Introducing Priyanka Gupta Priyanka Gupta is todays guest on the Steve Jobs inspired Join Up Dots business podcast. She is a lady from a small town in Uttar Pradesh, North India, who was once a software engineer by education, and also once an investment banker. But now she is a writer, solo traveller, and art lover and also the founder and editor-in-chief of On My Canvas — a personal growth and travel blog. Now the key to this lady is her story is about breaking boundaries in conventional India to follow her passion. As she says "I was neither a writer(blogger) nor an avid traveller until 2016. In my small hometown, education and work opportunities are limited. To make a good career, I left my home to study in Rajasthan, a desert state of India. The year was 2003, and I was just 15. How The Dots Joined Up For Priyanka In Rajasthan, I prepared to compete in a national-level exam which guarantees a merit-based course in the best engineering institute of India - The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). I studied hard for three years and scored an all-India rank of 78, out of half a million students who competed in the exam. In 2006, I joined the Computer Science and Engineering B.Tech course in IIT Delhi. I graduated in 2010. Then I worked in software and investment banking jobs and lived around India in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, and Bangalore. Throughout my corporate career, I never enjoyed my work. Mostly I was fixing the nuts and bolts of old software or was making the rich richer. Now I could have worked harder to develop the skills to get more innovation-centered jobs, but I didn’t like the work related to computer science. Why did I study it then? Because for a girl from a small patriarchal town, IIT and CS were the only way to opportunities. (A lot of Indians first become engineers and then figure out what they want to do.) The disappointment from my professional life bled into my personal life, too. I was mostly morose. And that is the perfect place to start todays episode. So why do few people really give their passions ago, when the story of others following their dreams are all around them? And would todays guest have moments still when she thinks "ok, this is a sticky time. Should i go back and get a job? It would be easier" Well let's find out as we bring onto the show to join up dots with the one and only Priyanka Gupta Show Highlights During todays show we discussed such weighty subjects with Priyanka Gupta: Priyanka talks openly about her belief that there was no going back once she decided that she was going to be a writer and traveller. Why you don't have to lose the skills that you have developed throughout jobs that you perhaps were eager to escape from. We discuss the path to finding the dream business, and why more often than not the dream doesn't come to you until much later. and lastly....... Priyanka reveals the steps that she took to get her first teaching position in Chile, after first taking the leap.