TANYA GUPTA

I’ll start from the beginning. I was born in the UK and immigrated to America in grade school. I grew up in Naperville, a suburb about 40 minutes outside Chicago. I knew pretty early on that I wanted to study engineering -- it was something that I explored in high school and excelled in. I applied to NYU Tandon as a biomedical engineering major and switched my concentration probably 3 or 4 times (oops!) before I finally landed on mechanical engineering. 

I actually went through most of my academic career at NYU with very little industry work experience. I watched as my peers got really prestigious internships at awesome companies that really bolstered their resumes while I faced rejections year after year. It wasn’t working out. Senior year rolled around and I didn’t have anything still -- I grew desperate. The summer before senior year, I want to say I must have applied to over 150 positions, bespoke cover letters and personalized resumes for all. I was a woman possessed. I stayed optimistic but I wasn’t expecting too much out of it, considering my luck up until that point. I remember I was studying for finals in the library winter of my senior year, and I got a phone call from Houston. “Hi, this is Kathy from Johnson Space Center, could I speak to Tanya?” I immediately thought it was a prank call. After confirming with Kathy that this was indeed real life, she asked, “Could you move to California for six months for a co-op with NASA?” It was a really abrupt change to my trajectory because I had to leave NYU. I took a leave of absence my second semester, senior year, and postponed graduation for a whole year. There was a lot that I had to miss out on. I couldn’t walk with my friends. I missed out on all the senior year activities. But who in their right mind would decline a role at NASA? I wasn’t in a place to say no, nor did I want to. That choice single-handedly changed my career trajectory forever, and I’ve never looked back.

I did one rotation at NASA’s Armstrong Research Center in the Mojave Desert. Literally in the middle of the desert. That was really cool. I was the operations engineering lead for the PRANDTL-M, which is intended to be the first aircraft to fly on Mars in 2024. PRANDTL-M will gather data about the Martian atmosphere that will help scientists determine what future astronauts will need to develop a space base or colony on Mars.

I discovered my passion for mixed reality when I studied abroad in Berlin in the summer of 2016. I took a multimedia projects workshop through NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where one of our assignments involved the Microsoft Hololens augmented reality headset. I just fell in love with it. I knew I wanted to do something in this space. Since I was taking the class through Tisch, they taught the technology from a very artistic perspective, which was a total phase shift from what I had learned at Tandon. Kind of something that I wanted to explore further but didn’t really know how to. When I was at NASA, I looked up opportunities for mixed reality positions there. I contacted the supervisor of the Augmented/Virtual Reality lab at Kennedy Space Center and I think we really clicked, right off the bat. I have a feeling he could sense the urgency with which I wanted to work in that space. Ultimately I got the position. That just changed my life. It was exactly what I wanted to do. It was really cool actually -- I would come into work two hours early and not leave until 8 in the evening. I got to explore all sorts of space-related activities, experiences, games, whatever was available in VR, all in the name of research. We had six different types of headsets and a complete motion capture studio. All the newest technology and I could just sit there and experience it for hours. It was a phenomenal time in my life. 

We built this tool called the Rapid Model Import tool, for which we are currently in the patent process. So when you file for a patent with NASA, the first part of that process is that they roll it out onto the NASA catalog. Anyone within the NASA organization can download and utilize the RMIT tool as of right now. It hasn’t yet been pushed to the actual patent repository but the approval process is underway. It’s a really gratifying feeling to know that I developed a patent with NASA at just 21 years old.

I just described my life up until 2018. After I finished my stint at NASA, I had two credits left in my degree. I decided to do part-time for two semesters, so that I could focus on my startup company full-time, Curtain Call. Are you guys at all familiar with that?

Nicole: Yes, but go ahead and describe it for the people at home that don’t know.

