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 12
10th August, 2022
Episode 12: Rhea Mehta
From landing a job in NY that allowed her to be in the presence of executives of Fortune 100 companies to willingly choosing to work at the intersection of impact, tech and healthcare in a developing economy, she’s probably seen it all. Guest on our show today is Rhea Mehta, who I have had the privilege to know through our work together as colleagues at Shortlist. Sharing a seat on the leadership table in a company that at the time had 60% women leadership was definitely a humbling experience that we both cherish. Today, Rhea is growing Navya, a cancer informatics company in India by leading partnerships, fundraising, building a team and a lot more. In the conversation today, she talks about how her liberal and protected upbringing didn’t necessarily prevent her from falling into the trap of cultural stigmas and social conditioning around gender roles where she’s often the one responsible for laundry & playdates for kids whereas her husband is responsible for fixing a piece of furniture or the other supposedly man-appropriate chores at home. She talks about how she defines success for herself, how she is trying to balance her own start-up career with equally demanding career aspirations of her husband, and almost daily questioning why extremely talented mothers around her had to quit their corporate careers after embracing motherhood. In the episode today, we will uncover how despite the place of privilege Rhea comes from where it would be easier to quit work if she ever chose to, she continues to fight for the balance between her own aspirations as a professional, her responsibilities as a mother while being a supportive and available partner to her husband.
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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.
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.
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