Satvika has always been interested in bridging the gap between technology and social justice. We know that technology can be a hugely powerful tool to help people in need, but we also know that the same technology, when left unchecked, ends up harming those communities. She has spent most of her professional career working on finding the bridge between these two important areas.

Satvika graduated in May of 2021 from a 2 years Masters Degree at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz College in Public Policy & Data Analytics, and in 2016, graduated from CMU, having studied International Relations and Politics & Computer Science.

heinz ms public policy - data analytics

In her second year, Satvika also served as the Graduate Student Assembly VP of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, fighting for graduate students at the student government level. With this position, she managed a committee of students, sat on committees and advisory councils, and advised administration on making Carnegie Mellon as a whole more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. Her main focus during this year was on intersectional justice for students on campus as well as community members in Pittsburgh, focusing on inclusive curriculum development, more equitable community engagement, and better accountability and reporting structures for DEI issues.

femisphere codeswitch

Femisphere Codeswitch brought together 5 teams of coders and aroudn 50 single moms from around Allegheny County to come together for one purpose: create a technology solution for moms that was made with moms behind it at every step of the way. We started with a community conversation to get at problem identification, and then had moms there the entire time of the hackathon for feedback, user testing, and designing - and created 4 incredible applications, the winning ones of which are in the implementation stage now. You can see the full story and read more about the apps here.

Two years later, in partnership with Single Mom Defined, the Women and Girls Foundation launched the Single Mom Resource Directory, combining the best parts of each of the winning applications, and it is currently in use by moms today.

Satvika has worked in digital organizing in the past 5 years in some capacity or another. She started working for the Women and Girls Foundation, mostly writing copy and doing event social media, and has since continued doing that work with other organizations. For example, she ran a video campaign for The Midwife Center that brought in sign ups to an open house from across the city, and worked to create an in house digital organizing plan for Pennsylvania's first AAPI 501(c)4. She has also been contracted by many organizations to run trainings on digital organizing, and how to run digital campaigns ethically.

You can see more of her work in this space in her portfolio.