Data and Defiance: One Woman’s Rise from Obscurity to Silicon Valley Success

To commemorate Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration of the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), we are profiling an EO member who embodies Ada’s spirit. Once an engineering student, Sindhu Srivastava built her career at the intersection of data and humanity and is now dedicating herself to ensuring that young women never have to question whether they belong in STEM — or anywhere else. 

When Sindhu Srivastava, today an EO member through EO Silicon Valley, was a little girl in southern India, she faced constant reminders that her very existence was a burden. Why? Simply, she says, “because I was born a girl.”

Her parents, who had clawed their way out of poverty, were wary of what may happen to their daughter if she were to follow a traditional path. “The woman comes into a family with a dowry and then the husband’s family harasses her for more dowry,” Sindhu says. “They decided that rather than saving for a dowry, which then might put me in the hands of a man who could kill me for more dowry, they would invest in my education.”

That decision set Sindhu — then a self-described “7-year-old country bumpkin who could do math until my face turned blue”— on a path to elite academic institutions and, eventually, to becoming a self-made Silicon Valley entrepreneur and executive. It also fueled her determination to make sure girls in the next generation, including her two daughters, are never made to feel as insignificant as she once did.

Sindhu with her parents and her daughters. 

A Beautiful Mind

Sindhu’s mastery of math earned her a spot at an elite boarding school alongside students from wealthy and well-connected families. She was one of few girls there and one of even fewer students of modest means, which made her an easy target. “I was bullied like crazy,” she says. She learned early that defiance could be armor. “I became belligerent,” she says. “I was like, ‘Screw you. I’m going to show you.’”

That defiance soon became drive. When her parents told her she could only be “a doctor or an engineer,” she chose the latter. She earned a coveted spot at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Madras — one of the nation’s most prestigious and competitive universities that has a roughly 1 percent acceptance rate. She was one of only 25 women in her class of more than 500 engineers.

“We’re raising a generation of girls who don’t need to find their voice because they never lost it in the first place.”

- Sindhu Srivastava (EO Silicon Valley)

She would go on to earn a master’s in environmental engineering at Ohio State, but soon pivoted to data analytics. “I came to the U.S. on a full engineering scholarship, but filtration towers and distillation columns didn’t interest me,” she laughs. “What really interests me is how businesses are run. There’s a whole bunch of technology that powers businesses, so that’s where I went.”

Data and analytics allowed her to marry an engineer’s mind with her fascination with truth. “I’m really animated by truth and stories,” she says. “Data is almost like a tool to see the truth. You see the truth of a business before anybody does.”

An Emotional Awakening

Her subsequent ascent was swift. She became a top-rated analyst at several major firms, but eventually ran into the same sort of biases that had shaped her childhood, even after she earned an MBA from Wharton. “It really wasn’t until I moved into the director level that I really felt that, ‘Oh, I’m a woman,’” she says, “and all these (unqualified) men were getting promoted over me.”

The next phase of her journey began after an executive coach delivered a devastating assessment. “She told me I lacked empathy,” Sindhu recalls. “I got mad. I said, ‘What do you mean? I literally will not ask anyone to do anything I’m not willing to do myself.’ And she said, ‘Sindhu, tell me, do you have empathy for yourself?’”

The question cut deep. She remembered getting physically beaten by tutors as she dedicated herself to the grueling studying and prep required to get accepted into the IIT school. That unrelenting pressure to perform shaped in her a belief that “emotions were a waste of time.” Therapy followed the executive coach’s blunt words — and so did growth. “I literally believed I had no feelings,” she says. “All I needed was objective data to make decisions and objective reasoning: And I realized what a fool I was.”

She subsequently struck out on her own and founded Meaningful Data, a data analytics and strategy firm. Soon after, she acquired a major Silicon Valley events company, We Crush Events. This year, she also launched We Crush AI, which is built around an AI-powered platform that measures and improves connections within companies by leveraging behavioral science and organizational psychology.

When Sindhu joined Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) earlier this year, she says EO offered what she had been missing in corporate America: community, vulnerability, and an exchange of ideas without ego. Through her EO Forum and the EO Women group, she found a network that not only supports her business but also nourishes her personally. “I feel like they are just such good people,” she says. “These are people that I instinctively connect with.”  

                                                   Sindhu and her team from We Crush Events. 

Girls Who CEO

We Crush Events was named to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest growing companies in 2024 and to Inc.’s Best Workplaces list in 2025. Still, her early days running the business were fraught. “I almost ran We Crush Events to the ground in the first three months that I acquired it,” she admits. A mistake during the acquisition meant that none of the customer deposits she needed to fund events had transferred over along with the business. “There was no money in the bank,” she says. She quickly spiraled into depression, overwhelmed by shame.

In one of her darkest moments, worried her pivot to entrepreneurship may have imperiled her family’s future, she turned to her daughters, then six and eight, for reassurance. “I asked them, ‘What would you rather have Mama do — give you each $1 million or try to be the best CEO she can be?’” Their response floored her. “They looked at me and said, ‘Mama, we don’t need your money. We’ll make our own.’”

Girls Who CEO's first session. 

That moment of clarity sparked a mission. Sindhu recently founded Girls Who CEO, a nonprofit designed to help middle school girls, including her daughters, develop confidence and leadership skills long before they enter the workforce. The program, led by elite executive coaches, focuses on self-discovery, leadership, emotional intelligence, and financial literacy.

According to research, by age eight, girls and boys have roughly equal self-confidence. By 12, girls’ confidence drops by about 30 percent. By high school, only about a third of girls self-identify as leaders compared to roughly half of boys. Sindhu hopes to help close that gap.

“We are not waiting for the workforce to change; we are building the leaders to change it,” she says. “We’re raising a generation of girls who don’t need to find their voice because they never lost it in the first place.”

Sindhu and her family.