Challenging Our Youth with Ritika Sehgal

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper countins counting beans Contador Quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy beer and coffee My coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos El gordo, the taco stand in pesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean Watch the sunset la Hoya shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders who who believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SDTechOS with your host, Neil Bloom.

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Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host, Neil Blum, San Diego's tech ambassador and together you're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle.

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And welcome back to the Tacos in Tech podcast. I'm your host, Neal Bloom and I'm excited to spotlight another great entrepreneur. From Connect all at the Jacobs center with the city of San Diego, we've got Ritika Segal, Executive director and owner of Challenge Island San Diego Coastal. Ritika, thanks for being on the podcast.

Thank you. Thank you, Neil, for having me. I'm so excited.

Yeah, it's a thrill to meet you. Thrilled to have you here. Why don't you give us a quick overview of what your company is?

Sure. As you said, I'm the owner of Challenge Island San Diego Coastal. It's a locally owned franchise of a national Steam Enrichment Award winning Steam enrichment program and I started it about two years ago. So I'm really, really excited and passionate to Bring it to San Diego community here.

Awesome. We're excited to peel back the layer of how you got into it, how it's impacting the community. You can already tell from STEAM enrichment. We know the passion that goes behind that and what that means for our future. But we're going to dive into kind of your connection to it all. But we'd love to get to know you a little bit. Like where did you grow up and did you come from a family of entrepreneurs? Take us through that a little bit?

Yeah, no, actually totally new to entrepreneurship and grew up in India. Did most of my schooling in India as well as in fact started my career there and then moved to San Diego for a job. And I've spent better part of my career actually in entering management positions and roles, all of it in San Diego foremost. But, you know, worked on application development and product development for medtech companies, especially infusion devices. So I've always had engineering in my background. I've always enjoyed it. A few years ago I had my son and as I was starting to explore things around, you know, what opportunities were available to him and you know, what I wanted him to be learning through. I noticed there was a lot of digital stuff which is, which has a place for sure. But I noticed there was not as much hands on, exploratory stuff, not as much organic learning anymore. And so I was kind of looking for those options when I had an opportunity to jump into something. I looked at STEAM programs because they kind of somewhat come naturally to me, but also I find them to be a lot more, more real life, relatable and started looking at franchises around that. And I just love this program that I bought into and that's how I got here.

That's great. Let's dive back a little bit comparing, you know, first of all, let's define steam, science, technology, engineering, art and math. So both you and I benefited obviously with me with an engineering degree as well. Like from the emphasis of that. Compare India and us a little bit from a STEAM focus for, you know, early childhood. How is India compared to the United States for enforcing STEAM for kids?

I'm glad you asked. So you probably have seen or, you know, you're pretty active in the engineering community here in San Diego. You've seen there's a lot of engineers and there's a lot of tech coming out of India. Technology has always been something that I kind of expected or it was we doing college or going through engineering was not something which was out of the ordinary for us, which was surprising when I actually moved to the US Having said that, the methodology, it was just not conducive to true learning. And that's part of the reason I like steam, because growing up, when I was learning, I was learning all of these subjects in various silos, I was doing them as subjects and they were standards, much like what we have here as well. But even to another level of extent, it was very, very compartmentalized. And so oftentimes I would wonder, like, where am I ever going to use this? Or how's this going to fit in my life? So what I love about STEAM is that it lets you see things in that context of real life, how they overlap. So, you know, you never really use math for math. Right. I mean, there's purpose behind it. Or like I give an example to a lot of people wise, STEAM makes it more impactful. It is like, you know, when you're doing cooking, you're learning about chemistry, you're learning about math through measurements. And it's not things that just kind of come together, they overlap without necessarily being, oh, I had to learn one thing and then had to go do another thing. So back to your question about learning. There was definitely that aspect that I did not really enjoy as much. And so the more I've learned about this team trend here, and it's picking steam everywhere, so to speak, I've really started to enjoy and see the benefits of how it can make it more relatable and easy to absorb, as well as get away from that rote mentality and actually fundamentally understand how things work together. That's been a big difference. What I've learned from being here now, of course, is there's still a lot of ground to cover. I mean, even in our current schooling system, there's still a lot of standardized or standard based education. And so we're trying to change that, or at least my hope is to try to change that and let people understand how making it a little bit more cohesive and interrelatable makes it a lot better.

Got it. So you studied software engineering. Is that the area of focus or what kind of engineering?

