IIM Ahmedabad hosted its first session on Women Leadership Lecture series at the Vastrapur campus on Monday. The auditorium was packed with students from across the city and the event saw participation from colleges such as MICA, B.K. School of Management and Nirma Institute of Technology. The speaker session was organised jointly by IIMA’s Women’s Leadership Society and Confluence - IIMA’s business school summit – which is to be held later this year.

Some of the women leaders who attended the event include Ruchi Kalra, Associate Partner with McKinsey and Company; Guntaz Randhawa, Brand Manager at HUL; Neetu Vasanta, Principal with the Boston Consultancy Group; Meetali Jain, Vice-President in the Investment Banking team at Bank of America Merrill Lynch; and Sonali Dhawan from P&G India.

The talk began with a simple idea, “You can only change what you are aware of”. Dhawan of P&G added impetus to the discussion by exploring diversity and inclusion. “If your company leadership wants to choose from all the best you have, you need to be inclusive and support this diversity in your organisations,” she said.

McKinsey’s Kalra supported the statement by citing company statistics. She added, “Organisations start with 40 per cent women and have only 3 per cent women in the top leadership. No organisation can afford to waste so much talent.”

BOA’s Jain said, “A leader is anyone who has a vision and can communicate this vision to otherwise. If it can be articulated so simply, why does one then need to distinguish between male and female leadership.”

Dhawan described, the essence of the session was to understand that women need to ‘lean in’ and take up matters in their hands. Every woman has a right to ‘Expect more’.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW