Women Back to Work Success Story: Anusha Ragothama Rao

At WBW, we see many women come through our doors every week, each one with varying levels of work experience and different reasons behind their hiatus. The thread of commonality that connects them all is their keen desire to get back to work. One such WBW is Anusha Ragothama Rao, with whom we connected in the latter half of 2018.  

Anusha holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and worked for a year-and-a-half at HCL Technologies in India as a software developer. Her marriage precipitated a big move to the United States in 2014 and she found herself on an H4 Visa without a job. She had no way to work legally within the US until her husband’s company filed for their Green Card.

During the interim, and not wanting to lose touch with the working world, Anusha kept herself busy with different volunteer opportunities.  

She volunteered at Class Consulting, which is a non-profit company providing business solutions to other non-profit companies. This was a part-time opportunity, where she logged in from home once a week, helping the internal team with resolving technical issues. One project that she was closely involved with at Class Consulting was the implementation of an HRIS system for the HR team using Sharepoint online. She also volunteered as a teacher at eVidyaloka Trust, which is a not for profit organization registered under the Trusts Act that focuses on transforming the educational landscape of rural India, where she would offer tuition in science to kids over Skype.  

Anusha juggled volunteer work with up-skilling herself and completed a Tableau certification online through UDemy. Anusha also volunteered for four months at Kaiser Permanente in Union City.  When her EAD was finally approved in April of 2018, Anusha could start actively looking for work. But with a few trips back to India that year, she could not give it her entire focus. 

She discovered Akraya on Linkedin later that year and connected with WBW Program Manager Deepika Chhibber online. Through WBW, she landed a few interviews, only to end in here not getting the role. 

Deepika invited her for the WBW weekly Power Hour where returnees can come in to Akraya headquarters to network, improve their resumes, and learn about job openings in the Akraya database that are available to them. Deepika also referred her to a few internship opportunities and assured her that she would keep her in mind if any openings that matched her profile popped up. 

It wasn’t long before an Akraya recruiter contacted Anusha about two openings. One at Kaiser and one at Adobe. Shortly thereafter, she was submitted for a Sharepoint developer role at Kaiser.

The team at Akraya prepped her well for the interview so she knew what to expect, what the manager was looking for, and how to highlight her technical skills. Her interview at Kaiser went very well. The interviewing panel was impressed with her prior work on Sharepoint which lined up perfectly with their own project. Kaiser subsequently came back with an offer, which she gladly accepted. Anusha started her new job at Kaiser in January.  

Anusha is currently working on two projects at Kaiser. One that employs Sharepoint, which is her area of expertise, and the other that utilizes knowledge of jQuery, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Her work offers her a great balance of learning new skills while exercising domain knowledge.  

Are you a woman looking to return to the workforce after a hiatus? Contact Women Back to Work