Women Who Inspire Us — Kajal Gada
By: Hiral Amar Thaker
Tags: Robots, Robotics, Women In Business, Women, Women In Tech

Hello guys!

Welcome to the last interview of this year with: Kajal Gada

Hope you all are having amazing holidays with your friends

Let’s start with your awesome introduction:

Kajal: I am Robotics software engineer and a youtuber. My love for robots was an extension to my love for coding — it is the ability to create logical pieces that come together to change the world.

Which brings me to being a youtuber. Growing up my sphere of influence didn’t have women who worked cause they wanted to — they only worked to alleviate financial burden. I created my channel to change this mindset. My channel is a space where you see women with different careers along with advice on how to grow your career. It is simple — you see someone like you doing it and you believe you can do it too.

Wow! Splendid to hear Kajal the way you are changing the world. Check out her youtube page here.

Q) Tell us something about your journey:

Kajal: This is going to be a fun roller coaster. As a kid, I wanted to be a doctor. Then I encountered Biology and knew that this wasn’t for me. Somehow I ended up in the realm of engineering.

I remember my first coding class in college — I failed. I couldn’t understand anything. So a friend and I started learning from her aunt. She taught us the basic — if else, classes, etc. Enough to pass the course.

Next came my internship and that was the turning point. For the first time, I was coding beyond — creating a class to store information about students. I had a real world project. I built a vehicle tracking system — a small device that you plug into your car and you can know anything you want: where all did the car go, how fast was it being driven and you can even know your car is about to be towed!

This got me excited and my mentor told me about robotics. And that was it. I found my area of interest and then worked hard to make it. I would watch YouTube videos to improve my coding skills. I started playing around with an arduino and made my own fun robot.

I went to pursue my Masters in Robotics from University of Maryland. I graduated in 2017 and went on to work in the industry. I have about 3 years of experience.

There were a whole bunch of failures and struggles in each step. Each failure was a lesson that made me better and got me to where I am today.

Loved your roller coaster journey Kajal.

Q) Next up, what inspires you to move forward in your career?

Kajal: Seeing the robot move in the real world. I think that is the best part of being in the industry (apart from the money :P). You get to create and see your code running on robots in the real world.

Yes! Can imagine your excitement, we can definitely imagine how you write a few lines of code and with thousands errors and failures you finally get a result. Exciting indeed.

Q) Throw some light about your vision for your life

Kajal: Seeing more women in the workplace. Having a career is not just about money. It is also about using your talents to create something. Then use it to boost your confidence, create freedom of choice and enjoy life.

I do this through my YouTube channel and would like to reach a larger audience.

As a roboticist, I want to create robots that can make everyone’s job easier. Yes it is fun to have a robot that you can play with. But I would like to work on robots that do the boring repetitive jobs so we humans can work on more meaningful things. :)

Yes! Agreed. Work to build yourself, grow and show you talents, and for your freedom.

Q) Who or what inspired you to start your journey?

Kajal: Kalpana Chawla.

She was an astronaut and a roboticist. There was a brief period when I wanted to be an astronaut. When that didn’t work out, I went for robotics.

She taught me to go chase dreams and be brave and step on a space shuttle not knowing what the future holds.

Q) Which simple pleasures in life do you enjoy?

Kajal: Reading books. I absolutely love reading and disappearing into a world of imaginations. I enjoy reading detective and mystery novels. And Harry Potter.

Woohoo! Potterhead in the room.

We too as an avid reader can completely relate to your love for reading and escaping into different world via it.

Q) Lastly what is your message for young girls/women trying to achieve their dreams against all odds?

Kajal: Get comfortable with failure. It is very rare that you see people have a neat path to success. You will fail, so learn to be comfortable with failure. Then get back up and try again.

Be it college admissions, job hunting, starting your own company — there will be a few failures. The thing is you retrospect, find your mistakes, learn from it and go back to it again.

For example, I changed my dream a couple of times before I found the one I was passionate about. I tanked 7 interviews before nailing one that ended up with an offer. Truth be told I was laid off from that one in 2 months.

But since I had failed so many times already, I just got up and went job hunting again. And I found a new one in a month.

So get comfortable for a series of failure. :)

Our key takeaway:

Try different paths until you find what you love the most, be comfortable with failures as it is an undying path of your life, and don’t stop until you find your passion.