International Women’s Day – BIS Lauds ‘Women Power’ in Tech

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Key Achievements

Nowadays, also in the hi-tech or technology industry we are beginning to see many women of all ages rising & taking strategic leadership positions in different disciplines, which itself is a testimony of the exceptional skills, dedication & accomplishments of women especially in the electronics industry. Today, managing diversity and inclusiveness is not an option rather it is a business imperative to have sustainable growth in the new socio-economic order. At ST, we are helping to create an inclusive world which offers new possibilities, exciting opportunities as well as enables attracting and developing best and diverse talent. This is why we set ourselves a goal to achieve full gender equality, with above 20% women in all management levels by 2025.
I am thankful for the many opportunities offered to me along my career journey to grow in all aspects of my profession. At ST, some years ago, ahead of many players in our industry, we structured our organization with the clear objective of adopting an integrated marketing and communications approach. We started to leverage, in an integrated way, all online and offline channels to fully support ST’s value proposition, focused on shareholders, customers and stakeholders at large. The achievement of which we are most proud has been the creation of a brand platform that, as a high-tech company whose DNA is deeply rooted in technology, customer relations and employee engagement, is based on the motto “Technology starts with You”. This was achieved as a team – a very diverse team, spread across the globe, and of whom around 60% are female.

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Words to Inspire

The words I have always kept for guidance and inspiration, for me and for my team, come from Nelson Mandela: “Everyone can rise above their circumstances and achieve success if they are dedicated to and passionate about what they do”. Dedication and passion are essential, even more in a hi-tech company such as ST, where everything relies on people – whether it starts from innovation and the activities run by the R&D or manufacturing teams, or proximity with customers across the globe to help them tackle their challenges. On top of that, I always add professionalism, of course, as well as perseverance, to my leading principles.

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Failures and Rising

One of my former mentors used to coach me by using this famous sentence: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts”. This makes it difficult for me to point to one specific failure or rising. At work, and even more at ST, although we all strive for excellence, failure is an accepted part of the process, as long as it is used to learn, grow and improve – both in your profession and as a person. In my working life I experienced some major crises that, managed professionally and humanly, made the company and my teams stronger and more successful.

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Key Achievements

I have 20+ years of industry experience after my Masters in Technology from IIT Delhi. I have worked across functional areas in software, standards participation, firmware, hardware, marketing and applications and technology domains as diverse as telecom, mobile and embedded and wireless. I have worked for multinational firms from US, France, Korea and Germany and have a good international experience. I have eight patents to my name in the field of mobility standards. I have built and enhanced high performing teams bottoms up.

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Words to Inspire

Find your motto in life on why you are working and pursue that. I found my motto as “problems have only two outcomes – it’s either solved or is no longer a problem”. I live my personal and professional life with this motto and look at everything as a collection of problems and solve them one at a time!

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Failures and Rising

I had a dual role of heading applications and marketing teams in one of my assignments, but given some organizational changes I had to let go of the marketing group out of India. At that time it was a difficult decision but as I look back it is better to focus on few things rather than spreading yourself thin. What this taught me was that there will be hazy times in our careers; solve one problem at a time and the bigger picture will become clearer and decisions will start making sense.

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Key Achievements

• Automation expert for Verification and Validation
• ISQTB, ISO26262 and AI/ML Certified Professional with a Patent and Innovation Award in the field of Verification and Validation
• Process Champion in defining and deployment of organization level processes

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Words to Inspire

Believe in “Never dream about success, work for it” and “Work hard in silence and let success make the noise”

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Failures and Rising

During my initial days at Infineon, I did not choose any specific career path as offered within the organization, and lost out on a year of growth. But then, I took a chance to apply for what I believed in and joined one of the specific career paths, called Technical Ladder, which then accelerated my growth as a technical leader within the organization. Today, I am proud to be the first female Principal Engineer within Infineon India and termed as an “influencer lady” by my colleagues.

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Key Achievements

Working at Digi-Key and in a technology-enabling industry for more than 30 years, one of the things that has excited me the most about my role is finding and applying technology to serve our customers more effectively, while also helping our team members work more efficiently. For example, automating purchase order entry so team members only need to touch exceptions and utilizing workflow, so we are more efficient with how we receive and distribute work. It’s important to stay on top of what’s being developed and keep an eye out for innovative solutions.

