Welcome everyone to episode number 117 of Underserved.

Joining me today is Sri Concharla, CIO of SalePoint.

Let's get started.

Welcome to this week's edition of Underserved, the podcast for the rest of the tech industry,

where we focus on stories of tech industry leaders, their insights,

and their lessons learned. And now, your host, Andrew Jalina.

Shri, thank you so much for joining us today on Underserved. Thank you, Andrew, for having me here.

I'm so excited to be here.

Now, way back in the day, how did you first become interested in technology? Were you into it as a

kid? So I was actually not into tech, but I was very much interested in math, and I was a strong

math student. And as I grew up, my math passion continued. And then after my

undergrad, I decided to go and pursue my master's in applied mathematics, where math and

statistics and all that analysis was happening there. I also had an opportunity to go through

some of the computer science courses. That's where my first tech introduction happened. And I'm like,

oh, math and then tech is actually solving business problems. But my passion towards math

made me more towards pursuing master's in applied mathematics. And then my first career opportunity

was also becoming an assistant professor teaching undergrad students math. Started now since I had

some exposure to the computer science and courses too, I was always reading and then trying to see

how that is related. But I was into math professor and then that career. So the end game is what? You get a PhD and then you become a professor or something. Is that what you were thinking?

So I think while I was pursuing my career as a professor and I wanted to really continue that and then do my PhD. So I got married. And then in 2003, I came to US with my husband. And there I was very much as my passion for math. I wanted to be an assistant, like do my PhD, pursue my PhD, and then really look for an opportunity to teach mathematics. So I started pursuing my career into PhD. And then I even started going to university for the first quarter. Initially,

they said they'll actually consider my credits and then I have to do some additional 10 credits and

then pursue my PhD, which was a two years program. But it, in fact, ended up being a five years

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