Amrutha Pulikottil is a triple threat when it comes to her data science expertise, her empathic leadership skills, and passion for solving problems that make a meaningful impact on her community. She serves as a Data Science Team Lead at Resultant, working on some of the most complex challenges, such as the response to COVID-19 and infant mortality. Whether it’s with her professional work, her involvement as a mentor in the Indy tech community, mentoring the team of six data scientists she manages, Amrutha brings a humble approach to her work, always willing to share her technical and leadership skills that continually lifts those around her.
“Both personally and professionally, my mentality is that when I walk into a room, I assume I know nothing; that I’m there to just absorb knowledge. That works when I’m learning a new skill or mentoring someone, or even with our clients. I think listening to what they need is really helpful, especially with data science because what I’m building is very technical,” shares Amrutha when asked about what makes her successful in consulting. “I know my expertise is important, but there are also subject matter experts in each industry and there’s a lot I can gain from that exchange,” said Amrutha.
Amrutha has made Indianapolis her home and embedded herself in various community organizations. When it comes to Amrutha’s community involvement and volunteer work, it is clear that learning, community-building, and civic engagement are very important to her. She’s a member of IndyHackers and The Startup Ladies. She recently sponsored a Startup Ladies membership to offer the same development, learning, and community connections she has benefited from at no cost to that member who wouldn’t have been able to afford the opportunity otherwise.
A graduate of Anderson University with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science-Economics and Peace and Conflict Transformation and Ball State University with a Master of Arts in Public Administration, Amrutha and her team help clients make informed decisions through data analytics, visualization, and modeling. She works closely with her clients to produce explainable and reusable solutions that integrate well with the client’s infrastructure and environment. However, her path to data wasn’t a straight line. She began her career in non-profit in marketing for about a year and then returned to grad school at Ball State to study political science and economics and to get a master’s in public administration.
“While I was at private school, I taught the statistics courses to the undergraduate students as part of my assistantship, and I learned through that experience that I really loved working with numbers and teaching about numbers. I think math can be aggravating for some people, but for me it just makes sense. I see a lot of design and creativity in it, so that’s why I wanted to work within data science back in 2015.”
A lover of travel, having lived all over the world and visited many countries, Amrutha enjoys the thrill of the unknown and thinks it’s important to find joy in your work just as you do your personal pursuits. “Some of the problems that we’ve had to solve have been very difficult. And that’s really exhilarating. I need whatever I’m doing for a living to be just as exciting as hopping on a flight, being late, shoving your luggage everywhere. I need that intensity feel. And so, I love the kind of problems that our clients have,” said Amrutha.
At Resultant, Amrutha’s impact extends far beyond her work and team. She’s actively involved in multiple Gathering groups, the company’s Women in Tech program and serves as one of the leaders of Resultant’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) knowledge sharing committee. An Indian immigrant herself, Amrutha is passionate about providing resources to help others think critically about social justice issues to serve as an active agent of change. Amrutha helped organize Resultant’s implicit bias training in partnership with the Peace Learning Center. The topic of implicit bias is something Amrutha is particularly interested in from a data science perspective, as emerging technologies like artificial intelligence risk can reproduce human bias.
She was recently named to the TechPoint Tech 25 Class of 2021, whose winners represent a wide range of roles within tech companies, such as software developers, financial analysts, marketing directors, and product managers. In addition to being star performers at their companies, winners are committed team players who build others up through mentoring, volunteering, and setting a positive example, and are committed to contributing to the broader community.
