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Student Who Proved Doubters Wrong is Ready to “Make a Difference” as Microsoft Intern

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[h=1]Student Who Proved Doubters Wrong is Ready to “Make a Difference” as Microsoft Intern[/h] [h=2]Even as a small boy, Kartik Sawhney knew he’d have to do things differently[/h]
Kartik-Sawhney-04_v3-96x72.jpg




Even as a small boy, Kartik Sawhney knew he’d have to do things differently — blind students really can’t focus their studies on science or technical subjects, he was told while growing up in India.


He wouldn’t be able to take the exams or do lab assignments, education officials said. Even the teachers he respected the most urged him quietly: Why not study humanities or the arts?


But Sawhney has a way of proving people wrong when they tell him he can’t do something and, despite encountering one closed door after another, he’s pursuing his passion. He left New Delhi to study computer science at Stanford University and landed a summer internship at Microsoft, where he’ll be on a team that works on technology for accessibility.


He is eager to focus on how he can “make a difference — and not just a difference for people with disabilities, but a difference in general,” he says. “That is the primary motivation for me to go into a technical field.”


Heather Eichholz, a lead software engineer in the Operating Systems Group who interviewed Sawhney, says that he came across as a remarkable candidate who’d done his own computer programming in high school, coming up with projects and building relationships with the right people to get them done.


“He’s very impressive. He’s also very articulate and easy to talk to, from that perspective, so this one was kind of a no-brainer,” she says. “He wrote code, it was good, and all of his experience put together with his ability to communicate — it was just very easy to say he would be a good fit here.”


Though the specifics of what Sawhney will be working on have not been finalized, they will likely involve writing an app related to Narrator, the screen-reading software in Windows, Eichholz says.


A “brilliant kid” who’d fit right in



Sawhney says he’d wanted to work at Microsoft long before he went to an information session at Stanford and met a recruiter at a career fair. They talked about accessibility and universal design, which he is passionate about, and it left him thinking, “Yeah, this is what I want to do.”


Sarah Faubion, a university recruiter for Microsoft, remembers Sawhney wasn’t the same bundle of nerves as most candidates when he came in for his series of back-to-back interviews. She recalls that they got to talking about food, of all things, and he had her laughing with his “wicked sense of humor.”


She calls him “a brilliant kid” whose many accomplishments and awards are well documented. He fit the bill for what recruiters are constantly looking for, she says: candidates that would fit culturally and technically anywhere in the company.


“We want to hire people who are going to change the world,” she says. “And whether it’s hiring people who are going to work on a project that’s going to help millions of people or transform someone’s life – and that’s the kind of work that Kartik is going to do – I really believe that’s extremely specific to Microsoft.”


Sawhney’s perseverance is what got him where he is now. The college sophomore, who has been blind since birth, first tried his hand at writing computer code in his ninth year of school and says he quickly decided it was a way he could make an impact.


“Plus,” he adds with obvious enthusiasm, “I love it so much. It’s all about logic.”
He knew by grade 10, when students generally choose among three main study tracks for their final two years of secondary school, that he wanted to take the technology-encompassing science track. He knew it would tough; math and science rely heavily on graphs, diagrams and other visual components, and pursuing that track was something no blind student had done before.
The Central Board of Secondary Education in India said there were just too many challenges.


Convincing others to believe in him


The officials may not have recognized the determination that hides behind Sawhney’s wide smile. He wrote letter after letter and got others, including his principal and several advocacy groups, to plead his case. He met with the board chairman and even demonstrated how he uses a screen reader, which reads text aloud, to demonstrate how he works on a computer.


“It took me almost nine months to convince the board that I could very well manage everything,” he says.


When he finally got in, the work for the science track was hard. Without available ebooks, Sawhney spent long hours each night typing up the pages of his textbooks, his mom patiently dictating, so he could use his screen reader to study. He devised his own ways to study things like organic chemistry molecules, and even wrote his own software to represent graphs with sound frequencies.
His grades were stellar, but he faced another hurdle: Getting permission to take the entrance exam to attend one of the Indian Institutes of Technology. After another now-familiar battle, he was denied. He said he was repeatedly told there were simply are no provisions for blind students to take the exam.


After three years of trying to convince officials otherwise, he decided the rejection would not keep him from the career of his choice and applied to schools abroad. It was tough to convince his parents that the move was a good idea; they worried how he’d manage on his own thousands of miles away, but finally agreed he might find a better education — and perhaps more acceptance — elsewhere.


He got into Stanford, his first choice. “The computer science program at Stanford is amazing,” he says, “and they have a really awesome disabilities department.”
There, he’s encountered a different attitude toward people with disabilities. People at school aren’t interested in doling out sympathy and charity, which he deeply dislikes; they focus on his academic abilities and skills. He’d love to encounter that mentality much more often.


“If you talk about empowerment, it’s not really about the facilities that are available to you; it’s more about the mindset of people,” he says. “There needs to be more of an appreciation for diversity, like, ‘I’m doing the same task that you’re doing, it’s just that I’m doing it differently.’”


Eager for the new challenge


Eichholz says the obstacles Sawhney faced and how he handled them — fighting back from rejection and following his heart at a prestigious school like Stanford — left a lasting impression.


“That sort of tenacity really stuck with me,” she says. “To be told that they’re not going to accommodate you and to push back, at such a young age … I just thought was really amazing.”


She says his inspiring story was “indicative of qualities that would make him successful here at Microsoft, like standing your ground, pushing for your ideas in a way that’s productive and trying to drive forth solutions.”


In early May, Microsoft flew Sawhney to the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters for its annual Ability Summit, which focuses on creating better technology and opportunities to empower people with disabilities. Sawhney says the two-day event further convinced him that this would be a great summer.
“It’s just amazing, the kind of work they’re doing,” he says. “I cannot wait to start.”

http://microsoftjobsblog.com/studen...ady-to-make-a-difference-as-microsoft-intern/
 
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