Nabanita De
Software Engineer,
Serial Entrepreneur,
Forbes Contributor
Invited to Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit by Forbes team for my work
Anything Interests you? Reach out at:
Leadership, Initiatives and Volunteering
Being able to contribute and see something come to fulfillment has always been one of my primal driving force. I dont wait for opportunities to show up, when I come across a pain point, which isnt being addressed yet, I see what I can do about it.
Leadership
experience​
Build with Me Initiative
Founder
Seattle, Washington
2020
Bringing together Software Engineers, PMs, Data Scientists, Designers and Business folks to build products from ideation to publication in the market by going through the entire Software Engineering agile process. The first session I conducted was on how to pitch ideas and was able to bring people together to learn how to pitch their ideas - Link - https://www.facebook.com/events/493699784669524/
and https://medium.com/@nabanitade/pitching-and-fundraising-your-next-billion-dollar-idea-or-business-plan-59fdf49dde97
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Software Engineer.
Microsoft
Redmond, Washington
2017-2019
While my time at Microsoft, I led few initiatives that I started on my own.
1. Interns Turned FTE - I created a platform where over 300 Microsoft new hires company wide were able to connect, share their experiences, find their community, feel more inclusive, help each other with on-boarding and eventually find people in the city to do things with and also a platform to organize events and invite people. The group was initially created to help me find my intern friends who were now in the Company as a FTE to get lunch with but It got scaled to new hires and also to people who have been in the company for a while to find friends and new connections. I received amazing personal emails and notes from over 100 people at Microsoft Company wide, who benefitted from this group.
Even though a ton of people leveraged this platform to host events of over 50 people, my most Successful event I had hosted through this is I managed to register and go to the Coldplay concert for 35 other new hires and I had booked out 3 rows at Century Link for the same and I handled the logistics like registrations and seating.
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2. Shark Tank Group at Microsoft - I created this idea tank group for breeding innovation at Microsoft, to promote entrepreneurship on Campus and create the next products for Microsoft through Brainstorming and pitching. The group meetings were generally divided into several splits -
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People would bring in side projects they are working on or new ideas and get feedback from other people. It would help them find people who can be accountable and stay on track.
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Pitch Practice - I would help them learn how to pitch and if their elevator pitch is concise enough to capture the technical aspects, Business value and the why, what and how part of the pitch.
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Brainstorming sessions - I would divide groups into teams of 5 or 10, depending on the Turnout, ask them to brainstorm and come up with an idea for a particular domain problem and pick two other teams to plat devils advocate. So after 15 minutes of brainstorming, they would be ready to pitch. After their pitch, between the two teams that they picked, one team would give them the pros of the idea and how it can further innovated and the other team would tell them the cons of the idea and other competitors that are there in the market and why their product maynot have an edge. Eventually the Audience can ask them questions.
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Ideas diffuse session - Where people come together to brainstorm latest technologies or innovations they have learnt about before.
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Networking Sessions in speed dating format where you get 2 minutes to network with each member and then you switch.
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Ideas to improve Company products - Picking a Microsoft product and how it can be improved or brainstorming new ideas for Microsoft.
I was able to collaborate and bring together over 100 Microsoft Product Managers, Designers, Software Engineers, Data Scientists as well as research and marketing folks. I organized this group meetups, bimonthly from September 2018. I was also able to use the Facebook group created for the same to talk about upcoming Entrepreneurial events and talks in the area.
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3. Learn Machine Learning - I created this group of over 100 Microsoft employees who come together to review new concepts of Machine Learning and learn.
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Leadership Positions I held in established initiatives at Microsoft -
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Grad Intern Social Coordinator(ISC), Camp Microsoft
Worked as a Intern Social Coordinator for more than 200 Grad Interns. Intern Social Coordinators are assigned interns and fixed funding and they plan out the entire roadmap for the summer activities for those interns, to ensure Interns have the best experience at Microsoft. For Grad ISCs, since its much more limited (only 4 Grad ISCs each year), we are assigned all the Grad and Marketing, Business Interns in Pacific Northwest area. I also mentored a bunch of my interns by finding them opportunities in the company and connecting them with teams they are interested in. I also volunteered with overall ISC events like the organizing the Microsoft Signature Event 2018 and hosted a ton of Intern events over the summer.
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Microsoft Student Partner,
Microsoft
Dubai and Massachusetts
​2013 - 2017
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Received the Best Microsoft Student Partner Dreamspark Execution award for onboarding over 30 people on Microsoft Dreamspark in 2 days. Received a Windows phone as the award.
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Received BITSAA Mantra Entrepreneur of the year award for "Bluetooth Messenger".
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Built a strong Microsoft tech Community on Campus by leading various Microsoft initiatives, technical bootcamps, hackathons on Microsoft Technologies like Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, Cognitive Services etc, coupled with talks and events targetting women in tech and ACM Machine Learning Community.
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Attended “Microsoft Tech Day 2015”, Boot Camp, app development sessions & took part in Hackathon - 2 day workshop on Microsoft Azure, Windows 8.1 App Development, Windows 8 Mobile Development using Visual Studio & Blend.
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Developed & published Windows Phone 8 apps (Using Visual Studio & App Studio) like "Missing MH370" (helping people stay up-to-date on Missing Malaysian Flight) and "Bluetooth Messenger" on Windows Store. Bluetooth Messenger hit more than 10,000 downloads in first 3 weeks and was featured on top 6 new and rising Category worldwide. (https://www.microsoft.com/en-la/p/bluetooth-messenger/9nblggh09xlf?activetab=pivot:overviewtab)
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Gave technical sessions on Cloud and Web development, creating Chatbots using Microsoft Cognitive Services and Bot Framework and integrating ML models on Campus.