Actually, I have experience in business as well as engineering, so I did my bachelor's in business and then I did my master's, which I actually did in the US in engineering? Yes.

Okay. Primarily, has it been in the software world and professionally?

Yeah, spent bulk of my career as software developer and then up the ranks through engineering management roles.

Okay. And I see some biotech, some wireless and telecom. Take us through some of the industries that you saw and have worked in.

So bulk of the career has been in medtech as I was mentioning, in fusion devices and I really, really enjoyed that. I do have experience and background in telecom and telematics prior to that. So, you know, just starting out my career I was kind of just exploring software and you know, different applications of it. But as I grew my career, I kind of found my home in the med tech world. And it's very gratifying knowing that products I worked on made a difference to, you know, they were life saving equipment or, you know, they were making improving quality of life for people. And that kind of just was very gratifying for me to know. So I kind of stayed there for a while. It was not until a couple years ago that decided to jump on.

Yeah, Take us through a little bit, you know, of your thinking of how you knew you wanted to start something. Right. And especially in this case a franchise. Right. You could have taken your idea, started from scratch and done the whole thing or you looked at an existing model that you could kind of buy into. So take us through the mentality shift of starting and then how you kind of went forward from there.

Sure. So I definitely want to give credit to my son. He's a six year old now, but when I started out taking him for enrichment classes, I was always feeling like there was something missing. A couple years ago I decided I wanted to be one of the providers who could get something different for kids to just play and learn as they're, you know, playing and exploring. They don't necessarily have to learn it through YouTube or through games. I mean all of those have a place. And I mean being a software person, I'm not just saying digital media by any chance, but at the same time I felt like at that early age they kind of also needed to fundamentally understand these concepts and kind of get absorbed them. So he was really my inspiration to start looking at what kind of programs I could bring along. And I also kind of always felt passionately about the engineering mindset and Steam was helping bring that together, the mindset itself. And I could have started on my own, but then I realized I had no experience in business so I didn't want to really like have to start just learning from, you know, everything from the get go. So I wanted to have some kind of an infrastructure that I could just get started with and started looking at franchises for that reason initially. And then when I came across Challenge Island, I just loved everything we stood for. The program was exactly what I wanted, not just from this team enrichment but also the social and emotional focus that we have with our program. So. Which makes it very unique, at least in my opinion. That whole child approach, a holistic approach focusing on just beyond the STEAM concepts, but also bringing in concepts about what are typically considered soft skills, but really, really essential collaboration, working in a team. So inclusion, communication, perseverance, quite honestly. So I'd learned all of that through my corporate background. And I knew that oftentimes, especially engineers tend to be introverts and we do not really communicate all that well, or we are always kind of communicating in ways that may not necessarily be the most conducive for understanding for the larger stakeholders. I was like, yeah, there's more skills that are needed for people to be successful. So what I loved about this program was kind of. It was bringing all of these together. So I really felt like I don't really have to do a lot to change it, and yet I could bring my own stamp to it when I did it. That's the beautiful thing about a franchise is I get to own it and make it my own with having a little bit of a background and infrastructure. So that really helped.

That's great. That's really smart of you. Take us through what the actual program coming to fruition looks like. So is it a physical center that people kind of come after school or they do on their own time? Like, what does it look like for a student to go through it?

So typically we work with. I say wherever there are kids, we can work with them. So we work with schools. We work with Montessori. We have various team partners or we are providers for their after school or enrichment programs. We also work with clubs like the Boys and Girls Club. They're, you know, for catering to sort of aftercare, but also wanting to bring more enrichment to, you know, their members and such. Other than that, we also work with libraries. We work with essentially anywhere they want kid programming, we can work with them. We are mobile in that sense. We don't have a center. Maybe down the line I might open one. But at this point, I'm basically working with organizations that have a need for programs like mine. Yeah. So we run the whole show. We bring in the materials, the instructions, the instructor. So we are basically their provider and their partner. So we are essentially. We take care of their kids. They get a little break, especially for school teachers when they're looking for field trips, they don't have to bus kids out anywhere we come into their school. We kind of take care of giving them that little different perspective, letting them do these hands on activities feel like a field trip? When we're done, we pack up our stuff and leave. So we leave it back to them.

Got it. So, man, Covid must have thrown everything for a loop. I'm sure. Take us through what that last year to 18 months has been like for you.

