Volunteer Spotlight: Alaisha Sharma, AB ‘20

Alaisha is originally from Mountain View, CA and is currently based in Santa Cruz, CA. She graduated from the College in 2020 with an AB in Computer Science and a secondary in Energy & Environment and is currently working as a Forward Deployed Software Engineer at Palantir Technologies. She identifies as an Indian / South Asian American woman, avid dancer, computer scientist, and passionate environmentalist.

Alaisha has been passionate about the natural world since her childhood. As a child, watched Animal Planet like it was the Disney channel. In one of her classes she was moved to tears when reading about the Hundred Heartbeats Club, which is a list of species with less than 100 members left on Earth. And when visiting family in India, she saw the overwhelming pollution choking not only the wildlife around her but also her fellow human beings.

However, she is still optimistic and active about the change we will be able to make, especially by uniting people across policy and tech. In the future, Alaisha wants to rethink how we build smart, sustainable cities, with a focus on developing countries. She would like to help bridge the gap between biologists, engineers, and architects to promote more bio-inspired design.

In terms of HACE, Alaisha would like to see the expansion of the Mentorship Program to become an active hub that people can use to give or receive mentorship to their individual capacity, attend office hours to get feedback from experts on a startup idea, and receive informal peer reviews through discussion and collaboration. Her one ask for the group is that members invest their time in HACE. She believes "energy is contagious and you really do get out of it what you put in." She believes, and we agree, that in our new normal of remote connections individual investments are even more important!