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Words to Inspire

When I think about how the world has changed in my lifetime and the digital transformation era we’re now in, it’s an exciting time and technology makes a major difference in people’s lives. It’s amazing to think how much better our lives are now and how connected we are because of technology. Anyone’s idea can come to fruition. As a kid, one of my favorite TV shows was The Jetsons – someone imagined the robots, space vehicles, virtual exercise coaches on the show – and now they’re reality! Women in technology are a big part of all these innovations – you’re changing the world!

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Failures and Rising

One of my challenges historically, which I think is true for many women, especially in this industry, has been at times being the only woman at the table and not speaking up soon enough to make sure my voice was heard. I was raised that you didn’t interrupt, but at times you need to insert yourself and figure out the best way to do that. Early on in my career, I didn’t do that enough. If you wait too long, you can lose your opportunity. Lesson learned: Speak up and make yourself heard – take your seat at the table.

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Key Achievements

Have been able to inculcate and drive innovation culture across the organization and brand Elektrobit India technically in various internal and external forums

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Words to Inspire

“If you’re afraid to change something it is clearly poorly designed.” – Martin Fowler

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Failures and Rising

After taking over the role of leading the architects across Elektrobit India, I had to bring in transformational changes within the architects group to primarily achieve outcomes across our focus areas of ‘bringing in value growth’, ‘becoming thought leaders and innovators” and “support in winning local business”. For achieving this I had to start from organizing the architects together by breaking the silos they were working in, change their mindset to think out of the box, inculcate innovative mindset and ramp them up on their technical and behavioral skills so that they can start communicating with customers to understand their pain points and propose holistic solutions to address the pain points. It was a long journey albeit satisfying as we as a team could transform ourselves and achieve our aspirations that we had set out for.

Initially one my failure was my inability to follow a well thought out and structured approach along with a detailed plan. While I was doing my best, I was not seeing the outcome in the initial months and I was failing to achieve the desired results. But then I realized the importance of detailed planning and structured approach that also helped me in breaking down problems into smaller chucks and making it more manageable to address.

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Key Achievements

In 2020, Jaya was the recipient of the prestigious ‘Rising Woman of Influence’ award by the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA). This award recognizes and profiles the next generation of women leaders in the semiconductor industry who are believed to be rising to top executive roles within their organizations. In 2018, she was recognized by the international publication, Diversity Journal among the “2018 Women Worth Watching For”. The award recognizes global change makers and leaders who have recorded outstanding achievements throughout their career.

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Words to Inspire

My advice to women engineers is that they should lead the way by standing firm on what is right, question the status quo and not shy away from making bold decisions. Women should embrace their femininity as a core strength. We tend to be more caring and that helps us bring in the much-required sensitivity to understand, comprehend and resolve people related issues at work. My personal mantra is that, I do not want us to look at ourselves as ‘woman leaders’ but leaders!

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Failures and Rising

I was given the mandate to lead the leadership team at AMD India in 2015. This role was challenging but it gave me an opportunity to learn new leadership skills. I had to work with leaders who were my peers and learn the art of influencing without authority. Earning the trust of my peers, bringing teams together, and getting AMD executive attention on regional initiatives were some of the critical milestones. After five plus years in this role, this experience has been the most satisfying. It taught me several leadership lessons, the important one being how to influence without authority!

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Key Achievements

Leading Innovation Charter & re-invigorate the organic growth engine for Hon Aerospace India, instilled entrepreneur mindset within the organization. Setup the framework for driving ideas to New product introductions. solve customers’ problems and needs with technology ideas. Hold Four patents, presented Technical papers related to Aerospace at International forums.

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Words to Inspire

We come equipped with a tremendous amount of grit and tenacity to go beyond our current limits. So, wherever we are, we just need to push the envelope, see problems as opportunities, Bring the best in what we do & always have the zeal for what’s next.

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Failures and Rising

In my early to early career days, there was always a dichotomy between personal life and work. Fear of shortcoming (for meeting/exceeding expectations) on both sides was a concern that was lingering in my mind during a normal day. In pursuit of this balance, I realized that we as women have an innate ability, to selectively zone in & out, multi-task, be unemotional (on the work front) and achieve the results we hope for, Integrate work/life is the choice I made, Play to your strengths and it would go a long way professionally and personally.

