A Dozen Questions with Ash Lab’s Manager, Divya Bharadwaj

We sat down with our very own Divya Bharadwaj, Ash’s Labs Manager, to talk about diet coke, their role at Ash, Olivia Rodrigo, the future of Ash, and more. Get to know Divya below!

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What drink is your in-office must-have?

You know I love a Diet Coke, any time of day – constantly. I will say, glass bottle coke is the best, followed by can. Though.. McDonald’s diet Coke might be the winner. 

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What is your career background, steps before Ash? 

I have a pretty scattered background and I feel pretty fortunate to have been able to do so many things. I started out in impact investing - it touched on healthcare, but really focused on impact in the global South broadly. I spent 6 months in Bangalore India and then some time in Seattle on the investment side. I worked in transportation at Lime and at Dishoom- an Indian restaurant chain across the UK which was really fun. Right before Ash, I was in the at home health testing space.

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What music has been on repeat lately?

I’m a huge Olivia Rodrigo stan - I had my neighbors over to watch the Guts tour on Netflix. It is slightly embarrassing that she's ten years younger than me and I can relate to her music but I love her and I won’t apologize. 

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What is an opinion you feel strongly about (or a hot take)?

This might ruffle some feathers, but I refuse to listen to Radiohead simply because the type of people who ask me to listen to them are edgy indie-rock boys who are like “you don’t get Radiohead?” And it’s not that I don’t (or won’t) get it, I just don’t want to listen to it.

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What is something you have changed your mind about?

Hmmm – maybe Radiohead? I don’t know, I might have to listen. I do like that genre of music, but just something about the ~vibe~ has kept me from diving in. 

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editor note: these comments came after I hyped up (too) many covers of Creep. 

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What is your fave spot in the city?

I love Prospect Park, it truly feels like my backyard. I’ve spent so much time there and I feel like I know how to get the vibe I want out of the park. If you want a forestry-hike vibe where you can’t see the city or if you just want a lazy spot to hang around other people there’s a spot for that. I have friends who live on nearly every corner of the park so it’s become a meeting point and really does feel like my back yard. 

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Who do you admire?

Jia Tolentino - she’s a writer with the New Yorker and writes about pop culture and she takes pop culture very seriously which I love. If you haven’t read Trick Mirror, I’d give it a go. I saw her at a coffee shop one time and was too nervous to say anything! 

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‍What does a good day at work look like for you? What do you do at Ash?

This has changed since I first started at Ash, but at the beginning a lot of my role was just making sure labs were functioning properly – putting out fires, solving issues, etc. Now though, we’ve streamlined and updated so many processes that I get to think about the bigger picture of lab processes, evaluate new labs, build concrete documentation around labs, and communicate with vendors (a huge part of day-to-day things). I spend a lot of time working with labs & clients to: gather information, project managing technical integrations, push operational improvements forward, and a dozen other things. 

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What project at Ash are you most proud of?

Probably the The Labs World Tour ™ 

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[editors note- Labs World Tour is our internal name for the yearly series of tours over a number of days, in which our Operations team visits labs within our network to strengthen relationships, gather information, evaluate quality, and more]

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Last year was the inaugural and we didn’t know what to expect. We wanted to do site tours with our network of labs and it was a strange/chaotic experience to say the least. This year, we had a much stronger sense of what we wanted to accomplish with these site visits. We were able to pin down documentation needed for various stakeholders, we developed score sheets to quantify the differences and quality of our lab network, and were able to better understand what’s needed when thinking about adding new labs to our network.  

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You’ve been at Ash now for over a year - what’s one of the most notable changes you’ve seen?

When I first started, everything felt like an emergency and it just wasn’t sustainable. Now even when there is a fire – we have a process in place to fix it. We’ve seen so much and have response plans in place so now if something pops up there’s just way less of a meltdown. We can take a step back and say “here’s what we know, here’s how we can solve that, and here’s how long it will take.” 

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What are you most looking forward to in the future of Ash?

Developing a shared language with the rest of the Ash team. Labs can sometimes feel like an island and, when things are going well, that's when you don’t hear anything - because a lot of work is going on behind the scenes to make sure it is going well. But lately, I’ve been doing a lot of work with Alexis [VP of Product Marketing] to put together a testing menu and working with the product team to make sure we’re using the same terms between labs, engineering, and the full Ash team. 

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Anyone at Ash you want to shout out?

The rest of the ops team - Jack, Melisa, Vincent and Eva. Like I mentioned before, you don’t really hear about operations unless something is going wrong - which kind of sucks. There’s so much going on every day and the ops team is so good at making sure no team member feels left out on an island by themselves. The team is constantly there for each other and ready to support; even when things aren’t quite in someone’s job description. We’re a small team that helps each other out, and I love that. 

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Want to learn more about the Ash team? Check out our interviews with Eva Marsh, Patient Experience Manager, and Toni Antonova, Engineering Manager. If you're interested in joining this team of doers and dreamers, check out Ash's open roles.