My Background
Born and raised in India and migrated to U.S., I am a hybrid product of eastern-western culture. I can speak four languages and have lived in six different cities since childhood.
Growing up in a multi-cultural atmosphere (while being deep rooted in spirituality) has made me an adaptive individual. It has taught me to be considerate of others and be a quick learner.
Manali Gortekar
How I got into UX Design?
Back in India during my undergraduate studies in Information Technology, I had taken up a
course on introduction to HCI (Human Computer Interaction). That is when I
knew such a field existed. I found the course to be very interesting, it gave me a
basic understanding of what HCI is and why it is important but I never
considered pursuing it as a career until I actually started working professionally.
After completing my undergrad studies, I got an opportunity to work as a
Software Engineer at Accenture. I took it up in the hopes to get a good
experience of working as a professional and also, to explore a new fun city -
Bangalore. As a software engineer, I was doing functional testing on the
applications related to banking domain. I was preparing test cases and tracking
defects for the same. While working I was always curious to know the impact of
my work on a bigger scale and the difference it was making in people’s lives.
The quest to know why I am doing what I am doing led me to the
realization that my passion actually lies in design. I researched more on the field
of HCI and got very excited about its applications. As an individual, I always
wanted to channelize my creative side in my career to do something
meaningful. After talking to dozens of students, professors from different
universities around the world, I decided to pursue my masters in HCI program
and get formal education to become a UX Designer.
Current Endeavor
I am currently working for Cisco Systems
in San Jose, CA for past 1+ year where I am designing human-centric solutions in the form of networking enterprise applications. Prior to Cisco, I was working for Juniper Networks
for 3 years and prior to that, I was working for Edifecs
in Bellevue, WA in the healthcare field and leading a local meet-up group Ladies that UX, Seattle
where I organized monthly design talks and workshops. In my spare time, I read a lot about design through books, articles and podcasts and experiment with different techniques so that I can collaborate better and make informed design decisions.
Currently, I am also training to be a Bharatanatyam
dancer. Besides work, I enjoy participating in community service projects and spreading awareness about holistic well being through yoga and meditation.