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Blog • • 3 minute read

Finding Balance: How Movement Shaped My Path to WWT

My journey from competitive gymnast to Kathak dancer to Associate Consulting Systems Engineer shows how discipline and teamwork carry across every stage.

I still remember the half-second of stillness right before a routine starts. Chalk on my hands, eyes on the beam, everything in my body already knowing what it's about to do before I move. That stillness is where my story starts — not in a classroom, and not at World Wide Technology. 

Photograph presents a woman posing for a professional portrait, arms crossed and smiling slightly. She wears a white button-front uniform with a small pin and necklace, against a softly blurred dark background with metal railings.
Mannat at WWT's Global HQ.

I was a competitive gymnast for years before I even considered a career in technology. Gymnastics gave me more than physical and mental strength; it gave me a system. Show up, repeat the same motion a hundred times, get corrected, and do it again tomorrow. If you're scared, learn how to do it scared! For most of my childhood, the gym was the one place I knew exactly how to get better at something. 

College changed that. I started studying computer science, and gymnastics, the thing that had shaped nearly every week of my life, didn't fit into my schedule anymore. There wasn't one dramatic moment when I walked away from the sport, and I'd be lying if I said I replaced it immediately. For a while, I didn't have anything playing that role in my life, and I felt it. 

What I found instead was something that had actually been around me the whole time: kathak, a classical Indian dance form my mom has taught for years. I grew up watching it, and it never quite pulled me in until I was spending ten hours a day in front of a screen, deep in technical coursework, and found myself wanting something physically challenging again.

Kathak is intricate. It's fast footwork, spins, storytelling told through gesture and expression as much as through movement. You're usually dancing with other people, reading their timing, adjusting in real time without a word passing between you. And once I look back at it, gymnastics, kathak, and computer science aren't three separate interests I happen to have. They're rooted in the same instinct, applied three different ways: notice what's off, adjust, and try again until it's right. Sometimes you're figuring it out on your own, and sometimes with a whole group relying on you to catch the same beat. 

Photograph shows four smiling coworkers posing for a group selfie inside a bright technical workspace. Three wear neon-yellow safety vests, with equipment cabinets, workstations, and fluorescent ceiling lights visible behind them.
Mannat (right) pictured with fellow Associates at the NAIC.

That instinct is exactly what shows up in my work now as an Associate Consulting Systems Engineer in the Technical Operations Center of Excellence (TOCE). The job is technical, but it's rarely solitary — it's coordination, catching what someone else might miss, adjusting mid-project the same way you'd adjust mid-routine. The Associate Academy gave me an on-ramp into my career in tech, but the foundation of finding my rhythm provided the tools I needed to succeed.

Honestly, I'm still finding my rhythm; I just do it in a technical capacity now.