Tanya: Alright, cool. Basically, Curtain Call was like the HotelTonight for concerts. Granted, this was pre-COVID, back when watching live music in crowds of thousands like sardines was the norm. A lot of live venues, especially those in NYC, often are unable to fill their seats to capacity. There are a few different ways that they usually solve that problem. One of them is called “papering the house”, where they hand out tickets on the day of a show entirely for free, to fill bodies in the space. So Curtain Call’s objective was to basically allow the venues to still make some money from those empty tickets for below face value on the day of the show. That benefitted both the customer, who got to buy tickets at a discount, and the venue, who got to make back some of the revenue that they would have lost. Our company was founded by 4 women, all NYU students: Carissa Estilo (Steinhardt ‘20), Laura Ahmetaj (Tandon ‘18), Quinn Robertson (Tandon ‘18), and myself. We were in the Stern 300K Entrepreneurship competition when I was a junior in college and we were one of just a handful of undergrad teams to make it to the semi-finals. That catalyzed us. We were provided with a lot of resources. We used the e-Lab for the Entrepreneurial Institute. After the competition ended, the Curtain Call team completed a few bootcamps with them. It was really cool. End of 2018 to 2019, before I graduated, I was working on that full-time. We opened up an online store, we were selling tickets, we made some sales. Really, really cool. All of us wore a bunch of different hats. It was the most intense business experience I’ve ever had and I’ve worked in two major corporations -- nothing can compare to the year that I did Curtain Call.

I am now a hardware developer at IBM. Half of my job entails being a test engineer for the IBM Z Mainframe computer. For example I’ll disconnect a cable, run a test, see if the system recognizes that the cable is disconnected and then document that, and so on. Pretty straightforward. In addition to that, I’ve also gotten into the mixed reality space at IBM. My interest lies in integrating IBM’s already established machine learning and AI technologies towards VR/AR. It’s a newer endeavor but there’s certainly a growing interest there.

Hashika: You’re so cool. I can’t believe that you just did that much.

Nicole: You started talking and you said, “back when I was at NASA.” Can you imagine? I just texted Hash and said, “imagine saying those words?” And now you’re at IBM, killing it.

Tanya: Listen, I cannot emphasize enough that when I was in college, I was convinced that I would be the bum out of all my friends. That I would not amount to anything. I was a failure. Ugh, that was real. And then in addition to that of course, once I got there, once I got to NASA, even now, I get imposter syndrome all the time. I remember back when I used to find those goals so unattainable for me. And now I’ve done it. Sometimes I wonder to myself, how did I get here? How did I manage to scam myself into this one? 

Hashika: That’s so crazy. I feel like you’ve gone through so many different experiences. You took on so many projects. 

Tanya: And I didn’t even mention art!

Nicole: I was just about to say, your Instagram now is popping off!

Hashika: It’s so insane! I want to go back to the NASA stuff though. I feel like that was a very special experience. Was that an organization that you always wanted to work for? I know you mentioned testing out the games and all of that, but were there any other special moments you had there? Do you have any fun facts about that place that not a lot of people know?

Nicole: Something that I also wanted to say is that when people think NASA, they automatically think astronaut. I didn’t know playing games at NASA is a job that you could have! That’s so cool!

Hashika: I think it’s so mysterious! We all know what NASA is but we don’t know much about what really goes on in that place.

Nicole: You could spill some secrets. We would love to hear it.

Tanya: Totally. So I visited the Johnson Space Center when I was 10. I have family in Houston, Texas. We were familiar with the fact that you could go and check the place out. It’s almost like an amusement park in a way. They have all these kinds of activities for kids. They show a replica of the space shuttle and things like that. I was enamored. I guess that point in my life was when I decided to pursue STEM without even realizing that that was a thing that was happening. I just realized, oh, this is something that I could actually do.

Another thing - side note - I will end up talking about my obsession with Barbie for sure. That’s it’s own thing. But the first Barbie movie that I ever watched was this VHS when I was really little. It was from the 80s. The whole concept was that Barbie was a pop star who turned into an astronaut and gave the first concert in space. She jet sets out in a pink rocketship. I was sold. That’s going to be me. That’s going to be my life. Aerospace has been a theme in my life since childhood.

But let’s go back to actually working at NASA now. Yeah wow, it was definitely magical. If I can first talk about my rotation in California, that was really interesting because the Armstrong Flight Research Center is on an air force base in the Mojave Desert - Edwards Air Force Base. We actually had to get badges and clearance in order to get on site. The base is so large and there’s so much classified stuff that goes on there. The entrance to the base is 30 miles away from any actual buildings. I lived closer to the site than any of my other co-workers did and my commute was still 35 minutes. So anyone else’s commute was somewhere between 1-2 hours. The drive in the morning was always really serene. I had to wake up really early in the morning so I would see the sunrise in the middle of the desert, driving 60mph and dissociating while driving until I would see the huge NASA meatball logo. Not a single day went by that I didn’t get chills at the sight of it. It was so surreal. 

