SAWN Monthly Spotlight: Anu Codaty and Taara Verma

Meet high-achieving mother-daughter duo, Anu Codaty and Taara Verma as they talk about their professional journeys and how they inspire each other.

Anu and Taara will also be our guest panelists next month! In celebration of Mother's Day, SAWN has an exciting discussion panel featuring both. Stay tuned for details!

Tell us a little about yourself. What has been your professional journey so far?

Anu: At seventeen, I came to the US for college, breaking the mold of my family's lineage of female physicians - my grandmothers, mother, and aunts. Despite being a good student, I had no desire to follow their path. In India, I knew I would face daily questions about why I wasn't pursuing medicine or engineering, despite my family's support. So, I decided to study biotechnology in the US, ultimately earning a degree in mathematics with a minor in biotechnology.

My career journey has been far from straightforward. Luckily, I discovered my passion for healthcare early on. Over the past 25+ years, I've focused my career on making a difference in healthcare. I've worked in management consulting, biotechnology, and medical devices, with a central focus on improving patients' lives. Initially, my job search revolved around finding opportunities that would hire a math major and sponsor a visa. Fortunately, I struck gold and landed a position working with an amazing group of women who imparted invaluable skills that have shaped my career. To this day, we remain close friends.

I took a leap of faith during the onset of a major recession, leaving a successful job to pursue business school at Dartmouth. Since then, my job evaluation process has shifted. First and foremost, I consider whether an organization's mission aligns with my dedication to healthcare. Next, I assess the potential impact I can make and the opportunities for personal growth and learning within the healthcare field. If the position lacks that element of the unknown, the one that makes me slightly nervous, I know it's not the right fit. In my experience, the most significant growth occurs within the discomfort zone, where learning thrives.

What are you most excited about in the future?

Anu: I'm incredibly excited about the future of gene therapy and the transformative power of AI in all aspects of life and work. It's mind-blowing!

Is your daughter a source of inspiration to you?


Anu: Taara inspires me every day. She's fearless, determined, and willing to put in the hard work to achieve her goals. Her emotional intelligence surpasses mine. Once, after a tough meeting, she coached me on how to deliver feedback more effectively. And she was right.

Any parenting advice you'd like to share?


Anu: Our goal is to provide our children with more degrees of freedom than we had as immigrants. We give them the freedom to pursue their own passions in school, activities, and extracurriculars. We don't impose our ambitions on them. Actions speak louder than words in this regard.

Tell us about your app, Feel Now and what led you to develop this.

Taara: If not me, then who? This philosophy has inspired my mental health advocacy. In therapy, I always started by verbally identifying my emotions. Since this technique helped me ground myself, I thought it could help others too. I had the privilege of receiving professional mental healthcare that many teens across the country often do not have. In this, my idea for Feel Now, an emotional tracker app for teens, was born as a non-profit organization to ensure free access globally. 

If you had to answer “How are you?” right now, how long would it take you to find the right word? Feel Now helps you do just that every day in under a minute providing the first step to better mental health: emotional awareness. Each day users select the specific emotion(s) they are experiencing that day and the intensity level of these emotions. Feel Now uses aspects of popular social media apps like SnapChat and Be Real to incentivize user retention. Feel Now provides teens with a fun, low effort way to check in with their emotions daily and see how they change over time.

A senior at high school and you have already been featured in local media! We are curious to know what's in store for the future?

Taara: I am incredibly grateful for the media attention that Feel Now has received. It has been instrumental to increasing our user retention, allowing us to reach over 7000 users globally. When my co-founder Siena and I were designing Feel Now, one of our primary goals was simplicity. We noticed that many other mental health apps had numerous features and required significant time each day. We knew that this would likely discourage busy teens from using the app altogether, So we embraced the philosophy that some emotional tracking was better than none at all. Thus, we want to ensure that any future additions continue to adhere to this philosophy.

Before deciding on this idea for Feel Now, my original idea was to create a virtual memory box for users to store positive memories via photos, videos, music, and personalized notes. Ultimately, I hoped that this could serve as a reminder for people experiencing depression or even general sadness of all of the good in their lives. Additionally, I planned to include a space for users to write a notes for their future selves in times of need and for users to request notes from loved ones. Going forward, now that I have finished the college admissions process, I would like to further pursue this idea.

How has your mom inspired you in your work? What's the most important lesson you have learned from her?

Taara: First and foremost, this work would not be possible without my mom. From encouraging me to write out sketches of my ideas to helping with the logistics of incorporating a nonprofit, I am so grateful for her help. However, my mom has been supporting me long before my idea for Feel Now. From a young age, she has shown me what empathy for others, problem-solving, and executing ideas looks like. Most importantly, my mom has taught me to never be afraid to take my own path in life and to forget what others may think about it. Nobody embraces this lesson better than her: when my mom was seventeen, she came to the US by herself to continue pursuing her education. In comparison, creating an app is an easy feat. However, I hope to continue embracing this attitude as I further my education and beyond.