“There are so many paths to your destination there’s no one person who can ever define it as long as you’re willing to move forward to get there.”

In early December, we sat down with Shobhana Ahluwalia to discuss her trajectory in an extraordinary career that has scaled as fast as the businesses she has worked with. Starting from the aptly-named RocketFuel, the companies she has worked with have started off small and taken off incredibly under her. Most recently, she left her role as CIO of Uber to work at Peloton, a growing name in the exercise world. When we sat down with Shobhana, or Shobz, as she is known, Kamala Harris had just become the first South Asian-American woman to be elected Vice President of the United States. Both women began their careers in a world that did not have them in mind, but, as Shobz discusses, the growing visibility of South Asian women has propelled them to greater heights. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sandhya Panchapakesan: We’d love to hear a little bit more about your career journey to being CIO at Peloton from former CIO at Uber as well as all the other varied career adventures you’ve had. What drew you to this field, and what keeps you there?

Shobhana Ahluwalia: I tell people that generally if you were growing up in India in the 80s [or] in the 90s you had two career choices in front of you. And then, since I was a science major, my choices were either become a doctor or an engineer, and I could not decide to dissect a frog. So that pretty much threw me out of the medicine business completely. I am actually analytical and logical: I like doing algorithms. I like figuring out logic. So, in a way, these things kind of fit well in my brain…I’m not quite sure, but in the end, logic engineering software made a lot of sense in my brain.

Divya Prakash: For people who aren’t in the industry could you explain what your role is as a CIO [of Peloton]?

SA: As the Chief Information Officer I’m responsible for most technology platforms and services inside the company. Our role ranges from supporting the company’s growth into new geographies, support launches of new products.

SP: Fascinating. What’s the common thread between your roles in Rocket Fuel, Uber, and Peloton?

SA: The common thread amongst all these opportunities  was crazy growth in a short amount of time.The growth graph was quite steep for all of these. When you grow a company very fast in a short amount of time, there’s just a different kind of attitude and a different kind of mindset needed to support the company. My experience with such high growth companies enables me to be agile and bring the “fail fast, succeed often” work culture .  

DP: Neythri is also a startup that is going fast and wants to become a real force. Do you have any advice or knowledge from your roles and other high-growth startups?

SA: There are certain key pillars to keep a close eye on during the meteoric company growth phase.. Make sure that your culture remains what you want it to be. Hire, fire, and promote to reward the cultural behaviors that you want to imbibe in your community. Build elastic and scalable processes and don’t be afraid to re-process a function when it stops working for the company. . You want to figure out where your limits are, as people, processes and systems. And as you’re approaching it you know you’re constantly thinking about what to do next. 

DP: At a company like Uber and Peloton, does the influence that it has over people’s day-to-day lives, and the way it’s in the public eye frequently, change your view of your job?

SA: I love the fact that I understand our end product so much, not only from a support or our executive point of view [but] from a user’s point of view. So in the case of Peloton, I’ve had a bike for over three years now. And I firmly believe that a well-exercised body is home  to a balanced and calm mind. So, the point [is] that I am working on a platform or a product that I deeply believe in; that touches not only a lot of people’s day-to-day lives, it touches my own day-to-day life. So, for me it’s so much easier to visualize where all of my team’s work is coming in and how it impacts the product. You can touch and feel it. Similarly for Uber: it was a very pervasive platform. I looked at Uber as it was providing dignity and livelihood to hundreds of thousands of people around the world. 

SP: What does Neythri mean to you and how has it played a role in your life so far?

SA: I have been associated with Neythri for just about a year.. I remember not having a lot of professional companionship or mentorship when I moved to the US more than two decades ago. It has been wonderful  to be part of this peer group of high intellect and  high-EQ women with rich  career and personal experiences and to be able to discuss ideas and issues., [What] really sealed the deal was, as I told you: this quality of real closeness in the culture that the founding circle is creating. There is complete transparency and closeness in that group. So you feel like you have this group of people who you can discuss things with, and they have similar backgrounds, similar experiences and sometimes our moral framework is similar too. We are  looking to give back, how can we make the world a better place. 

SP: Given that you have worked with a lot of high growth companies where they’ve scaled, how do you think Neythri should work going forward as they scale into a bigger and bigger organization through multiple states, probably continents? 

SA: In the end I think Neythri is very clear about where they bring value. And [a group can]  bring back value as long as we can find a way to expand our culture. You have some really strong culture carriers. 

DP: Have you ever found any barriers, you know, as a South Asian woman? Could you talk a little bit about what this journey has looked like for you as you’ve seen this progress?

SA: The first barrier, we have to work on, is the separation of protection and support. I had to fight against protectiveness of well meaning relatives to be able to pursue Engineering in a distant university. They worried about me living away from home but it turned out well. My engineering school did not have a women’s dorm, and what kills me is they had five men’s dorms. So I went to this private little hostel and it was fun. We got really close, this group of 12 or 13 girls living there, we had a blast. I would rather have people in my life who support me. My parents were (and are) extremely supportive of my ambitions. 

DP: What constitutes the perfect day for you?

SA: A balanced day is the definition of my perfect day. I prefer to have various events during the day – exercising, working hard on an initiative, learning from life, giving back to our community, enjoying the company of my friends and family and some great food and wine!  

SP: Looking back and reflecting, starting from a modest background, going to engineering school, all the way up to where you are right now. Is there any wisdom that you would like to share with us from what you’ve learned?

SA: Listen to your heart. I think it’s high time we stop apologizing for ourselves and just enjoy who we are. There’s so many paths to your destination there’s no other person who can define that for you.  As long as you’re willing to work hard and move forward you’ll get there.