Software Engineer & Environmentalist Interview

We own our environment and irrespective of our professional career aspirations, it is our responsibility to preserve our natural assets !

Prudhvi Dharmana, our next pathbreaker, works as Engineering Manager at TruEra (San Francisco), a B2B AI company building tools for companies that create trusted AI models.

Prudhvi talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about his work in nature conservation alongside his career, through ReWorld ( a non-profit that he co-founded, aimed at accelerating biodiversity conservation worldwide through a participatory approach !

For students, having a personal mission is as important as having a professional ambition !!

I grew up in a small town, Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh. My dad runs a business and mom is a homemaker. Thankfully, they could afford to put me in one of the best schools in that small town. It was ICSE based education, so I got early exposure to computer science, programming, and environmental studies as well which also sparked my interest in physics. I used to participate in almost all extra curricular activities like debates, painting, singing etc. I grew up watching national geographic and discovery. That definitely had a big impact on my interest in the environment, physics and massive engineering structures!

What did you do for graduation/post graduation?

I did my bachelors at IIT Kharagpur in Computer Science.

What were some of the drivers that influenced you to pursue a parallel career in environmental sustainability?

I was very curious about computers back in my school days. I am very thankful to my school for including computers in the curriculum all the way from 3rd grade. I still remember being fascinated while reading about the mouse, CPU and other computer parts. We had programming exercises like drawing circles in LOGO as early as in 4th grade. In one of those 8-bit video games keyboards, I remember writing a program in BASIC to print prime numbers till 1000.

Beyond that, in 9th grade, we had to learn Java. It was definitely intense and exciting for me at such an early age. I was really fortunate to have a very passionate computer science teacher, Sudhakar sir, in that small town. His teaching increased my love towards computers, I could listen to hours of his classes without getting bored and tired. Just like a drug addict, I would not be able to sleep without writing a program every day during those days. Also back then, computers were not very accessible for me, so we used to write all the programs in a notebook and would have 1 hour of practical class. During that time, I would not look around. I would type everything I wrote on the book to watch it compile and run successfully by the end of that hour.

These experiences were the main reason for me to choose CS as the major in IIT Kgp.

Likewise, we also had environmental education from 6th grade. I used to feel really sad with all the things we do to our planet. In those times, I stuck big posters in my room that said “We have one earth, and that is our only home”. During the paint competitions at school, I would paint about the impact of global warming on ice sheets and polar bears. But documentaries on national geographic had a big impact on me. I would watch documentaries on life on water, about the lions and sharks, and this created an empathy for natural life from a very young age. This emotion eventually stayed with me after school, and led me to start ReWorld.

How did you plan the steps to get into the career you wanted? Tell us about your career path

My job at Microsoft after college was straightforward. Microsoft came to hire CS grads for internships, and it is a regular software engineering internship process. I got a full time offer from them after the internship, and I worked with Microsoft for a year after that. Post that, I switched jobs to work in startups.

Founding ReWorld is more“off-the-standard-path”. All I knew was I wanted to do something about the biodiversity crisis, but I didn’t know where to start.

I started with questioning my own bias on how big of a problem global warming and biodiversity conservation is. So, I took some time off from work and signed up for a few courses to understand science from first principles. This led me to realize, this is a much bigger problem than what I initially thought it was. I moved to California through my job to find other people working on this, because honestly I felt I won’t be able to move any needle by myself.

In California, I went to climate tech meetups, and was so happy to meet with many passionate people working in this space for a while. After 6 months, I joined a grassroots level non-profit(Citizens Climate Lobby – CCL) and worked with Congress to put a price on carbon in the United States. I was one of the core-committee members in the bay area chapter of CCL for over 6 months before I quit to start ReWorld.

ReWorld happened when I met my cofounder Chris over one of the climate tech accelerator events. We had a great conversation on that day and after that he called me up to share his idea of dividing a large piece of land into “mini-forests” for people to name them. We brainstormed different versions of it for over 4 months before we knew exactly what it should look like.

How did you get your first break?

I joined various climate tech orgs in the bay area to get to know people and try to work with them. Eventually, ReWorld happened out of serendipity. I definitely had my heart in what I was doing though.

What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you address them?

ReWorld is my first startup as a non-profit. So I had to overcome many first time founder challenges, but thankfully I had my cofounder who is a veteran in startups.

Building trust – In a world of greenwashing in environmental non-profits, trust is our main currency. We wanted to make sure our donors can really trust us, for example, every time I watch a non profit ad on YouTube I would know my donation is going to marketing dollars. So we decided to give 100% for forest conservation and not incur any admin costs. That meant we would fund ReWorld from our pockets and find contractors who can deliver great work at an affordable price point, and we did that for a while.

Funding operations – Over time, we realized that we won’t be able to fund all the operations ourselves – we need a team for marketing, corporate outreach, media relations and donor engagement. So, we reached out for help and we have got help. We now have an amazing team of professionals who volunteer their time and give back to the planet through ReWorld.

Where do you work now? What problems do you solve?

I work at TruEra as an Engineering Manager. TruEra is a B2B AI company building tools for companies to create trusted AI models. Engineering Managers requires programming skills, and skills to deliver high quality software products in time for a young startup. I worked with startups for well over 5 years now, as an individual contributor. Typical day involves going through architecture reviews, building things and reviewing the team’s code and holding team meetings. Even to this day, I enjoy building stuff in software, that’s the part I love the most.

I also work part time as a founder in ReWorld. I am responsible for all technology and donor operations in ReWorld. Typical work involves hiring, operational efficiencies and setting a roadmap for the org. I acquired a lot of these skills by just doing and failing. Most importantly, learning from other organizations. I love that every part of the work in ReWorld has a big impact on our planet.

How does your work benefit society?

ReWorld’s work in conservation saves critical species on our planet. Biodiversity extinction is a big threat to our planet, similar to the threat of climate change, and ReWorld’s mission is to protect biodiversity by supercharging environmental non profits of the world.

Tell us an example of a specific memorable work you did that is very close to you!

Most of the work in ReWorld was very rewarding and memorable. The closest to my heart is building the volunteer team from the ground up.

Your advice to students based on your experience?

I would just say – every person who chose a different path, had all the doubts and questions just like we have them, till we did it. The trick is to be relentless and seek help.

Future Plans?

I am definitely going to launch a for-profit startup soon and scale ReWorld to fund a project in each continent.