For sure. Yeah. Much like everybody else, we had to shift and pivot. We had to switch to offering our programs online. And while it was not ideal. Right. Because part of our big uniqueness is the collaboration in the group activities. We call them tribes. So it was a little bit of a setback from that perspective, but we tried to kind of keep it. We bring in all the essence of those 21st century skills that we talk about by either having them interact on zoom or the platform that we were using and still engage to the extent possible. So the only thing they're not doing is doing hands on collaborative work on the same workstation. But we were going to try and encourage that. But yeah, it was. I'm so excited to be back in person. Last year was a little bit of challenge getting. I mean there was that zoom fatigue and of course, but we had some really good reviews. Having said that, we had some really good reviews. In fact, we just got done with a Mom and me Girl Scouts workshop on automated engineering badges for Girl Scouts and it was a blast. So families really got into it because kids were at home so parents could see and more partake more in it and so they got a feel for what the program offered. So it had ups and downs. We had some successes and some things didn't work quite as well. But we learned through it all and we're ready to be back in person as soon as we can.

Yeah, I can only imagine for sure. Same with all of us. I was going to ask about what are some successes? Like what does success look like when someone gets inspired by the program? And I think you touched on it, but do you have some other little wins to show the kind of impact that you know you're making?

For sure. I think one of the biggest thing is what we say is we open the kids to this world of imagination and an engineering mindset. So it's been amazing to just watch how creative the kids can get. A small little example that comes to mind is obviously in the peak of COVID when everything was shut down and they couldn't even go get. We used very, very basic materials, but even so, if they couldn't go grab balloons or something, we had kids come up with the most creative ways of Completing those challenges. We call them challenges. Like, for example, they would use a glove because a lot of people were using lots of gloves. Then instead of a balloon, we needed a balloon for an activity, and they had the glove instead because they're like, okay, that kind of inflates much the same. Overall, we've seen so much creativity coming out of kids and resilience. It's just. It's amazing. There are times that I would get videos of them working, even after our session was over, with what they've completed. So it's all very, again, gratifying and exciting to see those smiles.

Absolutely. And to. And to know that you're changing, you know, literally changing career paths, which could change the world. Right. You could literally be inspiring someone who's going to cure the Next. The next Covid 20 pandemic, which is pretty. It's got to be pretty fulfilling.

It is. Especially. I mean, one of my favorite things to work on is working with Girl Scouts or Scouts in general. I mean, all kids. But it's one of my other passions is to obviously encourage more girls. As I started out on this, I was hearing a lot about, okay, well, girls are really not into Steam. And I was actually very disappointed and to some extent, very disillusioned. But I just love the fact that girls are getting into it and because we keep it so creative. And that's what I like about Steam with the art. Right. A lot of people think about it as, oh, it's painting. No, it's not. It's really the artistic thinking ability. So with that, it makes it much more inclusive because now you're not shutting somebody off because they're intimidated by, let's say, technology or math or something. I used to be really scared of math myself when I was growing up. So for me, I think just putting them together makes it that much more engaging and inclusive. And that kind of just takes away the fear of STEAM and promotes that interest and STEAM for girls, which I think is, again, one of my passions.

Love that. Take us through your decision to join an accelerator. Were you seeking out, like, business, mentorship or how did you come to even find ConnectAll and take us through finding it and then some of the experiences of going through it.

So, yeah, it's been an amazing experience doing this accelerator program at the Connect all at the Jacob Center. So I learned about the program through some workshops I'd done with them. And also some of the folks I'd connected on LinkedIn with were doing it. So it kind of was something I'd learned about. But what I was really seeking was just learning new things. And as I said, I really didn't have much experience in entrepreneurship so I knew that there's a lot for me to learn and there's a program that can kind of give me that structure rather than me having to learn it over time or through trial and error. It would just, you know, accelerate. I'm so glad I did. I've learned so much in the last few months and built some amazing connections, great mentors, accountability partners. I think that that was another big thing for me and I found that to be a big. It was just one of those things I was looking for as a single, you know, kind of starting out on your own. You're looking for some support system. And that was something I got from the program as well.

Take us through a little bit. Some of the impact on your business. Like what's your business look like coming out of the program any, any different in that regard?

Well, I mean, so I started the program when things were pretty much kind of shut down. And so it, yes, it's starting to look better now. But I'm a lot more comfortable and confident in what I'm looking, how I have to plan my, you know, six month to a year outlook or even three years outlook, a better understanding of a lot of concepts. But I think the other thing that I've really enjoyed learning through this is just a lot of systems that I did not know about that I would have probably earned through time. But it was helpful for me to kind of get those, have access to them as well as learn how to use them. And then it's all again in the mindset. I keep going back to. It's a mindset thing. So I'm much more confident about being able to go out there and I got this opportunity to talk to you through that. So just being able to meet more people, spread the word and share more of my journey here as well as my business.

