Senior Success: Badeti, Student Senate Prez, Working at Bloomberg

Anuja Badeti started interning at Bloomberg in high school, kept working there during summer breaks from college and will accept a full-time role upon her graduation from the joint B.S./M.S. program in computer science this spring.

It's a strikingly logical career path, considering her childhood dream of being a farmer - "I really liked the idea of being able to grow food and eat it," she said - and then her move into campus politics, where she served as president of the NJIT Student Senate after not being involved until her junior year.

Badeti was born in California, moved to New Jersey with family and graduated from West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North where she took every computer course. As a senior she went to school in the morning and drove to Bloomberg's Princeton office for the afternoon, rather than join her friends who focused on clubs, prom and sports. There was some awkwardness - "For sure," she said. "Almost all of my coworkers were 40s, 50s and I was 18. I missed out on certain senior year aspects, but all in all it worked out pretty well for my career."

When it was time for postsecondary education, "I got into a couple of places but nothing was comparable to the NJIT scholarship," Badeti said, landing in the Albert Dorman Honors College.

As she kept going back to Bloomberg, "Every year I kept switching teams and doing something different, so it felt like a completely new experience. I just love the company culture, that's the reason why I kept going back so much."

Badeti said she will live in Jersey City and work in New York, where she'll build software for financial analytics using the C programming language. It is a good fit because she enjoys learning about the stock market, took a couple of business courses here and even joined the coed Alpha Kappa Psi business fraternity.

Badeti added that she's unlikely to get involved in real-world politics, particularly because of the red tape and ugliness that comes with such roles. She was happy to help push forward various campus beautification and entertainment projects, but shook her head at some common misunderstandings that her fellow students hold about the rule of student government - "We can't pay people's tuition!," she joked.

"I have other aspirations I want to accomplish first in my own career before politics is even a consideration," such as community service, teaching and perhaps pursuing an MBA degree, Badeti said, noting that she wished she'd joined student government earlier. "I don't think I'll go into farming! I think I'll stick to financial technology … But I'm glad I got a computer science degree. I feel like it's the most universal degree that will open a lot of doors for you."

Badeti cited Matthew Blanar, director of student life, and Kristie Damell, assistant dean of students, as important mentors. She also cited computer science instructors Barry Cohen, Gerard Ryan and Abdul-Rahman Itani. Ryan passed away in 2019 before receiving his Ph.D., which the university presented to his wife Deborah in 2020.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.