Building Culturally Intelligent Futures: A Conversation with Rhea Sharma

Rhea Sharma discusses Diverse AI, immigrant women, and culturally intelligent tech design.

Rhea Sharma

At the intersection of technology, equity, and systems design, Rhea Sharma is emerging as a powerful voice in the South Asian diaspora, working to shape the future of culturally intelligent artificial intelligence. As the founder behind Diverse AI, an upcoming platform being built to centre cultural context in technology, she is focused on expanding access and opportunity for South Asian women and other underrepresented communities in the global tech ecosystem.

Based in the United States, Rhea brings over 15 years of experience in healthcare operations and clinical research leadership, working across multi-site programmes and collaborating with senior leadership teams to scale research operations. With advanced training in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning from MIT Professional Education, she is now working at the intersection of healthcare, AI, and equity - reimagining how technology can reflect real cultural and lived realities.

In this conversation, she shares insights on support, identity, and why redesigning systems around immigrant women is becoming central to the future of technology and work.

When you began running online support spaces for South Asian women, how did that experience change your understanding of support and success?

When I started facilitating these spaces, I believed support was about offering advice, resources, or motivation. Very quickly, I realised most women were not looking for answers. They were looking for permission. Permission to speak honestly, to admit exhaustion, and to say they were not sure they were okay. What truly shifted my perspective was seeing how many capable and resilient women felt unsafe expressing vulnerability, even in spaces designed for support. Success, for me, became less about outward functioning and more about whether someone felt seen without having to perform strength.

Why do gaps continue to exist in online support spaces, even those created with good intentions?

Many support spaces are designed around conversations that are easy to host rather than those that are difficult to name. In South Asian communities, silence often surrounds emotional fatigue, identity conflict, financial and immigration stress, resentment mixed with gratitude, and the pressure to succeed without complaint. Even in women only or safe spaces, there is often an unspoken expectation to remain agreeable. The most challenging issues are emotional, cultural, and systemic. When spaces are not designed to hold that complexity, people disengage quietly, even when intentions are good.

How does culture shape what women feel they can ask for, and how did that reflect your own journey?

Culture plays a powerful role in shaping silence. Many of us grow up fluent in the language of responsibility, respect, and duty, but not in expressing emotional need or personal boundaries. Family roles often teach women to adapt and carry emotional labour, making asking for help feel like failure. I saw this reflected in my own journey. There were moments when ambition and intelligence were not missing, but permission was. Permission to slow down, change paths, or admit something was not working. In these spaces, women often spoke in coded language, asking about careers when they were really questioning identity, or talking about burnout when what they meant was loneliness.

When did you realise these challenges were not personal failures, but systemic ones?

That realisation came when I began hearing the same stories repeatedly from women of different ages, careers, and immigration statuses. Different lives, but the same exhaustion, self doubt, and sense of personal failure. That repetition made it clear this was not an individual problem. It was a design problem. Our systems of work, healthcare, mentorship, and community assume cultural fluency and access to informal networks that many immigrant women do not have. Once I understood that, I stopped viewing these struggles as personal shortcomings and began seeing them as structural gaps.

How did this understanding lead you to imagine a different kind of digital infrastructure?

Human led spaces are powerful, but they are also fragile. They rely on emotional labour, availability, and constant energy, often from a small group of women. I began imagining something more sustainable. A system that could hold context, remember patterns, and understand cultural nuance without flattening it. The goal was not to replace human connection, but to support it, allowing women to show up as they are without having to re explain themselves each time. It was never about building another app. It was about building infrastructure that truly understands the user.

If the American Dream were assessed through the lens of support for immigrant women, what does your journey reveal?

My journey has shown me that opportunity exists, but access to support does not. The American Dream often assumes resilience alone is enough. In reality, resilience without support leads to exhaustion, and ambition without guidance leads to isolation. Immigrant women are highly capable, yet they navigate systems that were not designed with them in mind. They succeed despite these gaps, not because of the structure. If we measured the American Dream by how supported immigrant women feel emotionally, professionally, and culturally, it would be clear that there is still a long way to go. That understanding continues to drive my work, not to fix women, but to fix the spaces around them.