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First things first, you are probably wondering how to pronounce my first name. My mother taught English to foreign students and named me after a student named Setu, which means “bridge” in Bengali. She heard the name pronounced like “shay-two,” so she changed the spelling to be phonetic, thus Shaytu.

Coincidentally, as with my name’s meaning, I have become a bridge between business, design, and technical teams as a product manager. I credit my background in design in helping me translate ideas and find creative solutions.

My interest in design took root with the creativity I saw in comic books then expanded to video games, vehicle design, and architecture. I stumbled across the Digital Arts & Sciences program at the University of Florida, which combined fine arts and engineering into a single program. I enjoyed the combination of the creative and logical projects.

After graduation, I worked as a web designer within a web development environment. I realized I wanted to learn more and to teach design someday, so I started a Master of Fine Arts in Integrated Design at the University of Baltimore. The program taught design across all mediums and showed me how the most important tools in effective design are relentless questioning and thorough research.

Outside of design, my other interests are car racing (it’s not as dangerous as it sounds!), mountain biking, and tennis. I read both fiction (Orson Scott Card, J.R.R. Tolkien) and nonfiction (Jared Diamond, Malcolm Gladwell) but lean more toward nonfiction as of late. Fiction is fun but nonfiction is fun and describes the world we live in.

I enjoy the life-long learning process and recognize knowledge as the ultimate design tool.