Authoring Role Models for the Next Generation in STEM • Pratima Rao Gluckman

(Head of Blockchain Engineering, VMware || CA USA)

“When I was fourteen I took my first programming class and fell in love with it. I was born and raised in India. I had a lot of role models at home, my older sister played cricket for the country — she played a man’s game. I was raised with this idea that you could be whoever you wanted if you set your mind to it. Engineering was something I felt like I could do. I came to the US to get my Master’s in computer science, then started working at startups. I loved startups because I felt I could run 120 miles per hour — I could carve out what I wanted to do because there was so much to be done. Ten years later I came to VMware. I’ve been on this entrepreneur’s journey here — I start on a project with one or two engineers and no lines of code, then go all the way to shipping a product out two years later. I love the process of building a team and scaling. Now I’m the manager for the blockchain team.

•

One of the things I struggle with as a senior engineering manager is that I’m not writing code. When you’re not writing code, people don’t respect you in a sense; your technical credibility gets questioned. I find a lot of women are pushed into management, organizational roles that don’t make them CEOs of companies. I decided to write my book, ‘Nevertheless, She Persisted,’ when I realized my identity as a woman was affecting how my team’s projects were being reviewed by the company. I did a lot of research and discovered challenges many women face. This was not at all the way I was raised, where I was told I could do anything I set my mind to. In my book I wanted to create role models, so I talked to women who have gotten where they wanted to go. I wanted stories of ordinary women doing extraordinary things. This is really for my daughter. I’m at a point where I can only do so much for my career, but I can do a lot for hers.”