Episode 15: Merlia Shaukath

She has witnessed her grandmother and mother take reins almost overnight of a cement business that her grandfather left behind. She’s never been afraid to take the road less traveled and explore non-traditional career trajectories. The guest on our show today is Neha Inamdar, who is the Director of Data Science & Analytics at Fresh Gravity. From a successful and a high flying career in management consulting to finding gratification working at non-profits, from living and working in the US to finding her home in Pune, she’s not the norm, but an exception.

She’s not afraid to recall one of the most painful memories from her childhood of being bullied as a kindergartner. She has seen male allyship in action way before the term was even coined, watching her dad support her mom’s entrepreneurial pursuit. As a pre-teen she made trips to newspaper mandi’s at 4 am to negotiate pamphlet prices with the vendors. The guest on our show today is Nischala Agnihotri (Director of Marketing at Insightly Analytics) who loves to call herself a Story Scientist.

Born to a punjabi mother and a Tamilian dad, it was both fun and challenging to dabble between two cultures that could not be more different from each other. She fit in neither but she was both, she spoke neither languages, but people assumed she spoke both. In 7th grade she knew that she wanted to be a clinical psychologist.

“My career has been a series of "foolishly brave moves' and when I look back, I wouldn't have it any other way”. These are the words of our guest today, Arundhati Kumar who is the founder and the creative force behind her sustainable accessories brand BEEJ. Born to a punjabi father and a bengali mother, she’s taken the calm of her dad and the grit & go-getter spirit of her mum. She is a dreamer, a dancer, a designer but more importantly, an achiever. Arundhati has spent 18 years working across industries as a senior HR professional with various Indian and Global organizations including ITC Hotels, ICICI Bank, Deutsche Bank, Condé Nast before she decided to make a career pivot by launching her own #sustainability brand. She lives by the theory of #onelifeliveit and has created the life she wanted for herself. She candidly shares how she had to fight the inner demons first as she decided to end her marriage before she could get her family to see her point of view. Her advice of separating the ‘parent’ from the ‘spouse’ in order to successfully raise children in a #coparenting arrangement is raw, vulnerable and comes straight from heart. Without really saying anything, she is raising a daughter who believes that she can achieve anything and everything.

Despite growing up in a progressive household where her parents, especially her mother did everything to make sure she received the best in class education & became financially independent, the awareness that “I am a girl” didn’t escape her after she reached a certain age. She seethed with anger when she was told she can’t do a certain thing because of her gender. Thankfully, her response was not compliance, in fact it was just the opposite. She did things because she was told it was hard for girls to do them. The guest on our show today is Sudha Ranganathan, Director of Product Marketing at LinkedIn.