Shital Waters, a graduate of San Jose State University, wasn’t exactly sure where her career would take her. But when she decided to pursue a job in tech, she worried that her biology degree wasn’t enough to get her there. Today, having co-founded a business that taps both her biology and tech expertise, she is committed to growing her business and championing visibility for other women in tech. 

After graduating from college, Shital worked with Models in Tech, an agency focused on developing brand ambassadors with tech knowledge. Increasingly, she was seeing the tech industry as a male-dominated field, one where “people like her” weren’t welcome. While Black, Latina and American Indian women comprise 20% of the U.S. population, they only make up 5% of today’s tech workforce. 

“When I wanted to break into tech, I was fortunate enough to be around people who were experienced in the field, so I thought it would be great to ask them for advice,” she says. ”But with the majority of them being men, I didn’t feel like I was receiving the quality answers I needed.”

She sought out a program where she could receive support and encouragement from other women in tech, where she didn’t feel like a number—or a seat filler. After months of research, she found the Northeastern University Align MSCS program, a Cognizant Foundation grantee, through a Break Into Tech event in San Jose, California. 

Shital connected with faculty members who helped put her fears to rest and pledged their  support throughout the program if she took a leap of faith and enrolled. One faculty member even showed her around the San Francisco campus a few days after the event to make sure she felt comfortable and supported.

Once enrolled, she was overjoyed to work with fellow students, teachers, and tutors from varying backgrounds and experiences. In 2021, she won an inaugural Women Who Empower Innovator Award from Northeastern, which further solidified her appreciation for the program. “Winning the award showed me how much attention Northeastern brings to women in tech and that the university is actively working to close that gender gap,” she says.

But the pandemic introduced a number of challenges she hadn’t faced before. She realized she needed to take active measures to prioritize her mental and physical health, which included connecting with peers in the Align program. That’s when she joined Northeastern’s AI Club, where she explored her entrepreneurial spirit and continued pursuing her passion for tech with her peers and uncovered ways to thread her biology background into her software engineering studies. She found an even greater sense of connection among her peers in the midst of isolation.

Over the next 10 months, she worked with fellow AI Club members to brainstorm ways of incorporating software engineering into climate-change prevention. She eventually became a co-founder of BluePlanetAI, a company that works to mitigate damage from harmful algae blooms in fresh and saltwater environments. 

By intertwining her passions for climate change mitigation with her newfound software engineering skills, Shital is uncovering innovative solutions to address climate change in aquatic ecosystems—and is leading the charge for other women entrepreneurs to carve their own paths.

She says she wants to be the same source of inspiration and encouragement for other women, similar to what she experienced during her journey. For other women pursuing careers in tech, she shares this advice: “Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something — you know your own potential. If you have that goal, that determination, then you should just go ahead and do it and prove everyone else wrong.”

Shital is seeking internship opportunities for the summer of 2022 and plans to graduate from the Align program in 2023.