Rithika Desai was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed college graduate when she began working as a Collections Assistant at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. It was there that she would meet Vihaan Kumar, a mature and experienced Associate Curator in the same department. The two worked together closely, often spending late nights at the museum poring over their work and sharing take-out from the Indian restaurant around the corner. It wouldn't take long before their working relationship evolved into a friendship and evolved even further into a romantic relationship. After less than a year of dating, Vihaan and Rithika eloped at city hall and set off for Wisconsin where they had accepted jobs at the Milwaukee Public Museum.

Their first and only child, Savita Ravyanki Kumar, was born two years later on March 29, 1989 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But the Kumars would not stay in Wisconsin long and found themselves moving to Colorado before Savi's first birthday. Due to her parents' careers and nomadic personalities, moving would be a common occurrence in her life. Every time she found herself finally getting settled into a city, they were packing their lives up and moving on to the next place. It made school and developing a social life extremely difficult for Savi because she was constantly being viewed as the new girl. With few friends to occupy her time, her teenage years were focused solely on school. She was an exceptional student but left little impression on most of her teachers due to her quiet nature.

When it came time for college, Savi was living in Kansas with her parents when she had made the decision to attend Northeastern University to study nursing. Nursing had been a career that attracted her at a young age, wanting the opportunity to work with and help people on a daily basis. She moved to Boston that fall and for the first time in her life, she felt like she could start over with a group of freshman that were all considered the new kids. Classes were important to her but she also found a healthy balance with a social life full of new friends, parties, and newfound outgoing personality that had been hiding just below the surface.

By the time she graduated from Northeastern, Savi had to decide whether to stay in Boston and look for a job or find a home in another city. After spending the first eighteen years of her life moving from place to place, she knew that it was time to put down her roots somewhere and Boston had become the only place that ever felt like home. She was soon hired as a nurse in the OB/GYN department at Massachusetts General Hospital but transferred to the Intensive Care Unit after a year with hopes that it would lead to a position in the emergency room. It took another year and one failed interview but eventually she was able to move to the Emergency Medicine department. It's been almost four years since she made the switch and even though it's emotionally and physically draining at times, Savi can't imagine herself doing anything else.