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Key Achievements

Firstly, I believe that an integral key part of any organization must be to give back to the nation. At Western Digital India, in my role as Country Manager, I have the vision to collaborate with Government of India and understand the policies and framework and area of opportunities wherein we can make a difference. In 2018, Data Innovation Bazaar (DIB), which was launched in partnership with Startup India and Invest India, was a pan-India innovation challenge that invited ideas to solve problems of national significance. We saw the number of applications submitted in DIB 2020 increase by almost 85% in comparison to the flagship edition in 2018 and more than 65% of the applications were from outside of the 8 Tier-1 cities

Secondly, I strongly believe, India needs a sustainable growth of women entrepreneurs to promote a balanced economic growth in the country. We partnered with We Hub from Telangana government to promote women entrepreneurs. Women-led startups from Top 40 finalists of DIB 2020 received an exclusive three-month accelerator opportunity that equips them to be investment-ready and enables them to scale by giving access to national and international investors. I am delighted that we could contribute to empowering more women through these initiatives.

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Words to Inspire

I believe in being authentic, committed, accountable, courageous and standing by firmly for I believe is right. I dream of an equal world where women are respected for who they are and have the freedom to make choices without the fear of being judged. I believe in having a voice at the table: a seat at the table is only worth it, if you lend it your voice.

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Failures and Rising

Western Digital, being a diverse and inclusive workplace, has provided me opportunities to take up challenging roles. Moving from a functional to a business role of leading the India region, the transition has been empowering. I leaped out of my comfort zone and set an audacious vision by raising the profile of Western Digital India in the government, industry forums and partner ecosystem. Today, I am proud of leading Western Digital India region that is rooted in a culture of people-first, innovation and inclusion. The path less travelled has its own challenges, however resilience and hard work always pays off.

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Key Achievements

Despite the Covid-19 epidemic globally, Vivian took lead in pivoting strategic communications initiatives in both APAC (Asia Pacific) and EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) markets in 2020. HID Global is the worldwide leader in trusted identity solutions. The company successfully launched a few flagship products in the APAC region. The company also sweeps 8 industry awards and shortlisted with 2 solutions awards recognizing the company’s efforts in creating a safe workplace environment to its customers.

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Words to Inspire

Having the right attitude is the key to success.

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Failures and Rising

The path to success is from learning and failing. It is important to keep trying and learning along the way to achieve your goals.

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Key Achievements

One of her biggest achievements is to successfully mentor young women professionals and train them for top leadership positions. She leads and volunteer for several initiatives within the organization to train young women professionals in tech and security industry.

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Words to Inspire

In over 25 years as a working professional, I have observed positive changes when it comes to women representation in companies owing to different policies in terms of diversity and inclusion. I hope to see these numbers growing in the coming future.

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Key Achievements

• Consistently advanced TI India’s regional sales growth, for many years
• Involved in defining and adopting several sales behaviour and tool related strategies.
• Active involvement in talent development and hiring processes within sales.

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Words to Inspire

“I believe with proper planning and the right mindset, there is nothing that you can’t achieve in your personal and professional life.”

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Failures and Rising

“As a Sales Leader, I faced an issue with my customer base that hampered my region’s overall revenue. A quick discussion with my mentors helped identify a solution and turned the situation around within two quarters. Since then, my team has been consistently performing well.”

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Key Achievements

Technology entrepreneur who co-founded Amagi which has emerged as a global SaaS leader in providing end-to-end cloud-managed live and on-demand video infrastructure for TV networks, content owners, studios, live sports and news production companies, worldwide. The company today manages 400+ channels on its cloud platform for global customers. Prior to Amagi, Srividhya had co-founded Impulsesoft, a technology company that was later acquired by SiRF.

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Words to Inspire

“Do whatever you love” and “Put your heart, soul and more into it, and you will achieve your goals”.

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Failures and Rising

In the initial years of Amagi’s growth since its founding in 2008, we were offering cloud-based geo-targeted TV advertising in India. Those days, we restricted our operations to India. The global market offered much larger opportunities, which we missed. However, in 2018, we pivoted to become a global enterprise providing end-to-end broadcast workflow on the cloud – Not just advertising. This change has enabled us to grow Amagi more than 100 percent YoY.

