Through this experience [of makimg movies], I recognized what an extraordinary set of personality traits it takes to be able to succeed in that world, and I was really drawn to the character work we could build with actors as a result.

I spent a year and a half working for an art fair. I worked as a post-production assistant for a documentary film company for a while. Then I worked at the Apple store because I wanted a discount to be able to buy new gear to edit things while I was figuring out whether or not I wanted to go to film school. Those were the main things.

When I was in film school at USC, I wrote my thesis script about a woman on Wall Street - specifically a woman who used to work at Morgan Stanley, sort of based on her life. Through that process, I did some research.

It is my sense of exclusion from representation that made me want to be a part of figuring out if we could make a difference.

Creating a portrait of a female point of view in an environment that we've pretty much exclusively understood through a male perspective - "Wall Street," "Wolf of Wall Street," "Arbitrage" - etc. was beyond exciting for me. It felt downright necessary. And I felt really inspired by Alysia Reiner and Sarah Megan Thomas' agenda in telling these types of unique, feminist stories. [Both of them produced and acted in "Equity."]

You don't necessarily need to go to film school to learn that part of it. But what I valued was that it gives you that incubation and time to figure out who you are, what kind of stories you want to tell, and how you want to forge your path.

When I was a teenager, I thought I wanted to be an actor. I worked on an Indian soap opera that was my first exposure to production. But I quickly became disillusioned by acting and seeing that in the movies I loved and the TV I loved, no one looked like me. There weren't going to be any leading roles that would be interested in casting someone with my face.