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.
Episode 18
29th November, 2022
Episode 18: Sudha Ranganathan
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. She’s based in San Francisco with her husband and her 7 yr old son. In our conversation today, she recalls times when every Indian girl was told what to do and what not to do when they got their periods. She cringes at the instances of how public spaces for her meant she needed to wear her backpack as an armor on her chest to avoid getting violated. She remembers the times when she saw her mother as a person first beyond the role she played which helped her humanize her parents as people, something she hopes her son does too. She talks about how strategically she has invested time and effort to find her tribe and community as she has moved continents and countries. She ponders over the identity crisis people suffer from when they train their minds with the narrative of “I am because of what I do”. If you are looking to find a career coach or a life coach, you cannot miss the part where she talks about the differences between the two and the process of finding meaning & purpose. She dispenses perspective (not advice) on how fence sitters can think about parenthood. She challenges all conventional wisdom that boxes us into what we should be instead of what we want to be. She also touches upon a lot of relatable aspects of growing up in India, choices to pursue education, choices to work, marry and have children and most importantly finding “purpose & self” in the process.
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Credits
Sound Engineer
Shrey Tiwari
Producer
Vedant Naik
Recording Studio
Manic Pod studio, Chembur
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.
We only realize it much later that our parents were human beings too who were merely playing the role of a mother or a father, struggling to give us their very best. In the conversation today, Aarthi talks fondly about her mother, who was the force beneath her wings, fiercely prodding her to become financially independent.
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