My origin story starts with my mother. In the late 90s, she left behind everything she had ever known and immigrated to Canada by herself. She wanted a better life for her future children, even if that mean working at Subway because her new country did not recognize her Computer Science degree.

My mother believed that it was her own education that afforded her the privilege of unprecedented financial freedom and independence as an Indian woman. It was this belief that set the foundation of my childhood. She eventually took up a job as a Computer Science teacher at the same school she enrolled all three of her children in. She was very involved in our education.

I have two siblings. Both of whom are very similar to me - curious and unafraid of doing new things. In our younger years, we frequently ran around the neighborhood with a Sony Camcorder filming skits, narrating our days, and teaching each other the latest thing we learned to build/sing/play. We all had big dreams. Mine was to become an engineer, build something innovative, live in Silicon Valley, and ride a mint green Vespa.

I was raised in Surrey, BC. It’s a pocket of Canada with the highest concentration of Sikh Punjabis outside of India. Many families in Surrey were like mine: lacking the tools to deal with the trauma from the massacres and genocides they had survived, and struggling with the guilt of losing touch with their culture alive in a foreign land. This dynamic, for many, often resulted in trying to enforce overly strict rules around eating meat, cutting hair, or talking to the opposite gender.

I grew resentful and maintained a fractured relationship with my cultural identity throughout my late teens and early 20s. It started from the moment I first decided to cut my hair. I was 17. Much of my extended family stopped speaking to me.

I started at the University of British Columbia in fall 2016. I majored in Electrical Engineering. It was an intimidating experience to suddenly be surrounded by people much much smarter than me. It motivated me to work hard. I enjoyed my classes, and spent my weekends tinkering with hardware projects. I worked on a Solar Powered Racecar that competed the Formula Grand Sun Prix in 2018.

It was at UBC that I truly got exposed to cultures different from mine. I started to develop an ever-growing curiosity to see the world, learn how other people lived, and unlearn what I thought I knew. I applied for an exchange semester at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

At 19, I spent 6 months backpacking across Southeast and East Asia - from overnight hikes into the crater of Mount Igen in Indonesia to witness the chemical reaction that makes lava burn a bright blue, to the Vietnam-China border where a majestic muti-layered waterfall makes rainbows seem permanent.

I ate meat for the first time. I had my first sushi in Japan. My first pho in Vietnam. My first pad thai in Thailand. My first crab in Singapore. Also, a crocodile kebab at a night market in Phuket.

I returned to Canada in mid-2019 with a renewed fire to build, create, and make ideas real. It felts like I kicked off a chain reaction and suddenly following my curiosity become a way of life. I worked on SSDs at Intel. I did a fellowship at the AI4Good Lab in MILA (Montreal Institute of Learning Algorithms). I founded Newsworthy.ml - a tool that uncovers your subconscious biases based on the way you interact with your social media news feeds. I did ML research at TRIUMF (Canada’s national particle accelerator) to automate the beam tuning process for the particle accelerator itself. I worked at LinkedIn to create the ranking algorithm for the jobs marketplace.

At age 21, I decided to drop out of UBC. I had completed 4 out of my 5-year Electrical Engineering degree. But with only two year-long courses left, the opportunity cost of staying felt too high. My path was already unfolding in San Francisco.

My four years in San Francisco were joyful. I worked with two startups - Paper and Respell. Both of which exited gracefully. I’m proud of the work both teams did. I started a coliving space for women in tech called Merakii. I finally bought that mint green vespa that I always dreamed of, and a picnic basket to match.

I’m currently based in Seoul, South Korea. I moved here in late 2025 looking for a new challenge - without knowing anyone and without knowing the language. It’s been a wild adventure. Can’t wait to share more soon :)

Love, Harpriya