Asha isn’t going to stop now

by Marcelle Santos

While speaking on a panel a few days before our interview in the spring of 2022, Asha Makwana had a realization: it would be her last time representing Northeastern University as a student. “I’m in a transition phase. I’m done with my finals, I’ve got my results, and I’m interviewing for jobs in the Bay Area. I have a graduation ceremony coming up in Boston, and I’m looking at beautiful places to visit because my family is coming [from Mumbai] for the ceremony.”

Even though she earned a bachelor’s and a master’s in India, this would be the first time her parents saw her in a graduation cap and gown. “If you study engineering, you have a graduation ceremony. I was not in engineering.”

She tried to be. Before getting into computer science, she studied engineering for a full year. But she felt stressed, overwhelmed, and like she didn’t belong. “In engineering, it was mostly men. And everyone was so smart. I didn’t want to look dumb or say the wrong thing. Maybe I was too naive at eighteen to understand what was happening and how to get what I needed.”

The first woman in her family to pursue a career in STEM, Asha didn’t have references of career-oriented women in her community. Her brother, who is a year older and studied engineering, was the person closest to her to go to college. “But he was always the smartest. I was more of an average student.”

Because of her gender and her grades, her extended family didn’t believe that she could build a career in technology or engineering. “We used to get backlash all the time.”

So when she began to struggle as an engineering student to get passing grades, she was mortified to the point where she even stopped seeing her friends. “I was at a very low place where I didn’t have any confidence in myself.”

Her parents and teachers, however, never stopped believing in her. One of her professors suggested she take up computer science instead. Asha was surprised — computer science was the subject she’d struggled with the most. But she took their advice and went on to earn a BS and an MS. “Getting my master’s was such a big thing. I couldn’t believe that I was the same person who used to struggle.”

While pursuing her master’s, she took on the role of academic executive at a well-known educational institution in India. That’s when she discovered a passion for EdTech, the use of technology to facilitate learning. “I have always wanted whatever I was working on to have a positive impact. Education doesn’t just help you live a better life, it also gives you the freedom to make your own decisions.”

Determined to open up her own educational institute in India someday, Asha enrolled in Northeastern’s MPS in Analytics program to specialize in data analytics and gain experience in a global market.

Imagine Cup

An interest in education brought her and Beverly Quon, a PhD student at UC Irvine, together. The two met virtually in 2021 at the Grace Hopper Celebration, a conference for diverse women in tech. “In one of the group sessions, I shared my story. I talked about my experience and my dream of having my own educational institute one day. Beverly was in that group. Later, she reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, ‘In my seven years in tech, I’d never heard anyone talk about EdTech.”

A UC Irvine doctoral candidate in computer engineering, Beverly was also a first-generation college student with a passion for making education accessible. She suggested that she and Asha meet once a week to discuss their goals. “We became Wednesday buddies,” says Asha.

But Asha wanted to do more than talk. “I told her how I would love to work on a project that was tech-driven.” Coincidentally, Microsoft’s global student technology competition, Imagine Cup, was coming up. They decided to submit a project together. “Obviously, we wanted to do something with EdTech. We decided to focus on education and on children with functional needs.”

While searching for ideas, they stumbled upon an article that discussed the challenges of making programming accessible to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. They learned that the main reason that those with little or no hearing are underrepresented in tech is the language barrier. For most deaf people (especially those who are born deaf or hard of hearing), sign language is the primary language, and there aren’t many resources available in American Sign Language (ASL) for learning to code.

KAPI

Inspired to bridge the communication gap between spoken and sign language, Asha and Beverly decided to create an app for coding without a keyboard, using ASL and a webcam. To get feedback on their idea, they connected with Jonathan Henner, Associate Professor of Specialized Education at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. It was the first time Asha interacted with a deaf person.

“It was a different experience. I realized that there is so much to see in this world, so much to understand. That’s when I decided that I didn’t care about the competition as much as I just wanted to work on this project,” Asha said.

Their application, KAPI, which stands for keyboardless ASL-inspired programming interface, won them the Imagine Cup for the Americas region in the education category.

Although the pair didn’t make it to the World Championship, they were amazed at what were they able to learn and accomplish together, especially since they started off with zero expectations. “We were very unsure at the beginning, but we didn’t let that stop us.”

They recently partnered with Gallaudet University, one of the world’s top universities for deaf people, to continue developing their app. Right now, their project is in the beginning stages, which includes training potential KAPI users on coding principles, keywords, and logic.

Asha is so excited about the project that she is considering pursuing a PhD next year. She’s living by the promise she made to herself when she landed in the US two years ago: I’m not going to stop now.