PoojaSankar, founder and CEO of social platform website Piazza, spoke to Tufts students yesterday afternoon about how her personal battles as a female and ethnic minority in her university computer science classes drove her to create the now widely-used Piazza.
Sankar described Piazza as a free web platform where students can openly engage with one another without the fear and intimidation that often suppresses student participation in the classroom. Hundreds of campuses across the country, including Tufts, use Piazza for classes.
In front of a group of students at Halligan Hall during the talk hosted by the Department of Computer Science and Tufts Women in Computer Science, Sankar detailed her interest in interpersonal dynamics and her decision to attend business school at Stanford University while taking a break from the technical field. According to Sankar, she lived and breathed code but wanted something more. Looking back, she said that her technical background was invaluable when pursuing her business venture and also helped her avoid any gender discrimination.
"The software skills and the emphasis on process were key before I embarked on Piazza," Sankar said. "I don't necessarily know if there is [more] bias for men than women in business. You just need a solid background."
Sankar described entrepreneurship as an addiction that created and still creates unparalleled motivational drive. She feels pushed to construct a better product for her users, students, with more features and increased accessibility. Additionally, Sankar values student input and has constantly sought student opinion ever since Piazza's beginnings in 2009 at Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
"I really believe that Piazza is an addiction to me, and my level of fulfillment is unmatched," she said. "Piazza is for its users, and I am motivated to increase the levels of engagement in the classroom with the suggestions and feedback from students."
Piazza was born as a result of Sankar's personal classroom experience in the United States, the difficulty she endured transitioning from a more traditional classroom setting in India and the obstacles she faced as a minority female student in a prestigious engineering school in India, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).
"I went to school with a class of about three girls and the rest boys," she said. "I felt isolated from my male classmates at IIT as I often worked alone. I felt another separation in the U.S. as I came from a traditional background, and the American classroom experience was frightening."
Sankar received a master's degree from the University of Maryland, College Park following her education at IIT.
At Tufts, Piazza is used in several computer science classes. Jessie Serrino, president of Tufts Women in Computer Sciences, said she related to the fear Sankar felt in the classroom and said that Piazza has been a great learning tool in understanding the material in her computer science classes.
"Whenever I have questions, I am often too embarrassed to bring them to attention in class because I don't want to look as if I didn't understand a reading or analyze a problem," Serrino, a sophomore, said. "The feature to post anonymously on Piazza and read that other students are having the same questions is both beneficial and reassuring."
Institutions nationwide and worldwide have used Piazza for a variety of subjects from plant biology to aerodynamics in an effort to further engage students in the classroom.
"Piazza is left in the hands of instructors," Sankar said. "Instructors structure the function of Piazza and mostly integrate Piazza into their class as a means for efficient communication."
For the future, Sankar hopes that Piazza will venture into other sectors such as sales in addition to expanding its usage as an educational tool in academia. Sankar believes that her company will grow by word-of-mouth and students will tell instructors about its advantages.
"We do not have a large PR or marketing team," she said. "We are just a small group of people with a common vision of building an efficient communication core."
