The "Calmer Person in the Room"

The ability to bridge the gap between business and technology executives has become one of Rohan Chathrath’s defining traits. In fact, it’s why he pursued a career in technology in the first place.

Born in 1994, Rohan and his cohort have witnessed the full breadth of the technological revolution. As a child, he was wowed by dial-up internet connections. Today, he has a career that didn’t even exist when he first heard the unmistakable shriek of accessing the world wide web.

In his current role as a Technical Program Manager working with cloud infrastructure and security for Accenture, he has worked with world-renown brands like Marriott, Hilton, United Airlines, Fannie Mae, Verizon and Dun and Bradstreet.

“Millennials have had this perfect timing,” he said. “We’ve seen things grow from dial-up connections to 5G. We’ve seen that journey. When I was growing up, broadband came in, and making that jump was a very big thing for me. Being a kid you don't understand the technicality of it. You're just like, ‘Oh, this is normal.’ Until you evolve, you don't understand the complexities behind it and what the world was before. Technology just had a quick grasp on me.”

Speaking the Language of Business

That perspective, coupled with the skills and strategies he learned in Stevens’ Information Systems master’s program, has served him well. Not originally part of the Accenture cybersecurity team, he was called into action to help handle several incidents. His ability to speak to IT professionals and C-suite executives made the transition easier.

“When a team brings me on, they know that we need someone who can figure out the problem, innovate solutions and execute on those things,” Rohan said. “That's where I come in. Cybersecurity just kind of happened to me. I understand technology. I understand the possibilities of technology. And because of my degree, I know how to handle the business side of things with more empathy. I can use the correct jargon to keep everyone calm. I marry business and technology. All the case studies that we did, all the in-class activities that we did during the program, they fed into this.”

“Right now, if you throw me in front of the C-suite, I can understand the technical problem and get their frustration,” he continued. “I understand the business side of the problem and get their solutions. Then I can marry those two to level-set their expectations. The calmer person in the room becomes my title from time to time.”

That serenity was tested during a recent incident. Rohan’s team has been at the forefront of getting organizations back to business continuity and operating at full capacity.

“I have close to 200 people on the field with five managers handling them,” he explained. “I'm responsible for those five so it equates to a humongous team. We were able to diagnose the problem and come up with a solution. We are on the ground fixing issues that equate to financial losses for their clients and a lot of day-to-day frustration.”

From Entrepreneur to Consultant

The ability to connect technology and business has been part of Rohan’s skillset since finishing his undergraduate degree in computer engineering at Panjab University in India. Set on pursuing his technology passion, he was looking for more than a coding career.

“I started my own advertising agency in 2017 with the focus of social media marketing because that was still picking up in India at that time,” he said. “I did that for three years and loved every single day. It gave me the same kind of complex scenarios of how to market things. But I always understood that more than the advertising. I understand technology much better, so it was clear that if I wanted to make a pivot down the line, it had to be something more centric to technology.”

That is when Stevens entered the picture. Having split his youth between Pennsylvania and India and with two successful family members who graduated from Stevens, he was keenly aware of the advantages of pursuing his degree in Hoboken.

“Stevens has a great name because it’s been there forever,” he said. “I had some people who vouched for it so when I started doing my research about school, Stevens was something that popped up right away. It had a great curriculum and accessibility to New York. Stevens was prompt during the application process, and even though I was in India, they were very mindful of scheduling. There were open hours where the program director would guide you through the curriculum, the structure and explain what the two years were going to look like. They want to help. they want us to succeed.”

The Stevens Experience

Completing his program in an accelerated 16 months, Rohan’s placement at Accenture was the definition of opportunity meeting preparation in part because of SSB’s Corporate Outreach and Professional Advancement office resources and the program’s industry-connected faculty. A connection through the school’s mentor-mentee program connected him to a small firm in New York that turned into his current position.

“Before I graduated I was interviewing with a couple of companies,” he recalled. “I got connected through the mentor-mentee program with a cybersecurity director for a bank in San Francisco. He connected me with one of his friends who was working in New York for a mid-size firm. I was pretty much the last person they recruited because they were already in the process of getting bought by Accenture. It was my final interview when I learned I was interviewing for Accenture. I got connected through the Stevens network, and that paid off.”

Defining the Problem

While it seems Rohan’s path to his current role was clear, there were many hours of conversations with Michael Frank, the information systems program director, that made him really consider what he wanted to do after graduation.

“Professor Frank, even though he was a director, he always had an open-door policy,” he said. “He was pretty key in helping me figure out what I wanted to do and which industry I wanted to work in. Consulting was something that I was previously familiar with because I had experience running my own shop, but that was in a completely different vertical.”

“Coming to a new country, I had no idea what to do,” he continued. “When I read a title and job description, they all looked perfect. Professor Frank would always make me go deeper. If I said I wanted to do consulting, he would ask what kind. Then I would say technology consulting, and he would ask what technology. After about three weeks we reached cloud advisory consulting. I carry that methodology to this day when I'm working through a problem.”

The ”5 Why” method was just one lesson that Rohan uses daily. On the advice of Professor Frank, and with some help getting enrolled since it wasn’t technically part of the curriculum, Rohan took the course Human-Centric Design Thinking “because that was the best for me to do.”

“That helped me define problem statements, and I use those methodologies even today to define problems in my career,” he said. “Our situations are very complex and very scenario-based. It’s a matter of problem defining and those structures that I learned. Ninety-nine percent of the time, if I can understand the problem, I can give a better solution. That’s something I was always taught—figure out what the problem is and then find the solution. When I couldn't define a problem, I was just going in circles.”

The View From Manhattan

Having benefitted from his Stevens experience and connections, Rohan is now spreading the word about the great things going on in Hoboken himself.

“Accenture hires very select candidates,” he said. “Their general pool is like Cornell, Yale, Harvard, and other Ivy League schools. During our orientation, we were in the One Manhattan West Office, and everyone was just talking and when people asked what school they were from, it was all Harvard, Princeton, etc. Then they asked me. When I said Stevens, some people knew about it, some people didn't. They asked where it was, and at the time those two towers with the Stevens board (University Center Complex) just went up. I pointed out the window and said, ‘Right there.’ That was a fun, ‘Aha!’ moment for me that we had a lot of fun with.”