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Key Achievements

I’ve led transformational change, at multiple companies, to scale innovation through disciplined execution and have enabled companies to unlock tremendous customer and shareholder value. As a leader of leaders, my biggest accomplishment is helping people to achieve their full potential. I invest my time in mentoring and sponsoring women in technology, as they face extraordinary challenges in the workplace.

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Words to Inspire

Diversity of thoughts, skills and experiences leads to better business outcomes.

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Failures and Rising

I did not realize how I had been affected by conscious and unconscious bias. I now have strategies to address this issue and speak often about it to help other women leaders.

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Key Achievements

Over the course of my 12+ year career in technology, I have been in multiple roles, from a software engineer to a tech lead to a manager and now managing managers. A few key points have held true for me over the years, irrespective of the role I have been in.

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Words to Inspire

Trust yourself. I find that the biggest challenge for women in technology is not the lack of opportunities, but the trust in one’s self to take that leap. If something challenging sparks your interest, follow through with it. Bring other people along with you. Mentor other engineers, share your experiences, coach others. A mark of a true leader is not only what they get done, but how they get it done and who they bring along with them on their journey.”

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Failures and Rising

If a particular skill feels like a barrier to a role you are interested in, proactively bridge that gap. There are so many courses and mentoring platforms available online. Use them actively.

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Key Achievements

• Awarded Travel Grants from DST, Government of India, and IEEE Signal Processing Society to attend several international conferences.
• Gold Medalist – First rank at University level in B.Tech ECE.
• Received the ‘Outstanding Teaching Assistant (TA)’ Award for the academic year 2015-16, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kanpur.

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Words to Inspire

“It helps to take the challenges life throws at us, with a pinch of salt. If life went as planned, we would never learn and grow.”

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Failures and Rising

“There have been situations where things in life did not go as planned. Each incident continues to teach me how to be resilient.”

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Key Achievements

When I look back at my career of 21 years in the technology industry, I can very comfortably say that my biggest achievement is in making the right investment in people. Successful team drives successful companies. I feel proud to have built many such teams in the past that have delivered top notch results in the ever changing technology landscape and yet made things look easy!

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Words to Inspire

As women leaders, we tend to look outside for mentors, inspiration and motivation whereas all this comes from within. Leverage your strengths of multi-tasking, focus and dedication to commit yourself to your success. No one else can do it for you.

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Failures and Rising

I have had many failures and each one teaches me a different thing. But my favourite one is when I failed myself during a tough situation. The learning from this failure was to continue to depend on yourself to bail you out. Teach yourself resilience, build strength and trust your instincts.

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Key Achievements

At NetApp, I am the architect for System Manager Product, which is the element management for ONTAP Storage Operating System. I actively engage in the women in technology charter at NetApp and I am one of the leaders for the technology and innovation track. I am also leveraging my 16 years of industry experience to mentor deep tech startups that are a part of our flagship accelerator program – NetApp Excellerator.

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Words to Inspire

Make the most out of the opportunities and enjoy what you do.

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Failures and Rising

Dedicating one whole year to develop a new product that didn’t see light of the day, was a disheartening and demotivating experience. As the technical lead of the team, I somehow felt more responsible for the failure. The company took an acquisition route instead which we later realized, worked better for the business. It was a learning for me and have better managed such research situations ever since.

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Key Achievements

Throughout my career, I’ve focused on being a trusted advisor to clients to help them drive value out of data and analytics. This is fundamental to my role at Qlik as well. With acceleration in cloud & digital, customers are looking for the best end to end data and analytics platform, consulting capabilities and entire partner ecosystem to build business transformation solutions through the global solutions & partners organisation, which I lead.

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Words to Inspire

We need to get to a place where the world sees us as a “Leader in Tech” more often than a “Woman Leader in Tech”. Be your authentic self, believe in your abilities, invest in your learning and do right by your team and your customers.

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Failures and Rising

Imposter syndrome is something I struggled with early in my career. I had a great support system of both male & female friends and family who helped convert my insecurities to strengths which really boosted my confidence. This has enabled me to be clear about my point of view and actively seek opportunities that interest me

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Key Achievements

Lalitha builds and manages a diverse team of engineers from different disciplines. In her previous stint, Lalitha handled multiple roles in Global Business Services at IBM. Her professional journey started as a developer and now she leads multiple scrum teams in Lodging, Ground and Sea product (LGS) at Sabre. She supervises the teams in the development of features, delivers against product goals, contributes to product strategy and helps develop her team members.

