Episode 6: with Niharika Vadluri

We interviewed Niharika Vadluri from India to hear about her inspiring journey.

Graduated during COVID from a women’s university, Niharika faced challenges in finding her dream job, but the Python and open source community gets her going.

During her final year’s project, she made an energy monitoring system for her whole campus connected to a Raspberry Pi. Hear all about her work and all the contributions she’s made to the Python and open community.

Niharika shared personal stories dealing with mental health in her family, and how communities like PyLadies and the Python has showed her that those with mental and physical challenges can succeed in this community.

She shared advice and encouraged women to participate and contribute to the Python and open source communities.

Be sure to listen to the episode to learn all about Niharika’s inspiring story!

Topic discussed

• Introductions
• Graduation during COVID from women’s University/Institute
• Getting introduced to open source in college
• Dealing with mental health
• Her dream job, entrepreneurship
• Attending PyCon India
• PyLadies
• Discovering more open source communities and contributing through FOSSASIA
• Learning the different ways to contribute beyond code
• Growing skills and getting opportunities through open source community
• Her experience with GSoC (Google Summer of Code)
• Being an electrical engineer, and working with hardware, Raspberry Pi
• Her project at IIT (Indian Institute of Technology)
• Comparing experience in college vs. working in corporate
• Her advice to other women

Links from the show

• PyCon India: https://in.pycon.org/2024/
• BVRIT Hyderabad College of Engineering for Women: https://bvrithyderabad.edu.in/
• FOSSASIA: https://fossasia.org/
• PyLadies: https://pyladies.com
• Google Summer of Code: https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/
• Indian Institute of Technology: https://iitsystem.ac.in/
• Campus Energy Monitoring System (CEMS): https://drive.google.com/file/d/14eEk1fL-5HbHs8eEnq903hCJEBFxxPa5/view

Get to know Niharika Vadluri

Niharika Vadluri

Niharika Vadluri is working as a Packed Application Developer Analyst at Accenture India. She works in Retail Domain and Database Projects. She is an active open source community contributor and developer since 2018. She has been an active member and contributor in The PSF, Hackster.io, FOSSASIA and other Open source communities. She is a Toastmaster, and also loves singing.

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