Balancing professional and personal pressures with Shailaja Venkatasubramanyan

I am in conversation with Shailaja Venkatasubramanyan, who is an Associate Professor Emeritus at the School of Information Systems and Technology at San Jose State University. She is also a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar and a Master Teacher Award recipient.

A special note on this episode: during this conversation Shailaja talks about some very personal moments in her life that some may find disturbing or moving.

In this conversation, she talks about:

Wanting to do science, but was influenced to take up commerceEncouraged by her mother, choosing to study accounting in the USATaking up courses in Information systems and computer scienceBeing encouraged by a professor to take up PhD in information science and getting a PhD in Management Information SystemsFinding herself amidst engineers and how she got over the initial fearsTaking up a teaching job at Tulane University, but leaving that after a year to take up a position with a startup in CaliforniaHow she had to do literally a cross country trip one weekend a month for one more semesterEnjoying the work culture in a startup, till they decided to start a familyMoving to San Jose State university after a first meeting at a StarbucksThe hectic and intense pace of life, juggling work and family, with an incident at home that needed help from the Fire departmentRealizing that it is best to focus on one thing at a timeGoing through a tough phase personally, with family health challengesFacing some unfair situations and harassment at workNot getting an empathetic hearing from seniorsHow all these experiences made her more patientWanting to spend more time with her ailing father, choosing to pause her career and focus on familyFeeling happy about her choices as she has a sense of overall satisfactionHow she was able to find her niche, and differentiate her strengths, particularly when among others with more technical backgroundsAn example was about learning what she needed to know for processing satellite data

Shailaja "Shai" Venkatsubramanyan is an Associate Professor Emeritus at the School of Information Systems and Technology at San Jose State University (SJSU), where she has taught and researched for over 15 years. She has a Ph.D. in Management Information Systems (MIS) from the University of Arizona, and is a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar and a Master Teacher Award recipient.

Shai is passionate about using technology and data to solve real-world problems and to make the world a better place. She has also worked as a General Manager at theCoderSchool, a franchise that teaches coding and programming skills to kids and teens, and as a Knowledge Engineer at Kanisa, a Silicon Valley start-up that developed innovative solutions for online customer service. She has expertise in MIS, data analysis, databases, online customer service, and coding education. She enjoys writing, teaching, and learning about various topics related to MIS and beyond.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/shailaja-venkatsubramanyan-b47742