Fairygodboss of the Week: Niyati Shah

We've all heard it said before: confidence is key to career success. This was especially true for Niyati Shah, who found herself evangelizing and training seasoned software engineers... without a technical background. 

Shah started her career in payroll. But her persistence and confidence helped her along to director of education operations at MongoDB, a cross-platform document-oriented database program. There, her training team has grown from three to 30 and has helped over one million people in 196 countries learn the MongoDB platform. 

We spoke to Shah about how she found a career that fits her talents, even if her role wasn't something she felt immediately comfortable with. Then, we talked about her (relatable) love for travel, who inspires her and, of course, her best career advice. 

Director of Education Operations, Engineering Department at MongoDB

Greater New York City Area

My career has taken a very interesting trajectory. I started out in payroll then became an executive assistant, a recruiter and a global training manager. Now, I am a director of education operations at MongoDB. When I first joined, the training team was only a team of three. Fast forward to 2019 and we are a team of over 30 professionals. In my current role, I am responsible for expanding the global community of skilled and enthusiastic users of MongoDB.  

MongoDB University has over one million course registrations from learners in 196 countries, and is the primary means through which the world learns to use MongoDB.

I came from a non-technical background and was responsible for evangelizing and training seasoned software engineers. The way I overcame this challenge was through a lot of self-learning, being aware of my surroundings and picking up the lingo as quickly as I could.

My Fairygodboss is my mom. It may sound really cliche, but she really is. She came to the U.S. as an immigrant with two very young daughters and she worked tirelessly and endlessly to provide a better life for us. She started out as a cashier at Walmart and ended up being the director of finance at the Coca-Cola division in New Jersey. To really see someone coming up in this world based on talent and hard work is very inspiring.

I love to travel. I say this to my manager all of the time: the only reason I come to work is so that I have money to travel. I also read a list of five must-reads every day. It could be about personal investments, feminism, a new tech company that is up and coming or something as silly as reading a new comic strip. 

"Serving Crazy with Curry" by Amulya Malladi.

A lot of travel tickets.

Be persistent. I think it's really important to be confident and know what you're capable of doing.

I love MongoDB because it has given me the opportunity to grow — not only professionally, but personally. MongoDB believes in doing good for the community. We are one of the only tech companies that offers free education to anyone who wants to learn our product.