Paving my own Career Path

  In 2020, I was thrilled when Sharda recruited my former co-worker (and now close friend) Sunita into Radiation Oncology. Sunita would work in a leadership role with a Human Resources focus . Knowing Sunita’s brilliance in understanding data and systems from an organizational workflow perspective, I knew that the addition of Sunita would complete our dream team.   It’s hard to describe the resulting magic when the three of us began working together. During covid, we started our routine of meeting virtually via Microsoft Teams for D aily Briefings.   During these meetings, I demonstrate new developments I have made to our applications and receive instant feedback from Sunita and Sharda’s perspective s.     One way I like to illustrate how we work together is with the Bli nd Man and Elephant parable:   a group of blind men who have never come across an elephant before and who learn and imagine what the elephant is like by touching it. E...

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. ...