I was born in India, but I have lived most of my life in Saudi Arabia.
My father has always encouraged me to assimilate and integrate. This conditioning has made me extremely adaptable to people and to work environments.
However, my extroverted manner belies that it is out of introspection that I derive my energies. I have an ‘inner steel’ which gives me laser-sharp focus.
This is most manifest in my musicianship. While I am not the most naturally talented, I have the perspective to identify my capabilities and work towards it with the kind of determination that often amazes people who think of me as flippant. As a guitarist, I have taught myself to play pieces that my musical mentors have said would be beyond me.
Professionally, it is this focus and resolve that has seen me move back to Saudi Arabia, leaving behind a huge circle of friends - these were tight bonds formed immediately after four tough years at college.
Another attribute of mine that I am proud of is self-awareness. This has aided me in handling criticism. I have cultivated this ability to focus on what I call ‘actionable negativity’, and turn it around to improve myself.
While my natural tendency is to cower under criticism - I’m what Wodehouse would have called ‘a blithe spirit’, and prefer cordiality in interactions - I am capable of detaching sentiment from statement, and focussing on the latter to evaluate if there is merit in it, and if it is something I can act upon for improvement.
This ability to not take things personally also helps me maintain relationships while disagreeing on specific issues.
My spirituality - another of my latent attributes - keeps me on even keel, helping me, to paraphrase Kipling, meet triumph and disaster, and treat both of those imposters just the same. I deploy my capacity for hard work, stick to the task and see it to completion without giving up. I can accept failure, I have several times, but I always play to win. I am cognisant of how this makes me ultra-competitive and occasionally sways my focus. If only I were able to forget as easily as I forgive!
Another aspect I am working on is mental multi-tasking. While I come up with ideas quickly, a lot of them are off target; in the process of thinking of multiple solutions, I derail my train of thought, often stymieing my own creativity.
I’m also trying to fix my tendency to get personally invested in people. While the rewards are obvious, this also leaves me drained. My friends’ problems very quickly become mine, and I find myself fire- fighting a lot more than I ought to.
This happens at work too, and I end up overstaying, and working even when away from office. So, a work-life balance is proving elusive to me even to date.
I gave a speech at the World Championship of Public Speaking on kintsugi - the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken utensils with gold. A philosophy that illustrates the beauty of imperfection and the elusive pursuit of flawlessness. I opined that Kintsugi offers a poignant reflection of life, especially mine.
I had a nomadic childhood, living in eight cities spanning London, India and USA. It moulded my personality to become adaptable. I also developed a love for meeting diverse people and built some unexpected friendships.
To help me cope with these moves better and discover my latent talents, my father enrolled me into numerous competitions at school. Further, he diligently coached me and always encouraged me to play to win. This induced in me a passion for winning. From this stemmed my non acceptance of mediocrity. I further developed qualities of being extremely detail-oriented and being unafraid to do things differently.
During college, this mindset led to a few strong fallouts while working in groups. Through introspection and taking inspiration from Steve Jobs’ biography, I learnt that being open to ideas was key to becoming a good team member and consequently, a successful leader. I also realized that while disagreements were alright with me, they had to be bridged by building an overall consensus through healthy debates, sans my ego. Since then, I have improved at working with and leading teams through controlled aggression.
This aggressive exterior often belies my sensitive side. Having experienced premature baldness and the consequent social stigma during my adolescence, I grew empathetic towards others. I always try to lend a helping hand to people, especially those going through challenging times.
For it is in tackling challenges that I feel most at home. I can often be relentless when I set my mind on achieving a goal - be it turning around my business or living on 4$ a day during a cash-crunch at my previous company.
This intensity to succeed can sometimes be all-consuming. Much to the displeasure of my dear ones, I have struggled to maintain the proverbial work-life balance.
The balance has been absent emotionally too. I sometimes come across as being detached. While personally this has led to me being called emotionally unavailable, professionally it has helped me develop a thicker skin. This has helped me tackle stern leadership tests such as steering my team through the survival crisis at my previous startup.
Succeeding and failing in such crises has taught me to be more forgiving of myself when I don’t meet my own lofty standards. While mediocrity in efforts remains unacceptable, I have grown amenable towards failure.
