A Story of Reinvention, Resilience, and Purpose: Geetha Marri

After a successful 15-year career in fintech operations in India, Geetha Marri made a life-changing decision: she moved to the United States to pursue a new path in data science and business analytics. The choice meant leaving behind her family—including her 10-year-old daughter—a sacrifice she describes as the most difficult of her life. Yet she knew that stepping beyond her comfort zone was essential to grow and prepare for the rapidly evolving, data-driven future.

Geetha’s professional foundation was built at Cognizant Technology Solutions and Genpact Inc., where she specialized in financial planning & analysis, reconciliations, reporting, automation, and process improvement. Over time, she witnessed how analytics, automation, and AI were reshaping the financial world. Determined to stay ahead, she sought to blend her deep financial expertise with modern data and cloud technologies. That goal led her to UNC Charlotte’s Master’s in Data Science and Business Analytics (DSBA) program—a bridge between her experience and the future she envisioned.

Her transition, however, was far from easy. During her first semester, Geetha faced financial pressure without part-time work, relying entirely on her family’s support while adjusting to a new academic and cultural environment. In her second semester, serious health challenges added another layer of difficulty. Balancing medical care, coursework, and emotional strain—far from home—tested her strength. She remains deeply grateful to Director Joshua Hertel for his understanding and encouragement during that time. These experiences redefined her understanding of resilience and reinforced her commitment to her goals.

Despite these obstacles, Geetha’s time at UNC Charlotte has been filled with meaningful achievements. She served as a teaching assistant under Professor Colby Ford, gaining hands-on experience in Azure cloud computing, Docker, Kubernetes, DevOps, and distributed systems. She is also completing a CPT internship at Gramener, where she works on enterprise-level generative AI solutions. Her projects include automating financial risk analysis from SEC filings, building semantic search systems using FAISS, developing agent workflows with LangChain and LangGraph, and creating structured LLM outputs for financial insights. Along the way, she has strengthened her skills in Python, SQL, Power BI, Tableau, Azure services, OCR pipelines, embeddings, and machine learning workflows.

Looking ahead, Geetha aims to build a career at the intersection of data science, AI, cloud analytics, and financial technology. She is particularly passionate about generative AI, RAG systems, and intelligent automation—areas where she can combine her fintech background with advanced AI capabilities to drive meaningful business impact.

Her message to the SDS community is simple but powerful:
“Do not fear starting over. Challenges will push you, teach you, and shape you. Be resilient, stay focused, and trust your journey. Every small step adds value to who you become.”