Scholarship / Its the key for my personal and professional growth. Chevening Fellowship essay on networking skills [3]

Hello All,

Please can you provide me with some inputs on comments on my essay on networking? Appreciate your insights..

Give and Take

I believe that networking happens in true sense when there is a Give and Take between the two parties.
I am a firm believer of Mentoring. In my previous organisation I launched a unique mentoring program called "Reverse Mentoring". The here was that the young employees at junior levels would mentor the seniors ( Vice Presidents and Directors) in the organisation. It gave an opportunity for juniors to develop a network and allowed Seniors to get a fresh perspective to challenges. This in turn helped built a solid platform for networking in the organisation.

WeAreTheCity UK is a forum where the women share their inspirational stories. It gives an opportunity for women to connect with each other, search and post jobs etc. This forum was launched by Vanessaa Vallely. I was connected with Vanessa Vallely because of my work in gender Diversity space. When Vanessa decided to launch this forum in India, I immediated connected myself with this network. I regularly use this network to help women showcase their inspirational stories and blog about things they are passionate about. I was felicitated with the Rising Star Award in the first year of launch of this forum in India because of my contribution to the network.

I have also pledged for HEFORSHE Campaign. HEFORSHE is a United Nations initiative to engage men in gender diversity agenda. This has helped me create a network and meet with people who are passionate about human rights and equality. We run intiatives like training undder preveliedged girls and providing them computer education, conductive self-defence classes for women etc.

I believe networking is the key for my personal and professional growth.
If I could become a Chevening Fellow, I would use my existing networks to give back my learinings to the society. I will continue to invest in networking with Chevening Alumni in India and abroad to help find solutions to local issues.

Scholarship / Leadership is about influencing human behaviour to help achieve a common goal. Chevening essay [2]

Leadership and Influence

Leader and influence. With example.

I firmly believe that Leadership is about influencing human behaviour to help achieve a common goal.
I am currently leading a team of 9 risk professionals. While my team is responsible for the calculations and delivery of global regulatory reports such as Capital requirements report, Key Risk report and Economic Risk capital report delivery for Credit Suisse, we are also responsible to incorporate all the methodology, process and infrastructure changes in the bank in our reports. This needs me to constantly interact with various stakeholders like Methodology team, Risk Managers, IT , Data delivery teams etc. while each of these stakeholders have their own priorities and mandates, it is important for me to bring them on the same table so that we are able to extract correct numbers from the systems for our regulatory reporting. This requires excellent leadership and influencing skills so that we have everyone's cooperation to achieve the goal..

In my previous Organisation ( Barclays Technology Centre of India), we had only 15 % female inVP roles. The organization was struggling to get women in technology leadership roles. I formed an internal employee network called Women in Technology. I started by defining a mission statement for the forum which was then adopted by Barclays at the Global Level.

WiT mission statement- 'The Barclays WiT Network's mission is to empower women in Technology to develop to their fullest potential by helping them navigate and leverage available resources'.

The purpose of network was to provide a platform to expand their network, showcase their skills and provide them with opportunities for professional development. In the first year, we organised 4 "Tech talks" on latest Technology by women employees. As I lead and Chair of Women in Technology forum, I also influenced the management to change the hiring process by ensuring that we had a woman in the interview panel so as to remove any unconscious bias. My regular and constant engagement with Senior leadership team and an effort to create awareness about the reason of leaky pipeline when women leave workforce because of life changes like child birth, we were also able to increase the Maternity leave in the organisation from 3 months to 6 months.

I also engaged with a NGO called Lila poonawalla foundation to provide computer education to under privileged girl child so that they become comfortable with computer at an early stage and may pursue career in STEM.

My leadership skills at this forum was recognized and I was felicitated global level for the contribution to this cause.

I believe that leadership, inflencuing and interpersonal skills are something that we all need to constantly work on and improve.. it is a journey of self awareness and self realization