Birju: Yeah, I mean, it feels quite rare. And I think more broadly, our society is now grateful for how those seeds played out. But with that context, you look at it from the outside, and in some ways, I would say, oh, you were a good Asian son. You...

Randima: You did.

Birju: The Ivy League path. You worked for a large company, what is now perhaps referred to as the most consequential company of our time in NVIDIA, and then in your late 20s, you had this turn, and you took a leap. Towards that inner life, and I'm curious if you could share a bit more about what that leap felt like from the inside to shift track in such a significant way to Mindful School.

Randima: Yeah, I think for a lot of us, what happens is there's these early seeds. And then you get through the high school to college transition. You're probably going to be doing the things that you're supposed to do, right? Trying to do your studies and go to college, at least for me, right?

That was the expectation, and I was like, okay, learn what you need to learn, do your courses, and it's busy! It doesn't leave you with a lot of space to say, well, let me do some inner work. You're kind of busy. And then, I think for me, what happened was early at NVIDIA.

So NVIDIA, like a lot of Silicon Valley companies, they will let you do stuff very early that you might not get to do elsewhere. Age is not an issue, right? So even if you're just out of your master's. And I got to write this first book on this programmable shading language that we had just invented.

It was a crazy project. We wrote it in three and a half months, it's kind of unheard of, right? While the language was being developed and the hardware didn't exist, it was a crazy thing. But you get those opportunities, and if they turn out well.

You feel some measure of, when you graduate, right, you go into the workforce, and you kind of want someone to pat you on the back and say, good job, good job, you did a good job. You know, you're reasonable. And, I was very lucky, because I think I got that quite early. Because of those projects.

They were quite high profile, and Jensen was very happy with them, and it was great. And so then, that gave me some room. By 25, I was looking at different non-profit things and just starting to volunteer and learn a little bit. And then NVIDIA launched their foundation, so I was on the first board of that.

We got to write the charter and build that. That was in, I think it was 2007? And they said, you have to have worked here for 5 years to be eligible, right? And NVIDIA had only been around for 12 years at the time, so it was significant.

And that got me really interested in where we can allocate money. How can we get employees to give back to the nonprofit sector? They have expertise, not just money, but expertise. All those kinds of questions.

So then I was doing these volunteering things, learning about different non-profit things. Came across one that was teaching mindfulness in schools, and of course, you can imagine, right, with my background, aha! That sounds really good. Let's do that.

So I started volunteering. I did that for about 2 years. And I was commuting to Oakland right from Santa Clara, kind of driving, often to meet with the team. And just trying to be helpful.

And over time, it became clear, if this is really hard, right? Doing a full-time job, Silicon Valley job, and doing this thing, so many hours, and building… we built out the website, and the strategy, and all kinds of things, it's just a lot of work. I had all these great friends at NVIDIA who volunteered and helped on different aspects of the Mindful Schools work. It was so sweet.

Yeah, and then it did dawn on me that, wait a minute, if I quit. I could put all my time on this, and that would be probably, we could do a lot, I could do a lot. And so, the idea, I sat with it for over two years. There's this gradual shift, and eventually you're like, okay, let's do it.

And so I decided to give it a shot. It didn't feel as bold as it sounds, I guess? Because my parents were telling me, actually, we had a big argument. I didn't remember this, because I didn't, I was like, oh, it was all great, and they were really worried.

They were like, wait a minute, you studied computer science, you're at this good Silicon Valley job. I'm really worried that if you, what are you doing, right? And they were worried I wouldn't be able to find a good partner, and all that stuff, right? They were concerned.

And apparently, I was quite vehement in, I was just like, no, I'm going to do this! Something like that. Which is really funny, because I didn't remember that at all. But, yeah, I didn't feel… it didn't feel as risky because Jensen himself said.

Because I met with him when I left, and he was like, come back if it didn't work out. And so then you're like, okay, it's okay, it's okay. It… it was… A lot of changes, but I think in the end, I felt like it was a good thing to try.