That experience was crazy because they shot two films while I was there. One of them was star Wars and then the other one was First Man with Ryan Gosling. Ryan Gosling walked past my desk while I was working! 

Hashika: Stop, that’s crazy.

Tanya: I love Ryan Gosling so much!

Hashika: How do you fall asleep after that?

Tanya: Oh, no no no. I don’t think I’ve slept since.

Nicole: Oh my God!

Tanya: When Star Wars was filming they were way more secretive about that obviously. They shut down one of the entrances to the base. There are about 4 or 5 different entrances total and like I said, it’s huge. So depending on where you’re coming from, getting from one entrance to the other can take you an additional hour because you’re going around the circumference of the base. The entrance that they closed for the Star Wars shoot was mine so I had to drive an hour and a half to get to the other side to get in. I had to wake up an hour earlier on those days but like I implied before, the drive was more than worth it.

Another really interesting thing about that place is that since it’s an air force base, there are obviously a lot of flights that take place there. Military operations, military flight tests, things like that. The air strip that they use to do that is strictly off limits and you can’t take pictures of it at all. Basically no matter where you were on NASA’s site, if you had your phone or camera out, you weren’t permitted to face in that direction. If you did, the US Marshals had every right to come tackle you down and take your phone away. I never saw it happen but I did have mentors who said that it had happened to previous interns and to not take that lightly at all. Needless to say, I mean I kind of wish I had taken more pictures while I was there of things I was allowed to but because I was so scared to take a picture of anything I just kind of avoided it unless I was inside. It was so cool. I saw some really wicked and crazy looking aircrafts that looked like they were out of a movie. Coolest over.

We also did some flight tests of our aircraft. The plane that I was working on was the PRANDTL-M, which is intended to be the first aircraft to fly on Mars. It’s not an aircraft to carry people. It’s actually less than 2 ft in wingspan. Its purpose is to carry sensors to gather atmospheric data and figure out what life is supposed to be like on Mars. The idea is that they will use that research to create a space station or colony for future Martian astronauts.

Now let me fast forward to my work at Kennedy Space Center. One of the really cool things about that place is that all of the space station missions start from Kennedy. They sent out each and every shuttle mission from there before they stopped doing shuttle missions in 2011. Any time that astronauts are sent to the International Space Station from this hemisphere, they also do it from Kennedy at Cape Canaveral. Kennedy also houses the Astronaut Quarters where they quarantine for two weeks before any mission to space. Just as much as they have to be kept clean after they return, they also have to do that before they go out there. I was part of a very small group of interns that got to actually see the astronaut quarters. WOW. I saw where all the most famous astronauts had slept and had their last meals before going out into space. That was really, really cool. 

Hashika: I have one really quick question. What is the work environment like there?

Tanya: There are so many centers around the country that are all specialized in very different things. Even within those sites, there were any number of unique roles. There are 20 centers across the country. My experience at Armstrong was very different than my experience at Kennedy. I know I had a lot of friends at Ames, Johnson and JPL, all with different experiences.

There’s a bit of a myth that’s been perpetuated by Hollywood that NASA today continues to be a male, white, old dominated organization. That’s true of many corporations. I would argue that I have had experiences in some places that are like that. But I wouldn’t say so as much for NASA, especially because there hasn’t been a lull in them hiring people. They’ve been pretty consistent in hiring new talent. And that talent continues to grow more and more diverse because they’re a government organization and in the recent past they’ve tried to make more of an effort to hire diversity. They even have programs for students who do not have college degrees. One of my roommates in Florida was 18 and had just graduated high school and she had just as much of an opportunity to contribute to the work there as I did as a college student. There are a lot of cool opportunities for people across the board. You don’t have to have a PhD to work there. 

