A vocal advocate of immigration reform, she co-founded FWD.us
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Ruchi Sanghvi, the young woman who became famous some years ago by becoming the first female engineer hired by social networking behemoth Facebook, is departing from her current job at Dropbox.
During her time at Dropbox, Sanghvi held positions in a variety of fields such as marketing, communications, recruiting, and product development. Despite her departure from Dropbox in an official capacity, she will remain an adviser to the company afterward.
Sanghvi is a native of Pune. She earned both her bachelors and masters degrees from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in electrical computer engineering. In 2005, she and her husband Aditya Agarwal – also an alumnus of CMU – joined Facebook, making her the company’s first female engineer hired. There, she played a crucial role in the development of Facebook’s News Feed – the home page of a user’s Facebook account that allows them to see what they’re friends are up to and interact with their friends and the site’s content – and the Facebook Platform, which allows third-party websites and app developers to include Facebook content (such as Like buttons) in their content.
Sanghvi was the product lead on Facebook Platform, something that is now an indispensable part of Facebook, social networking, and the Internet as a whole. She left the company in 2010.
Sanghvi joined Dropbox in 2012, when the company acquired a venture Sanghvi co-founded with her husband a year earlier, called Cove.
In addition to her professional endeavors, Sanghvi has become a vocal advocate for immigration reform. In April of this year, she co-founded FWD.us, an immigration reform advocacy group that also lists Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg and, more recently, Bill Gates among its supporters. A Twitter user (@sanghvi), she uses the social media platform to promote her ideas and initiatives regularly.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com