Dr. Taniya Mishra is the founder and CEO of SureStart, a company whose mission is to increase AI workforce diversity by building early opportunity pipelines and technical skills training. She has been an AI scientist for over 10 years, with more than 50 awarded patents.
Taniya is deeply passionate about increasing AI workforce diversity through opportunity equity and mentorship. As a woman, person of color and computer scientist that didn’t meet her first computer until the age of 20, Taniya recognized early that there is a major diversity problem in tech, leading her to leave her job as Affectiva’s Director of AI Research to launch her company, SureStart, in Fall of 2020.
Especially for the WomenTech Network, Taniya agreed to give an interview and share her story.
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Congratulations on winning a WomenTech Network Global AI Inclusion Award of the Year! How did it feel when you found out you had won?
I was so humbled and deeply honored to win WomenTech Network’s Global AI Inclusion Award! It is not just my win; it is a win for the entire SureStart community: the team, the mentors, the speakers, and of course the students, who have trusted and supported me.
WomenTech Global Awards showcases women who are role models: demonstrating initiative with the focus on building inclusive technology with the help of AI, actively fostering a tech environment of diversity, de-biasing Artificial Intelligence applications, and conducting AI research related to ethics and building inclusive AI communities or providing AI mentorship.
To have been recognized alongside so many other inspiring women for efforts to make the world and AI more inclusive makes me grateful and inspired to keep working towards creating a more equitable tech ecosystem.
Tell us about your background, journey in tech, and what inspired you to develop your career in this direction.
Having grown up in a family of modest means in a small town in India in the 90s, I had not seen or worked with a computer until I was in college in the US. So while I had big dreams — I did not yet have skills. It wasn’t until my freshman year of college, that a professor and mentor of mine posed the question “have you considered Computer Science?”.
This question, which proved to be the most impactful in my career trajectory, was also one I least expected to be asked at that time — not only because I had no experience with coding but also because I had had less than 2 weeks of experience of even seeing a computer.
So an unexpected question was asked of an unlikely candidate. The outcome... a fantastic educational and professional journey beyond my wildest dreams! What started as one class in Computer Science culminated in a Ph.D., a career as a machine learning researcher, and later, research lead at two of the most amazing companies in the world, AT&T Labs and Affectiva (now Smart Eye).
But the most exciting — most inspired, you could say — part of my journey is what I do now. As founder and CEO of SureStart, I work at creating early success pathways for diverse young talent through training, mentoring, and intentional amplification. And my inspiration for all this: You! Amazing talented women, who both raise their hand to reach for the stars, while also lending a hand to support those behind them. Your journeys, your advocacy, and your ambition inspire mine. Thank you!
Any advice you would like to give to girls in STEM on pursuing their dreams?
My goal for myself and for other women is to be fearlessly ambitious: to recognize ambitions as a strength, not something we need to temper.
When we do this, we not only supercharge our psyches, we also create a chain-reaction of positivity and ambition; where other women see this attitude and say “if she can do it, so can I.” Owning our ambition is both our right and our responsibility to the next generation of women and young people, who all need role models that lift up, fire up, and activate their imaginations!
