First female engineer with an advanced degree at Ford Motor Company

By Damyanti Gupta (original source TIME) 

“‘Hard work and confidence can take you far.’

I was born in a small town in British India. One of the bloodiest partitions in the history of the world took place in my country. In 1947, the British had finally left India, which led to a division of the country into India and Pakistan. The area where my family lived became Pakistan, but it didn’t happen easily. There were riots everywhere, and, when I was 5, we had to flee in the middle of the night to the coastal town of Karachi. After that, we were put on cargo ships, bound for Mumbai.

My parents had been wealthy land and shop owners, and within days they had to leave everything behind. I remember my mother, Gopibai Hingorani, who had only completed a 4th grade education herself, telling me she was going to make sure I received something that no one could ever take away from me: an education. Despite the fact that we lived the next decade as refugees, my mother kept her promise.”

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