Packing up and moving to the other side of the world, sights unseen, might seem impetuous for some, but for Aradhana Elisa it was the exact opposite. Listening to her talk about the experiences that led her from Chandigarh, India to Southern California to Seattle, make it clear she’s a persistent, passionate person open to new perspectives. In her role as a full stack developer at 2A, Aradhana’s winning traits have made her an invaluable piece of the web development team.
Perspective
Aradhana approaches decision making with equal parts curiosity and determination. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, she knew she wanted to earn either a master’s in Computer Science or pursue an MBA. Instead of leaping directly into a program, she sought out a position at a software company as a user-interface (UI)/user-experience (UX) developer. In this role, Aradhana learned how to build new websites and software from the ground up versus coding into existing assets. It gave her a new perspective on what an advanced degree would provide, which she used as a springboard into her next phase.
Persistence
Sprint. Automate. Iterate. Lots of development processes focus on speed, but one of Aradhana’s greatest traits is her persistence—her ability to identify her goal and create a clear succession of steps to get there no matter how long it takes. After Aradhana decided to pursue a master’s in computer science in the United States, she set a year-long goal for herself and broke the monumental task into dozens of small activities logged in Excel sheets with timelines. From sitting for entrance exams to curating a list of target programs to applying to schools and completing Visa paperwork, Aradhana steadily chipped away at her long to-do list after work and on the weekends until her plane finally touched down in Southern California.
Passion
Aradhana leans into her passions to get more out of every project. During her master’s program, she worked as a student assistant in the Office of Institutional Effectiveness for Fresno State, where she taught herself how to build predictive models with Python to answer questions about the student population. While she had always known she liked working with data, she was surprised by how much. Instead of punching out to study the way most students do with university jobs, Aradhana brought her work to school, using it as the basis for her master’s thesis.
Judging by her personal and professional path, you might wonder if there’s anything too big, too complicated, or too tedious for Aradhana to tackle. From our perspective, probably not.