Just as in Kintsugi, I have learnt to piece myself back together after failure, strengthened by the golden glue of learnings, and have emerged as an imperfect but better individual than I was before, ready to go the distance again. After all, quoting Steve Jobs, “We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?”
My first month at Example Foundation (EF) – At a remote village, I met 2-year-old Arpita. Severely malnourished, whimpering in pain, she could barely even cry. Her father forbade his wife from taking her to the hospital because of an ensuing election. He was promised $6 for two votes. Her anemic mother’s silence signaled acute lack of agency, while her eyes revealed deliberate female-child starvation. In that moment, my own privileged, urban upbringing flashed before me. I felt helpless, grateful, and ashamed, simultaneously.
Such instances made me question the sufficiency of EF’s standalone health-system strengthening interventions. Leading an analytical exercise across ~900 villages, I discerned rampant socio-economic barriers in >50% of them. I realized that to achieve impact, our supply-side interventions must be supported by a demand-side push, helping women tackle behavioral barriers. Working directly with the end-community was a huge change for EF. I felt overwhelmed, but equally excited about co-developing the solution and steering the organization through this untrodden path. In this journey, the leadership attributes I had developed over the years were tested, and further honed.
During my first MBB project, I had to build a complicated model. I struggled, but afraid to be viewed as incapable, didn’t seek help. A day before the client meeting, I presented the model, which was instantly rejected. My entire team pulled an all-nighter to fix it. I was in tears. My manager then, mentor now explained that sometimes saying “I don’t know” yields the best results. That stuck with me. In a later project, I faced a client team of 10 managers, at loggerheads with me and each other. A particularly hostile one asked, “My experience is twice your age, let’s see your great ideas.” I answered that I didn’t know but would love to ideate together. That started a great relationship! As I brought the managers together, I included their teams in ideations. This enhanced quality and I grew to appreciate the importance of building consensus across levels. The farewell that my client team hosted when I exited the project is one of my fondest ‘MBB memories’!
At EF, as a newcomer co-leading organizational change, I applied these learnings. I openly acknowledged my lack of sectoral knowledge and took the help of our field-staff to understand on-ground nuances. I welcomed diverse perspectives through an all-office ‘Idea-box’ and conducted multiple townhalls to build our new vision, democratically.
Carrying my “I don’t know” mindset to the field, I uncovered that solutions often lie with those closest to the problem. A few women who collectively advocated for a road spoke about how collectivization transformed their powerlessness. A lightbulb went off! We decided to activate and empower women’s groups in each village as vehicles for change. To implement, we needed to build a team with creativity, strategic thinking, and passion.
At X COLLEGE, I had developed the then-nascent Indian music club. A receiver of multiple offbeat opportunities during my 10-year musical journey, I bet on people with the right attitude vs. experience. I built and trained a team of rookies, who worked hard and brought novelty to our compositions. Within two years, we became one of the university’s most successful music clubs.
Leading hiring at EF, I realized that our sector-experienced hires were often rigid. Adapting my music club learning, I changed the team composition. Majority new hires I recruited were fresh graduates, or from different sectors. Collaborating with managers, I created synergistic learning mechanisms between the old and new guard. I further created a 25-member ‘Culture Change Champions’ group across EF, to perpetrate a culture of ownership bottom-up.
I often wondered how our field-team was handling these radical changes, and worried about them coping with the grim incidents they frequently encountered. I couldn’t sleep the day I met Arpita! I uncovered acute mental health issues in the team. Taking charge, I personally redesigned policies to address wellness. I instituted a long-term partnership for unlimited therapy services and launched a digital platform for people to appreciate and feel appreciated. The management was initially hesitant to spend. However, I believe that team’s happiness is non-negotiable. I pushed for what is ‘right’ by my people. It makes me immensely proud today to witness our new ethos – vibrant energy, never-ending ideas, and thought-provoking team discussions.
I am growing as a participative, empathetic, and curious leader, uncovering nuances of scalable impact. Working in rural India has been particularly transformative and humbling. Most importantly, I found my passion. I had let go of an opportunity to move to the MBB Chicago office to join EF, a grassroots non-profit. A few weeks after my first visit, I received a picture of a cheerful, healthy Arpita. The inexplicable feeling reinforced my true calling. I had learned in my economics classes about poverty, about anemia affecting 50% women, and 3 mothers dying every hour. Now I have faces to these statistics, making them infinitely more real. I hope to spend my one wild and precious life helping these faces live theirs.