Another thing is that they have a couple different avenues of how you can work there full time. When I was at Kennedy, I was offered a full time position for after graduation. I had my own reasons why I chose not to do that but if I had taken it, I would’ve had to transfer into a different internship program first called Pathways. I would’ve had to do 20 weeks of rotation with them before I would be even eligible to be interviewed to work with them full-time. So even if you want to work there as a full-time employee, you still need to establish yourself as an intern first. Even if you interned the way I did, which was through the University Space Research Association, there was an entire process to be considered for hire. So it’s very structured and rigid. You do have to be a US citizen. That’s a question I get a lot on Instagram because I have followers from all corners of the world. Especially Indian folks. I get on average probably 2-3 DM’s a day from Indian girls, particularly those still studying in high school, who ask me, “how can I work at NASA?” I wish I could tell them to apply with abandon, but oftentimes I have to gently inform them that they’ll most likely have to get a visa here first. 

My experience was very positive. My professional relationships were great. My mentors were incredible. I still keep in contact with them and a lot of my colleagues as well. I would say that probably only about half of the people that I interned with have continued to work there full-time. It’s kind of a mix. I expected everyone to hold on and want to work there forever and I surprised myself because I didn’t end up doing that. It’s kind of all across the board. Some continued their educations, some of them completely left space -- I kind of did too. I’m not really in aerospace anymore but it’s always something to fall back on and I have the connections so it’s really cool. I loved it.

Nicole: Aerospace, something to fall back on...so cool.

Tanya: Oh no, that makes me sound so pretentious. Oh my God, I’m so sorry.

Nicole: Oh my God, not at all. It sounds so cool. Okay, just from a stereotype perspective of NASA and the engineering space, it tends to be male dominated. Was that your experience at NASA? How was your experience just being a young woman in that space?

Tanya: If I look at it objectively, I was the only woman on both of the teams I was in. The first team I was with three men and the second one I was with three men as well. Clearly I forgot that or couldn’t think of that number off the bat. It didn’t feel like much of an issue. I have to say that being the only girl in the room is something that I’ve been used to since high school. Actually, this story is something I tell a lot of people. When I went to my first engineering class as a sophomore in high school, I was late to class because my high school was brand new and they had just opened a new wing and I was unfamiliar with it. I got to class 7 minutes late and I showed up at the door of this class with 30 boys. It’s the first day of school so my hair is curled and I’m wearing a dress. You get the picture. I’m looking cute. I saunter in and say, “I’m sorry I’m late,” and my teacher goes, “Sweetie, I think you’re in the wrong room”! I was like, “No I’m not, check the roster”, and sure enough there was my name. So he let me sit down and at the end of the school year, guess whose work was being sent to conferences? Only mine! So this is not a foreign concept to me. I’ve been doing this for over a decade. 

I think that, first of all, going to NYU was incredible. Tandon has way above the ratio of women to men. We’re like really close to 50%, actually I think it’s 45% and 55%. There were definitely a lot of men at NASA but the other interns that I knew and the other projects that were taking place around me were split far more unequally. I was an anomaly because there were actually a lot of women in all of the teams. A lot of female interns. Not as many female mentors though. That’s why I say that there’s a phase shift taking place but there are still echoes of the way things used to be that kind of permeate through how the organization is split up. 

But in terms of discrimination or any sort of outward issues like prejudice, I didn’t experience that at all. It definitely would not have been tolerated. Not one bit. There would have been consequences for sure.

Nicole: That’s good to hear. Do you have any advice for young girls who are trying to get into that space? I know that it can be intimidating, the idea of being the only woman at the table. How do we pull up more chairs?

Tanya: Yeah, that’s a question that I get a lot. I can only speak from my own experience. I’m an only child. I have a total girl Dad who has never once delineated the difference of me being a woman -- which I recognize is a privilege within itself. I personally have always carried myself as a white man. I don’t know how to put it. You have to present yourself with the confidence of the most confident person in the room. That’s where imposter syndrome comes in… that’s very real. If you try and convince yourself that you’re all this and all that when there’s still part of you that doesn’t feel that way or doesn’t believe it, that’s when it starts to creep into insecurity or doubt. 

