Kunal Kushwaha

During Kunal’s freshman year, he was very confused as to where he should start his programming journey. The exponential options of learning paths that came with the various skills associated with programming left him overwhelmed at first. But he took the multiple options presented to him as a sign to take advantage of his resources and propel himself into his programming career. He attended and participated in events, expanded his network, and grew both as a developer and human being. Now, he brings the same opportunities that were given to him to others as he uses his position to give back to the community.

A part of the hacker community starting at 15 years old, Kunal attended various inter-school programming competitions throughout his high school years. This participation sparked his love for the hacker community and the contributions he was able to make in order to support the community that gave him so much help during his beginnings. This emphasis on community is what has brought him so many experiences in the tech world in such a short amount of time, such as becoming an MLH Fellow, where he brought all of his past experiences to his team. During the Fellowship Hackathon of 2020, Kunal and his team created Bundly, a haven for the sake of finding all MLH Fellowship resources and information in one place. Designed specifically to enhance the Fellowship experience, Kunal was once again paying it forward to the group of peers that have given so much to him.

Open Source played a large part in Kunal’s growth in the very beginning, helping him gain a lot of real world software development experience while building connections with others. His first experience with Open Source was a project by Red Hat. It at first seemed daunting, but the  community was there to help him with his start. Ever since that experience Kunal has placed an emphasis on providing guidance and mentorship related to Open Source and various technologies to students from all around. This desire to teach has led him to YouTube, where he and his team have garnered  60,000+ subscribers & community members across over 220 colleges that hope to learn together in the community. Beyond the mentorship experience of his channel, Kunal has conducted bootcamps and webinars across India, covering WebDev, ML, DevOps, Data Structures, and Open Source. After being invited to speak at an event called Kotlin/Everywhere, Kunal was given the chance to speak to over 300 attendees. He spoke about how to get started with Open Source and DevOps specifically. Kunal was flooded with support from students and teachers that saw the presentation. The satisfaction of knowing that his actions motivated others to contribute to the hacker space is an experience that he doesn’t ever want to miss out on.

With this adherence to giving back comes Kunal’s emphasis on promoting diversity in the workplace. He emphasizes the importance of participation from people of differing cultures in order to achieve instrumental growth of the IT sector. By being exposed to the multitude of values and principles that those of varying ethnicities hold, teams can appraise their work and the works of others in entirely new ways. This teaches a learned respect of opposing perspectives which creates a conducive workplace, as Kunal emphasizes in his workshops and hackathons that he participates in. Especially for those that are new to the hackathon space, Kunal knows that by making everyone feel welcomed, individuals naturally learn to accept and be grateful for the diversity of the space surrounding them.

With a litany of projects under his belt, Kunal is well-versed in the world of competitive hacking. But it’s the lack of competition, the internships and workshops that promote cohesive team-oriented thought, that Kunal loves. As a Junior Team Lead for the MLH Fellowship Fall, Spring & Summer batches, he was given the opportunity to make even more of these contributions. Even with so much experience, Kunal is happy to say that he’s just getting started, ready to spread the message of inclusivity to all that share the same positive energy as himself at future events.