Yeah, well, we appreciate that. It's good to be connected with you as well with like minded interests of how we want to affect the community. And I'm curious in that, just leading that question, how can the community help specifically your business? Something specifically you have like an ask to our listeners.

Thank you so much for asking and that's very nice of you to ask. Yes, actually it's one of the things that I've really started to think about as I was going through this program was how else I could bring this program to more in the community and an idea that came out of some of the brainstorming sessions I've had was I think there's a really strong need for programs like mine that can bring cheer and enrichment to long term residents at hospitals, especially like the children's hospitals. So our program could bring not just a little bit of an educational impact for kids who may not have access to schooling or structured schooling, but also just kind of keeps them motivated and engaged and just, you know, cheerful. So I'm trying to talk, I'm exploring more opportunities around that and I've spoken to a few folks, but if there's anybody who has ideas or interest in trying to pair up or brainstorm more on that, I would love to connect with anyone who may have some suggestions and wants to collaborate. Possibly.

Awesome. We'd love to help connect you in and put out the call as well in the show notes and social for this podcast. So thanks for doing that for sure. It sounds like obviously you're moving, looking at other opportunistic areas for the company to go in. Right. What else is on the horizon? Where do you think you are 12 months from now?

So first of all, great to be back in person. So hopefully back in person with schools and the clubs that we've been working with, community centers and such to summer camps coming up. So very excited about that in 12 months to 18 months, period. We're also wanting to develop more channel partnerships and corporate partnerships so that we're able to offer this program to more people either through sponsorship or for corporates wanting to support their employees. Again, you know, employee engagement is a big thing and employee supporting them, especially in this remote world, is it's a big benefit that companies can provide for their employees. So trying to look at that as an opportunity. Another thing that we're exploring and I'm actually already doing a little bit of is corporate team building. So again I mentioned the skills that we talk about now. Of course we want to teach them to our kids, but then we need to kind of reinforce them as we grow. And you know, sometimes when we're in project teams we can get very intense. So just bringing our workshops to be more of the team building. So we're trying to explore that as an opportunity as well and bring our program to corporates for their team engagement activities and such.

That's great. I also see kind of something you're saying about that is teaching in a sense parents how to be STEAM trainers too, a little bit. Right. Because obviously parents have the most interaction with their kids, the potential to really lead them in this direction, which does it sound like that's a part of it as well too, with the intention.

So I mean, as we've seen in the last one year, parents have pretty much become, you know, the teachers. Right. Which they should have always been. I mean, I know there's always parent involvement needed, but to some extent we were kind of outsourcing that to our teachers and there's a lot more of that that they've learned about how to incorporate teaching in, you know, everyday life. So yes, having that mindset I think is helpful. It just reinforces if, if kids are, you know, working with their parents that are a lot more, you know, likely to kind of understand it better because it feels a lot more natural. It doesn't feel academic again. So yeah, absolutely. We do family engagement. We do mom and me. We have a dad and me workshop coming up for dads for Father's Day. So yeah, just spread the word and spread the love kind of thing.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks. Thanks for that. We got to know this being the tacos in tech podcast, our audience expects that every guest gives their favorite taco. So we got to know. You got your favorite taco spot.

Oh my gosh, this is such a hard question. I think I would have to go with Puestos. They're kind of my favorite for the last couple years.

Yeah, a fan favorite as well, which we now have a taco database of all of our guests favorite taco spots and yours will be added there where people can see not just yours but how many times Puesto has been mentioned as well too. So definitely a fan favorite. We love their. We call them like high end tacos at Puesto, you know. Yeah, good one.

Yeah.

Laura Tick, it's so good to meet you. Thank you so much for what you're doing for empowering our community to get the future of everything ready to focus on with a steam mentality. So thanks for being on the podcast and thanks for what you're building.

My pleasure. It's been lovely talking to you as well, Neil.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Techs podcast with Neil Blum. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music. And thanks as well to Nest Podcast Network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest Co working in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter eelbloom as well as fresh brewed tech and tacos in Tech Pod on Twitter too.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos? Tacos in tech. You know we got it.

Hey, Sam.