position, Sharda sent me to the Society of Radiation Oncology Administrators (SROA) conference in Chicago, where I attended many sessions and got a jump start in the Radiation Oncology field . While there, Sharda would say things like “ s tart thinking about what your presentation will be next year”. I suddenly found myself on calls with high-level hospital administrators discussing new payment models and quality programs. It was all quite surreal.   I would like to thi...

  After spending close to four years in the Math Department, it was becoming clear that my time there had run its course .   While my work was valued and appreciated by Math Faculty and the School of Arts and Sciences (in 2019 I was recipient of their inaugural Distinguished Staff Excellence award), there was a systemic   inability to create a job role and position for me t hat accurately recognized and reflect ed what I brought to the table.   As such, my professional growth was stymied.   Now that I had experience building applications for higher education and understanding what was needed , m y initial “exit- plan ” was to build similar to ols for other universities and start a new business. I studied other universities’ websites to help me understand how operations varied from Rutgers’ (for example, course-numbering conventions ), with an eye towards bui lding tools to provide value more broadly, without being limited to a single departmen t. ...