I aspire to build a FemTech social enterprise for the ~300M marginalized women in India, giving them their health rights, and their voice. HBS, especially The Social Enterprise Initiative, will be the perfect catalyst, as it has been for NM (’XX). Having always learned the most from people around me, the Case and Field method will be a natural fit for me.
I have a dream, a bold one. An MBA from HBS will help turn that into reality, by nurturing me into an influential leader, innovator, and entrepreneur.
The biggest commitment I have made is to drive change at ground-level to elevate the underprivileged through education. As a child, my further often opined – “Every change begins with action”. And he lived his life staying true to those words.
When I was eight, my parents decided to fund a nearby village school despite their limited means. The school’s dilapidated state meant that my weekends were spent running errands in the school and as I got older, tutoring students. I was deeply inspired by Ruchi, a student whose drive, discipline, and ambition made me appreciate my blessings and work harder. Her excitement at being the first in her clan to graduate high school filled me with a swell of joy.
I knew then that I wanted to feel that joy repeatedly in my life. In dedicating myself to making a change lay my calling. And change, for me, is at ground-level.
In college I continued volunteering as a student teacher. I also discovered the unique art of “Nukkad Natak” or street theater. This distinct blend of dramatics and social messaging unleashed my voice, lending it greater purpose. I wrote and acted in 50+ plays with my troupe, tackling societal issues such as gender inequality, substance abuse, illiteracy, etc. I felt validated fulfilled when audience members, especially women, approached me post-performances saying they felt empowered to change their circumstances. Getting awarded as a youth changemaker by the government made my parents proud.
I considered full-time volunteering post college, but my dad urged to me reflect on making a bigger difference using technology. I concurred after some thought and pursued campus recruiting. The next four years were busy, balancing work, and volunteering. X and Y bettered my leadership, honed me analytically, and incepted benefits of scale and technology.
In 2022, I left my job to create a first-of-its-kind AI-tool that would teach and clarify the queries of rural students who wanted to learn but suffered from no teachers, a prevalent problem in India. I envisioned using Natural-Language-Processing and generative AI technology. The newness of the technology and limited resources of a non-profit made accessing expertise challenging and invited skepticism. Undaunted, I worked relentlessly, collaborating with multiple tech firms. The implementation, where I aimed to integrate the tool with WhatsApp, increased complexity. If successful, students would be able to message their queries into WhatsApp and receive detailed teacher-like responses. Planned launches got delayed multi-fold. I was asked to can the project. I pushed back. Six months later, we launched the tool with instant success. Adoption and usage metrics exponentially increased – student test scores dramatically improved. I now support thousands of Ruchis from their pocket.
Long-term, I aspire to build a social enterprise to mitigate rural students’ mental health. Yale SOM, especially course experiences such as Global Social Entrepreneurship: India, and Social Entrepreneurship lab and programs such as PSEII, will be the perfect catalyst for me to achieve this vision. An MBA from Yale will nurture me into an influential leader, innovator, and entrepreneur.
I grew up in a middle-class family in India in the 90s. I was one of two daughters. We lived in a huge government housing complex for Public Sector workers. Those three sentences contain the seeds of experience that shaped me into who I am today.
My parents choice to stop having more children after 2 daughters caused a rift between them and my grandparents who believed daughters to be less worthy than a son. They doubted that a girl could shoulder the burden of aging parents. This has fueled me to pursue my goals with a razor-sharp focus. Gifting my parents, a house has given me self-confidence to overcome my doubters.
My parents also inculcated that all good things have to be earned. This has formed the basis of all my pursuits. I have an unshakeable faith that there is no substitute for hard work and discipline. I am extremely diligent, be it professionally or in my personal relationships, believing in giving my best daily.
A consequence of this diligence is that I have been able to succeed in roles where I had to ensure mundane (but voluminous) tasks be performed, even while re-engineering the processes for greater efficiency within my teams.
The housing complex I grew up in exposed me to people from around the country. Adapting to this multireligious, multi-ethnic and multilingual environment I developed a strong sense of empathy. I try to understand why people behave the way they do even if it is alien to me. This attitude has helped me greatly in mentoring and leading my teams.
