I applied [to film school] figuring, "I need to find some structure for myself. I need to find a way to figure out what kind of filmmaker I want to be." And that is what film school provides you with. It'll teach you the basics of how a production works and the technical side of how to put everything together, but you could also learn that by working on film sets.

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.

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.

I always knew I wanted to make films, but just didn't quite know how to start. I was making little short films with my friends but I wasn't quite sure how to put those pieces together for myself.

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."]

When I got into film school, it really formed a sense of who I am and my sense of feeling like an outsider. If there was some greater purpose to do this, it would be so that future generations - my kids or my sister's kids - would grow up seeing themselves in their media culture in a way that I didn't. If The Mindy Project or Master of None were on when I was growing up, I wonder if I would be interested in doing this at all

I'd like them [people] to leave thinking about the challenges women face in the workforce, but more importantly to really feel the emotional highs and lows of those challenges - to have really experienced that unsettling place where ambition crosses over into something else entirely.