Sessions | Dialogues

15:45 to 16:30 ⋅ Afternoon

Bangalore International Centre

AMA: So You Want to Work with Data.

Data visualization has no single entry point. People arrive from journalism, design, engineering, social science, and places that have otherwise little to do with charts. If you're trying to figure out how to actually get into this field, what to learn, what kind of work exists, whether it pays — this is for you. A panel discussion with three practitioners who talk honestly about the work, the career, and how they found their way in.

Anushka Gokhale

Lead Designer·EPIC World

About this session

Data visualization sits at an uncomfortable intersection; part design, part journalism, part engineering, part storytelling. Nobody arrives fully prepared and everyone spends at least some time feeling like an imposter. If you're early in your journey and wondering whether a career in data viz is for you — and where you'd even begin — this session is for you.

What do you actually need to know before you touch a tool? What does a typical workday or a real project look like? What are the career structures that exist in this field in India, and what does compensation actually look like across them? Three practitioners — Sandeep Karmarkar, Hamsa Ganesh, and Areena Arora — with varying experiences, will address these questions from three different vantage points. Between them, they represent the corporate design track, the independent studio track, and the newsroom track. The conversation will be structured, yet informal.

No one usually has it all charted out. No maps for a career in this field. But by the end of the session, you'll leave with a clearer picture of where you might fit, a more honest sense of what the work actually demands, and at least one answer to a question you've been carrying around for a while. Where your path goes from here is still yours to figure out. But you'll have a better sense of the terrain.

About the speaker

Anushka Gokhale is a Product Designer and number-crunching storyteller. In her 5+ years of experience, she has collaborated with mission-driven teams and designed data-heavy products across govtech, conservation tech, fintech, and spatial intelligence — bridging the gap between data and people.

Currently Lead Designer at EPIC World. Previously Senior Product Designer at Parallel HQ and CivicDataLab, and Visiting Faculty at SMI.

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