Michelle: My first question is, could you kind of walk me through how your career got started?

Atty: I have a background in biotechnology. Initially, I was in research. I used to like to work on protein structure, determination, and all of that. But then while I was working there, I realized that I didn't want to spend my whole life in a lab. And I actually loved working with teams.

Then there was a startup incubator which was very close to the lab where I worked back in India. And it was there that I just volunteered my time. I just went there and asked that I see this as a startup incubator. And it looked very fascinating to me. And I just wanted to see what products they were working on and if I could be of any help.

And incidentally, they were working on different kinds of medical device ideas and concepts and they were looking to commercialize in India and other countries and naturally quality plays a huge role when it comes to regulated industries like medical devices. And that's how I started because I started talking to the startup founders there and kind of emphasizing the need for quality or like when do you apply quality principles in your product development life cycle and general awareness and also commercialization strategies. And then I realized that, I'm kind of good at this. So I should transition from research into these kinds of roles.

And that's what made me transition. And I realized that the US probably, if I get a master's here, it’d make me more skilled and equipped. So I came here and I did my master's in regulatory affairs at Northeastern and then during that time, I was involved in a lot of projects as well, very different kind of technologies, mostly in the digital health space. So I've worked on virtual reality based products and even wearables. And currently I'm in a role where I'm part of the digital health division. So that's kind of how I ended up here, but yeah, that's how my journey has been so far.

Michelle: Do remember what you want to be when you were a little kid? Did you always think you'd go into science or?

Atty: Yeah. So I actually thought that I would be, I would want to be something a bit interdisciplinary. If when I was a kid, I kind of wanted to be an author. And then during college, I was part of debating societies. And that's when I knew that I kind of liked debating about the law and things like that.

But I was also good at science. So I wanted a space where I could like kind of merge the three. And I'm glad that I found this kind of role like a hybrid between all three. You have to interpret the law, you have to communicate it like to different stakeholders. And you also kind of need to be understanding the technology behind certain things.