But the fact remains, if you meet a stranger who shows up in a room and is carrying themselves with this authority, you will think that they’re an authority figure. It really comes from your own demeanor and your presence. That’s something that you have to learn. Some people are born with it, for sure, but you still have to cultivate it. Your surroundings and your support systems have a huge part to play in that. If you have family members like I did who have always said, no you are the best or you are what you are, carry yourself as such… not everybody has that. You have to surround yourself with people who are great and successful, that’s one thing. When you surround yourself with greatness, you absorb that greatness. The other thing is that you have to surround yourself with people who will always bring you up and not down. That’s why I find female friendships so important. Or diverse friendships, especially if you’re in a field that’s still being dominated by men. You might be in classes where you’re the only girl, or the only few girls. Band together and form your own community. Bring each other up. Kind of foster this community of growth instead of focusing on the people that bring you down. They will always be there. There will always be a gaggle of people who are trying to discredit you or bring you down and say all sorts of things but it’s all about what’s in your heart and your head. That’s always going to trump what anyone else has to say.

Hashika: Definitely. I think you really hit the nail on the head. I don’t know, there’s always going to be animosity right? So it’s just about figuring out how you’re going to handle that and what in your life can help you. So you are an engineer, but that’s not the only thing you are. During this quarantine- I mean I love your art and I love your graphic design. Literally I was texting my roommates, the same 3 girls I used to live with in our old apartment, saying I’m on a phone call with Tanya and verbatim they said they loved your art. How has your experience as an engineer transformed or impacted you becoming a creative and changed the way you approach art?

Tanya: I don’t know if I can exactly pinpoint the correlation between my engineering STEM side and how that relates to my art. So I did photography in high school. I didn’t have a job. I was in all these AP classes. I didn’t have time exactly to make money but I needed to. Everybody needs to make money. I liked to take pictures of people. I did it for fun for a little while. I was just doing photoshoots with my friends. I gained some popularity on social media - very little for the time - but I started to get messages from my peers at school who were like, “hey I really want to get senior pictures done but my family doesn’t want to pay hundreds of dollars for professional photos.” I went to a school where there was a very clear distinction between kids whose families could spend $3000 on nice pictures of themselves and the ones who were struggling to pay for college applications. So that was a really cool opportunity because I could provide a service that was truly making people happy at a discount for them. I also felt like it was bolstering my own work because it was convincing me that I was producing something of value.

So that was way back when. When I went to college, I was dating this guy from NYU Tisch, so I made a lot of Tisch friends. A lot of aspiring actors. Models. People who wanted to get their headshots done or do shoots to add to the portfolio, whatever it was. It was great for me. I had a lot of clients and a lot of ways to experiment photography. Photography has always kind of been a hobby of mine and it became a side hustle at NYU. Everything that I do has to be a side hustle. It’s like a problem with me. 

When I could no longer pursue my freelance photography while I was doing Curtain Call and at NASA - I had so much other stuff going on - I still felt like I was missing this creative side of me. I really just wanted to create again. So when I graduated college, I started painting. I’d never painted my whole life and I had always wanted to. Since I was little, I was so enamored by it. So I just started watching Youtube tutorials and Pinterest boards, all that stuff. I realized I’m actually not bad at it! Then I was like, let me try another medium. I’ve done everything under the sun. I DIY. I do the digital art thing. I paint. I even draw and sketch now. It’s almost like I’m itching to make something all the time. 

So then when quarantine hit and I had even more free time, I was like I might as well really do this. I didn’t have any intention of turning it into a gig or anything besides truly a passion project. That was the first time in my life I chose not to do that. The fact that I was doing it just for me was new territory.

I have always wanted to be a Photoshop master. I remember when I was in high school, I would see on Pinterest all these really crazy edits. Photo manipulation things. I couldn’t even imagine ever being at a point where I could do that. Sure enough, I practiced Photoshop - and to this day - 2 to 3 hours every single day. And it’s not like I have it on my calendar. This is not a thing that I’m disciplining myself where I tell myself I have to give myself these hours. I just do it. I just want to. At the end of the work day when I’ve finished sending my emails and testing, the first thing I’ll do is open Photoshop. I’ll have the blank slate and I’m just like, alright what do I want to do today? Or I’ll go on Pinterest and get inspired by one thing and it’ll just start the Rube Goldberg machine that is my mind. I’ve never had that before. I’ve never had this opportunity to create anything at my fingertips, you know? And now I’m at a point where I have my photography and all this artistic creative stuff and I have refined my Photoshop skills. I’ve gotten to a point now where if I imagine something, I can bring it to life. It may not look exactly the way I envisioned it but I can actually do it. That’s when you know you’ve really acquired your skill. 

