Growing up in a family of architects, design played a crucial part in my formative years. One of my fondest memories is pretending to work with my parents as they finished a submission. I would sit on my dad’s drawing table with my feet floating in the air, trying to imitate his plans. When it came time to go to school, it was no surprise to anyone that I decided to pursue design.
I graduated from Pratt Institute having worked in interior, industrial, graphic and web design. For my senior thesis, I researched and designed a culinary school for the visually impaired. Removing the sense of sight challenged me to apply the various facets of design to find a solution that made a positive social impact and also further pushed the boundaries on how people interact with designed spaces.
Design was no longer limited to the bounds of my imaginary sketches or the liveable spaces my parents had designed; it was so much more. Within a year of graduation, I found a challenging opportunity that allowed me to design for social impact. I quit my job in New York and moved to Mumbai to join Teach For India, a non-government organization (NGO) focused on educating the youth living in the slums of India. I not only taught over a hundred underprivileged students eight different subjects for two years, but also designed extracurricular programs and learning spaces to facilitate their development.
One of those spaces was designed to assist the growth of students like Prathemesh, who at the age of nine was able to create impressive machines and sculptures from the scrap material he picked up at the garbage dump on his way to school. With no avenue for these creatively inclined students to grow, many of them are forced into menial jobs after graduation and get stuck in the rut of life, barely able to survive. I was determined to create a platform to facilitate their growth while allowing them to pursue their creative passion. That was the beginning of Stappu.
Stappu worked towards building an online creative community in effort to grow the acceptance of Arts in society as a respectable profession regardless of someone's social economic background. Running my own show – I learned a lot! (feel free to ask me about it)
Over the last 7 years I have had the opportunity to have worked in different capacities as a designer across sectors starting from the traditional to the social and most recently in the tech sector. In everything I do, people have been the constant inspiration in my work. That being said, in an ever-evolving technological world, my experience and love for design, psychology and social service is not enough for me to achieve my goals. Thus, I came back to grad school to gain a more formal education to not only build my toolkit but also to have a more sustainable impact on the design of our future. So here I am ready to take on the next challenge!