Ep 79: Nafisa Bhojawala: Anything You Choose to Learn CAN Be Learned

Diva Tech Talk interviewed Nafisa Bhojawala, Studio Chief for Cloud Design at Microsoft Corporation. Nafisa, the daughter of an engineer dad, and an art teacher mom, grew up in India, and Dubai, UAE.  “We grew up, drawing, painting, working on embroidery; just basically making things! But I also loved the clean rules of math and physics.  I learned to appreciate how the world works around me.”

When Nafisa chose her university major, she wanted to specialize in fine arts. But her parents persuaded her to “pick a useful profession.” She decided on architecture and emigrated to Chicago to study at Illinois University of Technology. She spent one year, before she realized she was hooked on design, “looking at problems, and solving them, even on a smaller scale.” She logically matriculated into the design school. Nafisa then discovered computer technology.  “I used it first as a tool, as a designer, but very soon I began running into these frustrating situations while using the computer,” which prompted her to think about how challenges could be circumvented. She began “sketching out ways of doing it,” and taking programming classes to “go deeper, to understand how code is written.”

Nafisa’s Capstone project was an interaction endeavor: a learning tool targeted to high school students. To gain confidence, she accepted an internship at Morningstar, the respected global financial firm offering influential investment research and recommendations, managing over $200 billion in institutional assets, and providing software/data platforms for investment professionals.  There “I worked for close to a year on a CD-ROM project,” Nafisa said. “They were converting their stock data into an information tool that financial planners could use. It was the first time I was working as a young designer, figuring out how to apply my visual skills to interaction design.”  After obtaining her degree, Nafisa joined The Doblin Group, a global innovation firm dedicated to solving complex problems through rigorous interdisciplinary approach.  It was another evolution for her. “Their work is very diverse. I learned how to do research there; apply business strategy to problems.”  It was there that Nafisa realized that “I like to design things that become real, and that I can see people using.”

Through a friend, 19 years ago, Nafisa successfully interviewed for a design position at Microsoft. “When I joined my team, I felt like I had found my tribe: very talented people, supportive of each other. I had a great manager, and a fantastic mentor.  I could learn everything!” As she has moved into more senior leadership, she has come to the realization that “It takes a culture that supports growth and exploration…where people feel like they can take creative risks, and actually try things.”

Nafisa shifted into program management and learned she needed to “lean on others.”  The key was also “being humble about it: being a learner,” she said. “Now I’m not afraid of pivoting.  I can figure it out. “ One of her revelations has been that early in her career she focused on how to get things done, (“because you need to perfect your craft”) but later in her career, she has had to “focus on the big picture, because I needed to solve bigger problems, that were more ambiguous.”  She takes pride in the fact that she feels comfortable “being the person who asks the stupid question.” That exercise often results in pinpointing the most innovative solutions. For example, working as a program manager for Microsoft Azure (Microsoft’s primary cloud platform providing a full portfolio of technical services for IT developers), Nafisa realized that there was a “weak link:  the customer research piece.” Accessing customer feedback was a complex issue as the product line was being developed. “There were various stakeholders, timelines were crazy, and we did not have resources.” In less than 6 months, she had created and led a “high trust” team, to “do research at a very fast clip;” and work with diverse user “personas” encompassing developers and IT professionals, to ensure high feature quality and useful deliverables across a decentralized product set.  Azure is robust and successful in part “because we figured out how to pump data through our decision-making process, from the time we decide what we want to build to actually building something.”

Nafisa has now moved to leading the UX (User Experience) for Microsoft’s Power BI (Business Intelligence), PowerApps, and Flow, tools designed to elegantly provide the highest level of productivity to developers and others deploying BI rules inside the enterprise. “Now we are adding artificial intelligence and machine learning.  The responsiveness of systems is just at another level. You suddenly feel like you have more power, working for you.”

Nafisa acknowledged: “I have a need to create. Art has always been the place I go to, my sanctuary.  It has, also, been a way for me to connect to a very different community, that I would not be connecting with in business. Her art “informs” her career and vice versa. It has taught her useful leadership precepts: “be optimistic about the process and the outcome; pour your soul into it; take risks along the way; recover from the failures you encounter.  You will discover you are very resilient. You know more than you think you do.” Nafisa also characterized her art as essential because “It helps me understand the ‘creatives’ I manage. It is a journey all of us go through.”

As a busy mother, as well as business leader/artist, Nafisa achieves balance by “not thinking about perfection.” She works on doing a little bit better each time, bringing heightened awareness to each project.  And “I lean on others,” she said. “My partner who has an equally busy and chaotic work-life is my partner in parenting, too.” She stressed that “we can all be present in all parts of our lives, if we have a strong community to work with, that we trust.” Additionally, “I am very selective about what I spend time on.  I am a little bit ruthless, setting those boundaries.” Nafisa’s final piece of wisdom was simply “anything you choose to learn, can be learned. You get to decide. But keep doing it, because that is how you keep growing.”

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