Smart "Power women"

By Saheer
It was a unique but quite an informal platform where the women professionals from different walks of the IT industry shared to each other their professional and personal experiences.
Though it was a working day, around 500 women could not help making it to the 'Women 2.0' conference conducted by The Smart Techie magazine, a sister publication of siliconindia at Dr Ambedkar Bhavan in Bangalore.

Chitra Kasthuri, IPRC-VP, Alcatel Lucent set a befitting start to the event by delivering a fantastic inaugural key note in a style of mind boggling narration. She urged the packed audience to dare to dream and be ready to make difficult decisions. "Take up jobs which other people don't want to. Because either you succeed or lose, you stand to gain," she said.

The first panel discussion at the event was on the topic, Ascending the Corporate Ladder. Jessie Paul, Chief Marketing Officer, Wipro Technologies; Mrinalini Ingram, Senior Director, Finance, Globalization Center East, Cisco; Vidya Srinivasan, Finance Controller, Global Engg. Center, Sun Microsystems and Vidya Nagaraj, Senior Director - Products & Services, Oracle were the speakers in the panel. The importance of networking among women was the major point figured in this discussion.

The discussion was followed by a keynote from Sharada Satrasala, Director, Strategic Supplier Management, TI. A catch word in the speech of Sharada was 'negotiate.' "Women are facing huge barriers in their day to day life. They have been assigned with multi-tasks of doing office work, and in the meantime, taking care of their domestic activities and feeding their kids. The only way to manage these barriers is to negotiate. Then they can see their life moving in a perfectly smooth way," she said.

Dr. Ramanujan Kashi, Senior Research Scientist, Avaya India spoke about the technology and solutions, which address the challenges in providing an environment for flexible work hours. Another speaker of the event was Vani Kola, Managing Director, India, NEA-IndoUS Ventures. As many speakers she also touched upon the management of work-life balance, a topic most pertaining to women. "As far as women are concerned, two things are needed to be addressed quickly: increasing attack against them and the matter of giving them the opportunity to make their own choices", she opined.

Second panel discussion of the event was on the topic 'Women's Work: The Great Juggling Act.' Akila Krishnakumar, CEO SunGard Offshore Services; Bharati Jacob, Managing Partner, Seedfund; Nita Goyal, co-founder & VP-product development, Tavant Technologies and Sapna Maheswari, Developer, ThoughtWorks Technologies were the speaker in this discussion. The message from this panel was that the most suited area in the industry for women is entrepreneurship. The panel urged them to get out of comfort zone and take risk to be good entrepreneurs.

Second panel discussion of the event was on the topic 'Women's Work: The Great Juggling Act.' Akila Krishnakumar, CEO SunGard Offshore Services; Bharati Jacob, Managing Partner, Seedfund; Nita Goyal, co-founder & VP-product development, Tavant Technologies and Sapna Maheswari, Developer, ThoughtWorks Technologies were the speaker in this discussion. The message from this panel was that the most suited area in the industry for women is entrepreneurship.

The panel urged them to get out of comfort zone and take risk to be good entrepreneurs. Aparna Pujar, Director - Media Products, Yahoo India also talked about the need of the women to be big entrepreneurs. "But there may be challenges in the life of each woman techie. But we need to look out for challenges, and to get over them in order to be eminent leaders in whatever segments we are working in within the industry," she added.

C Mahalingam (Mali), EVP & Chief People Officer, Symphony Services, who is also a well-versed writer, spoke on the topic 'Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Managing the Glass Cliff.' He had the audience laughing through out his presentation, a perfect proof for the effectiveness of his lively words. "The concept of glass ceiling does not exist in reality anymore, at least among woman techies. All talks about this concept are merely perceived ones. Ladies need to understand this fact and grow up instead of getting stranded in a condition called 'learned helplessness'," he said.

Third panel discussion was on the topic The 'Innovators'. Parvathi Menon, Senior Consultant, Erehwon Innovation Consulting; Hema Mani, Manager- Human Resources, Honeywell; Mangala Gowri, Research Scientist - India Research Labs, IBM; Vasantha Erraguntla, Senior Engineering Manager, Intel and Geetha Manjunath, Senior Research Scientist, HP Labs India. According to this panel, innovation was something related to the life of each and every individual. He or she does not want to find a particular time for doing innovation. It brings satisfaction rather than monetary benefit.

Closing key note was given by Pamela Kumar, Director - India STG Engineering Labs, IBM. Giving an example from Mahabharatha, she compared Krishna to a powerful Manager and Arjuna to a brainy Technologist and said that the battle of challenges can be won when these two come together. "Be passionate about what you do and keep it simple, stupid," she added.
Courtecy:- www.siliconindia.com