The 90s and early 2000s were also the high point of book readership in India. I developed a voracious reading habit and would compete with my friends to finish the latest, most anticipated books as soon as they released. I still carry with me the same attitude. What’s on the next page? How does this end? My curiosity means that I am the first to learn new tools, understand the nuances of new initiatives and strive to see the bigger picture.
However, this urge to reach the finish line makes me impatient. I developed a habit of committing slightly shorter timelines. A failed application release in the early days of my career made me realize how critical it is to pace oneself – it is also a form of discipline. I try to improve my patience at work by taking inspiration from my dancing sets where the most beautiful performances are only realized through hours of practice.
I value the relationships extremely dearly so I tend to avoid confrontation. However, having been part of a mentorship journey for a colleague who was struggling, I realized how frank and unflinching feedback helps people succeed. I now try to approach this objectively, making notes and worksheets to guide me through the conversation. Knowing what I want to say and making sure I have prepared how to say it lets me overcome my inhibitions.
My father lifted my family out of poverty through education. He put himself through engineering education by educating others, before finally landing a job in Saudi. He now gives back to his community in India by enabling the education of the needy and deserving. This is the prime maxim I hold dear: I must never stop learning, and I must always help by teaching.
At school, I was bullied and ostracised for being overweight by my schoolmates. This taught me two things. I learned to think independently and not be held back by pre-defined norms and expectations. This value eventually led me to pick a career very different from my family of 5 engineers. In my entrepreneurship journey, and work as a marketing consultant, practicing independent thought has allowed me to see gaps and opportunities which others do not.
The bullies inadvertently taught me the value of empathy: I was acutely aware of how hurtful people could be. I have found that this sense of empathy has helped me connect better with my students, clients, and co-workers and feel invested in their success. It motivates me to work harder daily.
In college, I started teaching my academically weaker college-mates and juniors. To my great satisfaction, I was good at it (just as my father had been) and turned it into a small revenue-stream. After college, when I returned to Saudi looking for an engineering job, I noticed the need in the market for tutors and founded an education company. I developed an extensive network of over 300 students and was recognised by a leading Saudi corporate. I was immensely gratified from seeing my students succeed. Unfortunately, there were gaps in my skillset which limited scaling and I had to wind up my tutoring business as I was starting to burn out.
This entrepreneurial journey taught me the importance of constant innovation and improvement. Now, if I am standing still, I consider it moving backwards. These values: helping others through education, empathy, thinking independently, and constant innovation have coalesced into a vision for my future.
Today, Saudi is under-served of quality teachers which directly affects student morale towards learning, leading to a poor literacy rate. My long-term goal is to create Saudi’s biggest education company. To achieve this, I have learnt marketing skills through my experience at Taurus. Now, I need to sharpen my business skillset, understand how enterprises run and scale across geographies. Thus, post-MBA, I aspire to join management consulting firms. A Kellogg MBA will bring me closer to my goal through the courses in the Growth and Scaling Pathway, the networking and diverse perspectives through events like KWEST, Kellogg Table and the intense case-training in the Consulting Club.
I vividly remember being gifted C programming books on my eighth birthday and leaping with joy when I successfully ran my first program, with the phrase “Hello World” flashing on the screen.
Numerous passion programming projects followed, helping me appreciate the efficiencies achieved through programming. The ‘Online Attendance and Quiz’ module developed as my undergraduation project, digitized a tedious process that would serve my university for years. The realization dawned – the prospect of making lives simpler through automation felt satisfying and I navigated my career in that direction. Since then, in my decade-long career, I have been the business liaison for technology solutions across various functions of investment banks. Given the rapid movement towards digitization globally in finance, I am keen to develop expertise at a strategic level to aid technology transformations across enterprises. Thus, post-MBA, I wish to transition towards working as a management consultant in London at the digital consulting practice of McKinsey, BCG or the technology consulting practices of Deloitte, PwC and strategically help enterprises adopt cutting-edge digital solutions.
In my career, I have worked across numerous banking functions where I have worked towards revamping numerous archaic IT systems used for core processes and almost always, the reason for outdated systems was the high scale/cost of transforming them. This context equips me to help businesses adopt an agile application ecosystem mindful to not just utilize the best of the technology available today but to also be adaptable to move with the future of technology.