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Organized Hack20 is UMass Amherst's Annual Data Science Hackathon [ http://gridclub.io/Hack2O/ ]. I co-organized it with UMass Graduate Researchers in Data as the chair of the Microsoft Student Partner Community at UMass. The technical part involved, hosting various sessions before and during the Hackathon on topics like Azure Machine Learning and Hackathons 101 as well as mentoring during the Hackathon as well as judging to give out prizes. We sponsored the "Best Use of Azure Machine Learning" Prize, "Best First Time Hackers Prize" and " best Female Hacker" prize. I was also part of outreach and marketing the Hackathon as well as getting mentors as well as registerations for the Hackathon.
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Mentored at various Hackathons.
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Led evangelizing, registrations of teams and mentoring of technical teams for Microsoft Imagine Cup, World's Largest Student Competition.
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Masters Representative,
Computer Science Department,
UMass Amherst
2016 - 2017​
​http://umassgradreps.github.io/service.html#ms-rep
• Served as the voice of Masters Students to the Computer Science department at UMass Amherst
• Served on the board of Dean and Faculty Hiring Committee at UMass Amherst Computer Science Department. Hired our current CS Dean.
• Involved in various faculty meetings to suggest changes to the Organization and CS Program at UMass.
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Social Media Chair,
UMass CS Women's Group
UMass Amherst
2015-2016​
http://umasscswomen.weebly.com/
ï‚· Mentoring Incoming Computer Science grad students through the WW2A Mentoring Program.
ï‚· Promoting Diversity and Inclusion online for UMass CS Womens Group
ï‚· Worked on finding and promoting opportunities for the community.
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Graduate Student Senator,
College of Information and Computer Sciences,
UMass Amherst
2016 - 2017​
​http://umassgradreps.github.io/service.html#ms-rep
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Represented UMass Computer Science Department at the Overall UMass Amherst Student Senate, to act as a liason between UMass CS Department and Student Senate to solve issues for grad students as well as suggest favorable changes, aiding the community.
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Reviewed funding proposals from various on-campus organizations and handled funds reevaluation & assignment for on-campus organizations as a part of the Graduate Student Senator Finance Committee.
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Graduate Liaison for Significant Bits,
College of Information and Computer Sciences,
UMass Amherst
2016​
Significant BITS is the CS publishing magazine at UMass Computer Science Department. I served as an editor for the Magazine.
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Public Relations Ambassador,
IEEE
Dubai and Massachusetts
2014-2016​
​As the sole IEEEXtreme Student Ambassador at BITS Pilani, collaborated with the IEEE BITS Pilani Dubai Campus Student Chapter to organize the event IEEEXtreme, a 24 hour programming competition that hosted 6,000 participants. Was in charge of advertising, event registrations, logistics-handling & organizing the event in Region R1(Springfield, US) and R8 (UAE).
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Co-Founder and Chief Financial Officer,
Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership
BITS Pilani Dubai Campus
2012-2015
Have been the founding member of CEL, been on the board of directors for CEL and Conjure, a CEL BITS Publication in 2012, also served as a Senior Editor.
Positions I have held:
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General Secretary (2013-2014)
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Coordinator and Senior Editor (2012-2013)
yet since I was one of the founding members, I got to wear many hats.
Work
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Getting Office Space on Campus and getting all the necessary equipment, logistics like furniture, marketing posters, stationary, and paperwork, creating Social Media Campaigns, people for CEL to be functional, helped aid design the CEL Logo and Conjure Logo.
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Collarating with Chancellors to eventually CEL's Launch.
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Defining OKRs and CEL Roadmap every year to define membership drives, marketing campaigns, recruitment campaigns, financial charts to break even at the end of the year, the timeline of the events to be organized for that year and the collaborations and talks for that year.
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Found speakers in the field of entrepreneurship and organized more than 50 entrepreneurial talks and events including
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TEDx BPDC (writing proposals for TEDx, doing logistics, marketing, registrations for the event)
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The Indus Entrepreneur Talks
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CEL Business Hackathons at Intrauniversity and Inter-university events like Business Quiz at Technofest'12
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Established fund raiser initiatives and membership drives for CEL and was actively involved in planning events and registration drive (registered more than 60 members out of 120, through paid membership, singehandedly) in the first year through Gorilla marketing adoption technologies.
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Driving Outreach events of CEL throughout the Campus, through talks and also on Social Media.
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Providing mentorship, helping write Business Plans for startups on Campus to connecting them with Potential VCs and Investors
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Helping introduce the course "New Venture Creation" on Campus to promote Entrepreneurship.
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Recruited people for leadership at CEL.
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Been instrumental in MoU signing with Institute of Management Technology & Incubators. Volunteered for SME World Summit.
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CEL was the most famous and established organization on Campus, by the end of my graduation year.
Mozilla Firefox Student Ambassador
Mozilla Firefox
​2014 - 2015
Served as a student ambassador to promote open source initiatives on Campus at BITS Pilani and lead the Marketing drives on Campus. Collaborated with the Open source initiatives of the Mozilla Student open source community!
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Internshala Student Ambassador
Internshala
​2014 - 2015
​Internshala is a career building and job search sites based in India, especially targetting Student Internships. I worked as their social media public ambassador to connect students in my community to job available and also evangelize the Sales drives like Internshala's offerings like Resume review and mock interviews services on Campus.
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Go-Robo Student Ambassador
Go-Robo
​2014 - 2015
Go-Robo focusses on their Robotics Offerings. Engaged with their technical team and was the face of its products on Campus.