On this episode of Work Made Human, Nichole Mendez sits down with Chitra Kanagaraj, CEO and co-founder of PikMyKid, a startup transforming school safety through technology.
What started as a chaotic school pickup moment — where the wrong child was placed in a car — became the spark for a company now helping schools safely reunite thousands of students with their families every day.
But this isn’t just a startup origin story.
It’s a conversation about what happens when frustration turns into action. What founders have to unlearn to build something that actually works. And why empathy, trust, and real relationships aren’t soft skills; they’re the foundation of how better companies get built.
If you’re building with intention, leading like a human, and focused on solving problems that matter, this one’s worth your time.
Read 3 Things I Learned from from Chitra Kanagaraj About Building Something That Actually Matters to hear more from Chitra Kanagaraj — including why she swore as a kid she'd never be an entrepreneur like her dad (spoiler: it's in the genes), what it was like to be in Tampa Bay's very first incubator cohort, and why she thinks AI is our internet moment — exciting, a little scary, and absolutely not going away.