LITAS Industry Panel on Careers in STEM

On Monday, March 18th, LITAS presented an insightful Industry Panel on "Career Pathways in Science and Technology," showcasing the journeys of three remarkable women paving the way in STEM fields. 

Students were excited to hear perspectives on career trajectories in science and technology from three amazing panelists:

Narjisse Sarehane (CA Government, Stanford '13): Narjisse earned her Bachelor of Science in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University in 2013. Narjisse works as an Analyst at the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) in Sacramento, CA as part of the California Competes Program.

Prior to joining the California Competes team in Sacramento, CA, Narjisse developed a brand incubator in Paris, France where she worked with private spas and clients to develop high end eco-designed skin care products with a social and sustainable impact. Her focus areas include hardware and software development, biotechnology R&D, battery manufacturing, electric vehicles, autonomous electric aircraft R&D, and beverage product manufacturing.

Bristy Sikder (Google, prev: MIT, Rubrik): Bristy’s journey began with competitive programming in high school, where she became the top female scorer at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) in 2012. Next Bristy graduated from MIT with a Major in Computer Science and minors in Economics and Mathematics. Post graduation, Bristy worked at Rubrik on Distributed File Systems and has 2 patents pending on her work. Currently, Bristy is a Senior Software Engineer at Google building out Risk-As-A-Service.

Anjali Prabhu (LITAS Alumna, Stanford Class of 2028): Anjali is a rising college freshman at Stanford planning on majoring in Chemistry and Computational Biology. After joining the LITAS team just before high school, Anjali was inspired to delve deeper into the different intersections of computer science and the benefit of applying tech toward the natural sciences. Anjali was previously a researcher in a year-round high school program, where she was able to work and present on organic chemistry, biochemistry, and computational chemistry research. Currently, she is a developmental biology and bioinformatics intern at UCSF at the Laird Lab. She is also the founder of her school’s ACS ChemClub and Women in STEM chapters, hoping to get more girls and people excited about unleashing the wonders of innovation and discovery in computer science, biology, and chemistry!

The panel was moderated by Anvita Gupta, founder and CEO of LITAS for Girls, AINovo Biotech CEO, Stanford CS '19. More than twenty five students from middle and high school attended, 75% of whom had little to no previous experience in computer science. The panel was a great success, and students were able to learn more about how to apply science and technology in different fields, spanning government to biotechnology to cybersecurity.