My guest today is Shreya Mishra. Shreya currently works at AWS in Amazon. She has a background in Computer Science. She chose to major in CS because she was curious about technology. At school, in one of her classes, she was asked to write a basic program and it was where she developed interest in coding. Her first job was in India, and she had to go through an intense training program to prepare for her first job. Shreya credits this training period for the basis of a lot of skills such as learning to code in new languages. She also wanted to enter management to see where and how decisions were made. Shreya immigrated to the US to grow her career and had to quickly learn the way things are done in the US. Her mentors supported her with the culture transition. Another challenge she faced was the fear of not knowing how to do things. To overcome this challenge, she had to change her mindset and know that she would learn things as she goes and improve. Now, when Shreya enters an unfamiliar situation, she goes in with the confidence that she will learn and then figure out anything that she doesn’t know.

One of the most important things for Shreya in leadership is to be able to collaborate with everyone. She also prioritizes the trust of the team as a key factor of success. Shreya values leaders who have backbones and will give reasons and rationale for decisions that were made and that might be polarizing. She also values constructive criticism given in a way that does not outline someone’s weakness and instead focuses on what that person who is receiving criticism can do to overcome that weakness. She advises anyone giving feedback to not focus on the problem but focus on the solution and go back from there. The main reason she wants to become a leader is to motivate others when they see her. She wants to be a role model for those who look up to her on how to overcome difficulties and still pursue what they want. She wants girls and the parents of those girls see women like her in leadership and in technology so they can see that there are opportunities for their children so the children can progress. One of Shreya’s most memorable experiences is when she had to present at Amazon’s Reinvent. Shreya only worked for one year at Amazon at this point. Her teammate could not meet in person and she had to present alone in person. This event built up Shreya’s confidence in her abilities. She believes confidence in people’s abilities comes from giving their best shot and not being afraid to fail because they at least know what not to do the next time they try again. Confidence does not come overnight and it comes from learning and watching others. One piece of advice Shreya would give others is to never let anybody make you believe that you are not good for something and to be open to learning, ask them why. For women trying to enter leadership, don’t let other people’s biases affect you and don’t let others dictate how good or bad you think you are.