The Microsoft Employee’s Journey from Slums to Apartment

Shaheena Attarwala, a Design Leader at Microsoft, recently tweeted about her experiences growing up in a slum. She shared about how her slum life shaped her and how she turned her life around for the better. Her Twitter thread went viral online with over 4,000 likes and hundreds of comments.

Shaheena wrote on Twitter that the Netflix series Bad Boy Billionaires: India shows a bird’s-eye view of Mumbai’s slums and one of the houses shown in the series is the house she grew up in. Shaheena’s father was a hawker of essential oils and they lived in a slum named ‘Dargah Gali Slum’ near the Bandra Station, Mumbai.

In an interview, Shaheena Attarwala said that life in the slum was hard and exposed her to the most intense living conditions, along with gender bias and sexual harassment. At the same time, it inspired her to learn and make a better living condition for herself.

Shaheena was interested in computers ever since she laid eyes on one in school. But her grades were not good enough for her to enter the computer classes at school. She made her father borrow money so that she can enroll for a local computer class. She also scraped up some money to buy a computer by skipping lunch and walking home. In the end, Shaheena chose to opt for design as she believes it has more possibilities.

Today Shaheena is the Design Leader at Microsoft. After years of hard work, Shaheena and her family moved into a nice apartment in Mumbai. Her current apartment receives ample sunlight and ventilation. “From my father being a hawker and sleeping on roads to having a life we could barely dream of. Luck, hard work and picking battles that matter,” she had tweeted.

Shaheena’s life journey is something that can inspire not just other girls living in poverty but also everyone in general.

Written by

-Poorna Krishnan