Nicole: I mean your art is so cool. You fully dismantled the idea that you have to be in-person to have a photoshoot. The fact that you were doing these in-quarantine photoshoots with people and making them so creative...I remember seeing Carissa’s and being like, this is so awesome!

Tanya: She was the first one I did, can you believe that?!

Hashika: So cool. Graphic design is not easy, you really have to have a knack for it or let’s say rather, an eye. It is so hard to develop your style and I think you have done that really well. 

Tanya: I kind of touched on it at the beginning, the movie that I watched when I was little that really shaped me. Another reason why Barbie has been this permeating thing in my life is because my aunt, my mom’s sister, has had a very fascinating career in Hollywood. She worked at Warner Brothers, she worked at Sony Pictures, and before she did any of that, she was working on video games. Back in the day, that was CD-ROMS. Do you guys remember those? (laughs). My entire life, or childhood, I was shipped out CD-ROMs every time they came out with anything new. Every time there was a new Barbie movie, like Rapunzel, or The Princess and the Pauper, Twelve Dancing Princess, MyScene, etc - they would always make the game with every one of them. And I have all of them. I STILL have all of them. Even when they were making movies they were making games like Fashion Show, Beauty Boutique, and Secret Agent. I could literally show you the stack that I have, it is ridiculous. I have kept them in such good condition that they still work -- the PCU makes a hell of a ruckus and they run slowly but they do work. So really, even my obsession with Barbie was directly linked to technology. I was never particularly interested in playing with the dolls. It was the gaming experiences. So I guess you could say that even my intro to gaming was also because of Barbie. All of these games and movies were centered around ‘pursuing your dreams’ and ‘you can be anything!’, since Barbie has had over 200 careers and can do everything under the sun. Clearly you can see, I don’t fit into one career category because I can’t! I can’t limit myself. I almost feel as if I relate to her in that way. Beyond that, pink is my favorite color. I am sure there is a lot of nostalgia that plays into my love for all things Barbie. I try not to go too overboard, I don’t want to be one of those crazy ladies who is like 70 years old and lives in a pink house with pink everything, pink pancakes and all that. It’s not that serious. But, I think at the end of the day, there is a point probably throughout high school and college where I was trying to hide that super super feminine side of me away because I didn’t want it to define me since there is so much prejudice against people who are like that, especially in STEM. Being overly feminine works against you. Liking Barbie would be the same thing, I’d be laughed at and it would be frowned upon. But, what I have learned is, in my experience establishing myself and actually proven that I have skills and I have done things, I have proven that I can be my authentic self. No one can use that against me because I have all of this already. I have already proven that it doesn’t matter if I do feel this way or act this way. That is kind of a journey I have gone on in my 20’s. My early adult life. My mom is convinced that this is all just a phase and I will come out of it eventually but you know what, maybe I will, but I am thriving. I am loving it right now and I am going to live through this. Be my Barbie girl self. That is why I did that series ‘If I Were Barbie’. It gave me so much joy. To be able to present myself and all of these different facets of my personality… it really spoke to me. I did it for myself. Entirely for myself. It has given me a lot of recognition but that was never my intention. It was just how I see myself in my head, let me put it out on paper. 

Nicole: You said something at the beginning of our conversation, about walking into a room and how your confidence needs to surpass the confidence of the most confident person in the room. But you are Tanya, you ARE the Barbie. You have done so many cool ass things. You are the coolest person in the room. I love that you did that for yourself.

Tanya: It has been a point of contention in my life before. Sometimes people just want to bring you down. Hold onto the things that make you nostalgic or make you happy, life is too short.

Nicole: I also have to say too, with Barbie especially, no one thinks about the games and what you can learn from them. And the movies and what those could inspire young people to do. I love that your love of gaming and technology came from Barbie, people don’t talk about it enough. 

Tanya:It's still a thing! There may have been a time in the past where Barbie wasn’t hitting the mark, they were still perpetuating the unhealthy representation of an impossibly thin blonde girl who could be perceived negatively as a role model for young people. In the last few years, they have evolved again, rolling out dolls of all different sizes and skin tones, creating dolls to represent real-life role models, and they continue to adapt to the new generation. Keep your eyes out, maybe one day there will indeed really be a Barbie Tanya doll! A girl can dream, right?