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Words to Inspire

Use positive thinking to learn, grow and evolve from the experiences we gather in our life. Positive thinking simply means that if you are faced with a setback, you work hard to overcome the challenges. Never compromise and give up your dream. Rise to the challenge and find a way out!

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Failures and Rising

Sometimes, while joining a company, we focus more on the scope of work in our roles and the financial benefits that comes with it. Amidst these priorities, we may fail to look at the culture of that company. I’ve learnt it the hard way that choosing an organization that promotes diversity and inclusion is more rewarding than choosing an organization based on any other parameter. My story of failure and rising is more about leaving a toxic environment and joining a team that is supportive and empathetic.

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Key Achievements

I have gloriously completed several Half-Marathons and a Full Marathons across several places in India in the last few years. Every run gave me immense joy in accomplishing a goal.

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Words to Inspire

The mantra which works for me is to be honest and sincere towards my responsibilities and always look at the positive side of any situation. This helps me to improve continuously and grow as a person and as a professional.

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Failures and Rising

In pursuit of a career in Information Technology, I came to Bangalore. I found myself disconnected from the big city culture and lacking the required skillsets. I decided to concentrate on overcoming the adversity. The perseverance has led me to where I am today. I am leading a squad of prominent data scientists contributing to Swiss Re’s journey in becoming a more data-and-tech driven organization. Reflecting on my choices, my struggles and my achievements reconfirms my belief in trusting one’s own abilities and always moving forward.

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Key Achievements

I joined SSIR following a 5-year stint with Texas Instruments. At SSIR, my role focuses largely on R&D, verification, and customer support for AP SOCs and Automobile SOCs. I would say that one of the biggest accomplishments in my career was spearheading and leading the Automotive IVI Solution Demo at the VLSID Conference -2020 & Wintechcon Conference 2019. The team had worked on Samsung’s first Automotive IVI Solution from verification to silicon bring-up to SW development, many of which was covered from the Samsung Semiconductor India side. This demo was lauded by the technology fraternity and I felt really proud for me and my team, to see our hard work “live in action”.

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Words to Inspire

I’ve always believed that success and failure are a part of the learning curve and I have learnt a great deal from my own experience. Having to juggle between my first born and work, was a bit of a challenge during the early years of my career. However, with the right blend and support, I was able to create a healthy work life balance between the two.

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Failures and Rising

To fellow women in technology, I would like to say – be confident and assertive, and don’t shy away from voicing opinions at your workplace. Secondly, ensure to maximize learning during the foundational years of your career. Lastly, for women who juggle multiple roles, prioritize your goals and be open with the leadership team to enhance your productivity and efficiencies.

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Key Achievements

While completing almost 21 years of experience, I have led multiple programs in software consulting/ support for customers, enterprise mobility, service design, enterprise business solutions, cloud computing and digital transformation

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Words to Inspire

I believe in collaborative execution and encourage my team to ask for help when needed, regardless of gender. To empower my team, I would choose to challenge any unconscious bias that confuses seeking help from a colleague as anything but a sign of strength and mutual admiration.

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Failures and Rising

I have always led customer facing teams and we come across issues every now and then – as one of my biggest learnings as a leader, our true self comes across when we are in a difficult situation, and it is important to be a strong leader in such situations. The key management principles that have worked in all such situations are:

• Every customer understands there can be issues; what matters is how soon we recover from those and that we don’t repeat the same mistakes
• Face your customer during an escalation. Strong customer relations are built over such conversations
• Co-Innovation with customer with design thinking
• Don’t just listen to, lead your customers
• Make things simple – be a trusted advisor

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Key Achievements

• Successfully leads multicultural teams across China, India, Bucharest and US.
• Involved in ‘Bringing Women Back to Work’ program, for which UiPath India won the Best D&I Initiative Award by Women Leadership Forum, Asia

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Words to Inspire

“Leading a team is not about following in the wake of what others have done. Your team must be your inspiration to excel. Think of them as a part of you and invest in them like you would invest in yourself.”

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Failures and Rising

“My failure has been my ‘inertia to change’. Once I fought through it, every change presented itself as a new opportunity and came with lots of learning.”