I grew up in Adelaide, Australia. No one in my family had finished high school, and I was smart at mathematics, so I became an academic and got my Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford. I didn't set out to be a businessperson.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I studied business and also studied film, then I graduated, and I worked at a network. I was able to use my business skills there - I was an associate producer for a little bit.
My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups - development, testing, marketing, user education.
Then I started graduate school at UCLA. I got a part time research assistant job as a programmer on a project involving the use of one computer to measure the performance of another computer.
When I left school I went to Australia for a year and worked in the drama department of a school in Perth.
I founded Atari in my garage in Santa Clara while at Stanford. When I was in school, I took a lot of business classes. I was really fascinated by economics. You end up having to be a marketeer, finance maven and a little bit of a technologist in order to get a business going.
I went to college at QUT: Queensland University of Technology. I studied for a Bachelors in finance and acting.
I wanted to be a businesswoman from as early as I can remember, and specifically, my real passion was real estate.
When I came back to India after Harvard Business School, I started as a lawyer and as a trade union leader.
I went to Harvard College and determined right away when I was a junior that I was unemployable, since I think I applied to 300 jobs and didn't get any of them, so I decided that I would stay in school and go to Harvard Business school, and that's my background.
When I was in college at Carnegie Mellon, I wanted to be a chemist. So I became one. I worked in a laboratory and went to graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh. Then I taught science at a private girls' school. I had three children and waited until all three were in school before I started writing.