Divyesha Malhotra

Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business

“Curious, empathetic people person. Advocate and mentor for women in tech. Software engineer passionate about analytics.”

Hometown: San Jose, California / Bangalore, India

Fun Fact About Yourself: I once performed at the ICC Cricket World Cup opening ceremony with my dance troupe.

Undergraduate School and Major: Duke University, Electrical Engineering Major

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Opsera (Dev-Ops Startup), Software Engineer

Aside from your classmates, what was the key part of Carnegie Mellon’s MBA curriculum and programming that led you to choose this business school and why was it so important to you? The Tepper school was exactly what I was looking for when choosing a business school. I wanted a program that would continue to nurture my analytical background as a data software engineer while providing me with a broad base of business skills so I could make a seamless pivot into product management. In a world centered around data and AI, Tepper was one of the only programs that was moving hand-in-hand with the times – seamlessly integrating the technical analytical skills into their entire curriculum, while also heavily focusing on the soft leadership, presentation and communication skills that any business leader today should come equipped with.

What course, club or activity excites you the most at Carnegie Mellon? For the last 7 years, I have been deeply involved in the advocacy and mentorship of women and minorities in tech and additionally as a Forte Scholar at the Tepper school. Rhe club I am most excited to be a part of is the Tepper Women in Business Club. All the alumni I have spoken to have absolutely loved their experience as part of this club, sharing stories of experiencing a supportive and creative network that helped them with career advancement, leadership strategies, and networking opportunities, all the while empowering women in business and creating a culture of alumni re-investment. I am very excited to join.

The Tepper MBA is known for intensive one-on-one coaching and personal development. What area do you hope to strengthen during your two years in business school and why? During my time at the Tepper School, I hope to take advantage of the ALC (Accelerate Leadership Center) professional and peer coaches to really help me grow as a leader and find ways to improve communication, presentation and networking skills. My aim is to really understand my bright and blind spots when it comes to my EQ and how I can leverage and tweak it. These are insights that will not only help with recruiting and interacting with my peers during my time at the Tepper School, but especially when I am outside the classroom, as a leader in my career.

The Tepper MBA is also known for being highly data-driven Why does the program’s focus on quantitative analysis and decision-making appeal to you? How have you been able to leverage this approach in your career so far? Before joining the Tepper school, I worked for a startup for the last four years as a software engineering team lead in the insights team. My day-to-day was spent poring over, synthesizing and extracting value from data that customers all over the world were extremely keen to leverage. During this time, I understood how much there was a need and want for data and quantitative analysis. And I really wanted to attend an MBA that understood that being a business leader today means leading with information – making Tepper the easy choice for an MBA.

Looking at your recruitment, what was the moment when you realized Tepper was the right program for you? Why? After being accepted into the Tepper school, I attended a welcome dinner in New York, where my interviewer and about 40 other incoming students and alumni were present. The moment I walked in, I felt at ease. It was clear that everyone shared an open-minded, collaborative, and generous spirit—exactly what I was looking for. I sought a community that was not only productive, humble, and skilled but also one that would challenge me to grow while sharing experiences so we could all learn together.

That evening, I not only formed a genuine connection with my interviewer, who was incredibly kind and made everyone enthusiastic about Pittsburgh, but also with everyone there. They made me feel so comfortable and excited, and I knew then that Tepper was the perfect fit for me.

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: When I joined the analytics team at my job, the analytics offering was not a heavily used product. Our customers didn’t understand how to leverage it well and there was too much noise in the data we were receiving to make any valuable KPIs. In order to combat this problem, I co-designed and built our “actionable insights” suite. It provided customers with seamless drill downs of data at multiple levels of organizations, projects and releases as well as guided them through their blockers. That way, they were navigated straight to the source of their errors, allowing them to save resources and hours of manpower often spent by engineering teams on just debugging systems.

These AI-fueled actionable suite of offering propelled Insights from a secondary offering to our best-selling product. I cherished my work designing cutting-edge AI integrations in DevOps KPIs with customers as well as streamlining engineering systems, fostered innovation, adaptability, and scalability in designing and developing key metrics.

DON’T MISS: MEET CARNEGIE MELLON TEPPER’S MBA CLASS OF 2026