Sector: Finance
Total work experience: Around 8 years
Personal interests: Watching lots and lots of movies.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your professional life after the ISB.

Prior to the ISB, I had done an MBA programme from a B-school in Bangalore. While it was a recognised institute, it did not have the kind of brand value that the ISB has, and also since I enrolled for the MBA programme immediately after my BCom., it felt like an extended graduation degree. This reality hit harder when I started working with 3M, which was a campus job, following which I moved to GE.

I decided then to go back to B-school, but this time to one which offered a more practical programme, (not just a lot of theory!), had a better brand and also helped build a valuable network. At the time I considered applying to the ISB, I also looked at other schools in the US, but since the ISB’s admission confirmation came in much sooner than others, I needed to decide quickly. The fact that the ISB had partnered with top global B-schools, at a time when no other school in India had done anything like that, offered world class infrastructure coupled with a one-year programme and was looking at applicants with work experience and diverse backgrounds, made it exciting and also made my decision easier (of course the competitive fees, compared to US schools, also helped!)

I did not come to the ISB with the intent of switching professions or doing something drastically different post ISB. I think I really wanted to just take away the experience of the year itself, so I was under no pressure to do specific courses, and instead could opt for those courses which interested me. I did a lot of finance courses, even though I was not necessarily looking for a finance job. In that way, I really enjoyed what the ISB’s programme had to offer.

When campus placements started, it was very interesting to see how many HR roles were on offer, though there were only a couple of us with an HR background. However, I was very keen to do HR Consulting, so I got in touch with someone from the previous batch working with Hewitt, and managed to get an off campus job with them, while ISB placements were still going on. After working with Hewitt for a year, I had an offer to join J P Morgan, based out of Mumbai. I joined them as an HR Associate, supporting their knowledge centre, and in the last five years I have been with them, I have had the opportunity to grow within the system and today I am a VP HR, supporting their front office IB businesses.

What was your key takeaway from the ISB?

We had a lot of visiting professors in the time that I was on campus. The concept that you could get face-time with professors who were considered the best in class in those particular courses, and that they were able to come down and teach us, was amazing. Even the approach to teaching was very practical and ‘real world,’ which was exactly what I was looking for. My only regret is that I didn’t really make enough use of all the facilities that the ISB had to offer, especially the Learning Resource Center. Now when I look back at all the resources that I had access to, i.e., the innumerable databases, research material, etc., it is simply phenomenal. The school offers you a lot by way of resources, infrastructure and opportunities - it is up to you what you take away from it. Our batch was also very rightly sized, with about 219 students, making us a close-knit group. This helped us learn a lot from the other students as well, essentially because you could interact, know more about where they had come from, what it is they do, etc..

How has the ISB contributed to your career growth?

It has definitely added brand value to my resume. The ISB has also influenced my style of thinking. I don’t remember every detail of every course that I took there, but there is an underlying approach to thinking, structuring that I took away.

What is your vision for the School? What are the strengths that the school can leverage upon and areas it can improve on?

I would like to see the school being respected in the corporate world. I want corporates to associate students from the ISB with certain values or a certain ability to deliver, which today we are still very weak on.

We also need to relook at the current strategy to increase the student intake. It’s too much too soon.A lot of the US schools have a large number of students, but they have done it over a longer period of time. It is easy to get a thousand people through the door but we have to be wary of compromising on quality of input, as this eventually impacts the output, which in turn affects perception, ability to place students, and the overall experience. I respect having a diverse class, just as much as the next person, but we need to ensure that we get the mix right.

What do you think is the alumni’s role in building the school?

If we have the right alums stepping out, they definitely bring credibility in the companies that they are in, so this translates into the companies considering the ISB as a place where they can source great talent. The other thing that alums can do, (and they do already do that), is transferring whatever real world input that they have back to the students on campus. Students at the ISB are people with experience, so they are not completely unaware of what’s out there, but they come here with great, sometimes maybe even unrealistic, expectations. While the ISB can help you move a step or two ahead of where you came from, it cannot transform everything in one year. It is easy to be shut off from the real world in a campus like this. Alums can bring in bit of a reality check.

What was your favourite place on campus?

The atrium, the terrace, the LRC, and of course, my SV, SV-3, was fantastic, (and the best! :)).

Anything else that you would like to add about the ISB?

Of course I love ISB for the fact that I met my husband there, who was my class mate, so that is something I can definitely thank the school for!

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