Connecting the Dots

With jobs in both South America and Asia, Ashish Grover has quite the commute: He regularly makes the 10,000-mile, 21-hour journey between the two continents, and the arrangement suits him well.  
 
The Bangalore resident had worked in his native India for Target and Reliance Retail when he decided in 2017 to strike out of his “comfort zone” and apply for work with Chile-based Falabella. “I am glad I did this,” observes Grover, the company’s chief technology officer, Digital Retail, and head of Falabella Technology India. “I am thankful to my brilliant and beautiful wife, Shailaja, and our son and daughter, now 15 and 10, who supported my decision.” 

Struck by the “welcoming, genuine warmth” of Falabella staff, Grover was even more “deeply impressed” after learning more about the company. “Being in this totally new world will help me as I grow professionally and personally,” observes the 21-year “technology-domain” veteran, who has worked in digital retail/ecommerce for the past decade.

Grover, 44, earned a bachelor’s degree in math, physics, and chemistry at Delhi University and a master’s in computer science from Maharshi Dayanand University. “Logic and potential application” attracted him to those fields. “I get excited by anything that can be logically broken down into simple concepts and then join back up to create bigger concepts and uses. With computer science, especially, I am continually amazed by the empowerment we have now to change, create, and make a more efficient world.”  

He learned about UAlbany while working for GE Global Research in Niskayuna. “The people were so knowledgeable, and that motivated me to study further in the U.S. I wanted to choose a university where great professors taught – one close by so that I could continue to work on some GE projects. There was no better choice than UAlbany.”

Grover praises the faculty: “S.S. Ravi was very kind. He was always there when I was ‘stuck’ and offered any guidance I needed. Daniel J. Rosenkrantz’s lectures changed my thinking around database systems and helped me to understand them more deeply. Ian Davidson guided me on a data-mining algorithm research paper I wrote.” Grover’s favorite courses were CSI 503, Algorithms & Data Structures and CSI 508, Database Systems. “I remember course codes, too,” he jokes.

Earning an M.S. in computer science enabled Grover “to discover myself and my strengths. My interactions with professors and fellow students, my part-time work, and the course content had a great impact on my career and on my aptitude for self-assessment.” He urges students to “maximize” those aspects of the academic experience “while taking time to learn and having fun!” 

Adds Grover: “As the brilliant Steve Jobs said, you can connect the dots only in retrospect, so don’t try to do that in the present. Focus on inputs and creating more dots. Eventually, they will all connect!”