In the last two years, the pandemic has inadvertently opened the doors for increased adoption of digital solutions such as Gpay and I have personally been involved in helping many people around me adopt these technologies, people who were previously unbanked. In the long term, I will utilize my experience and thought leadership to lead the India digital strategy team of financial enterprises pushing for solutions to facilitate the financial inclusion of the 60% unbanked population in India.
The LBA MBA program is the ideal platform to achieve these aspirations. The customizability offered by LBS in the second year would allow me to focus on courses like “Digital Strategy”, “Python in Finance” & “Fintech” to enhance my knowledge of tools impacting business transformation today. Through the Tech & Media Club, where I will take a leadership role, I can leverage my network to invite Innovation labs from banks at conferences like “Product@LBS”, to keep up-to-date with cutting-edge innovations in the industry. Being in London, being the global hub for finance, will allow me to take advantage of an internship and LondonCAP program, while also offering an opportunity to extend my network. The Consulting Club will provide an opportunity to practice cases with peers and attend various networking forums to interact with consulting firms, laying the base for my post-MBA aspirations. Additionally, with my experience of working in cross-cultural teams, immersing myself in interactions with the diverse cohort through career treks and projects will result in developing a more refined global outlook.
I found what matters to me on the soccer field. And why it matters to me as events unfolded.
When I returned to Saudi post-college, interviewing for engineering jobs, I ran into Fahd. I’d known Fahd, a Saudi boy, since we often played soccer. One night after a soccer game, he confided that he was preparing for his SAT and struggling. He wanted to be the first person in his family to go to college. I advised him to get a tutor but learnt that his family couldn’t afford the fee.
I offered to help him on quant topics. The next day, I spent an hour teaching him probability. There was an instant improvement. Over the next few weeks, as we worked through more topics, his problem-solving accuracy improved. His confidence shot up. Soon, I taught two of his friends. And then few more. The results were similar. I felt an extra layer of warmth that was beyond normal satisfaction.
Further conversations made me realize their school teaching pedagogies were archaic resulting in poor foundations for students. I connected-the-dots on why Saudi was facing a shortage of 700K+ skilled workers despite high literacy rates.
The following month, just as I’d received an offer letter from a coveted multi-national firm, Fahd’s parents enquired if I could teach their friend’s son. Recalling the warmth I’d left, I felt life had led me here to follow in my father’s footsteps.
My father lifted my family out of poverty through educating himself and subsequently educating others, inculcating values of always learning and helping by teaching. During college, I started teaching some peers and juniors. I was good at it and felt similar warmth.
I’d grown up seeing my father feel utterly satisfied at the success of his wards. When I conveyed my thoughts to him, he said, “X, that is the warmth of fulfillment. If you feel like being the Sutradhar of other people’s dreams, so be it”. The Sutradhar is an ancient Indian clan of builders responsible for some of India’s finest monuments.
Feeling inspired, I rejected the offer and pursued teaching full-time.
I agreed to teach the friend’s son 1-1, charging a nominal fee. Quickly, I developed a small clientele. I officially founded Y, and I tapped my network to spread the word. When Fahd scored 1500 on his SAT, I still remember him tearfully conveying that I’d enabled his dream. Six months in, more success stories followed. I expanded my team as we clocked 600+ students. I remember feeling exhausted but oh-so fulfilled. A landmark moment was when Saudi Aramco contacted me to lead their CSR scholarship program, the only non-American tutor chosen. It was a landmark milestone as a team and we grew strength-to-strength thereafter.
A year later, I began to dream bigger. I wanted to revamp Saudi’s education system from ground-up.
But I was wrong. I could not sustain what we had built. The pace started to take a physical toll. Scaling was a challenge. As a small team, we couldn’t enroll students beyond a threshold. Onboarding other quality tutors proved challenging. In hindsight, my hesitation to delegate played a part but student experience was top of my mind. Eventually we burnt out. I also realized that there was a mismatch between my vision to build a big business and my raw business skill set. Thus, we shut operations. It was painful, having to say no to approaching students.
I subsequently transitioned to Taurus with the view of building a functional skillset, refining my marketing skills, learning people management, leading large teams, and managing diverse stakeholders.
I remain determined to build Saudi’s largest education company. I have a dream, a bold one. An MBA from Yale will help turn that into reality, by fostering skills of being an influential leader, innovator to become the Sutradhar enabling dreams of all the other Fahd’s.
