Success mantras of four top women bankers

Milestones that changed my game

Naina Lal Kidwai talks of her early turning points citing them as a most critical. "Those come in the form of breaks, in terms of career movement or the first support you see from a boss or a mentor which enables you to take the plunge as large steps." In her case it came when she was asked to head the investment bank at Grindlays, which was the largest of the foreign banks in India at the time. "It was a big step for the organisation and for me. I was taking over from someone who was 10-12 years older. I felt a bit like a gold fish in a bowl. It was scary yet one of those opportunities was a real turning point. It established that I could lead and gave me a chance to move into other leadership roles." Those early steps and the ability to deliver are key to the future of any leader she insists. "Some of the turning points could be failures, mistakes made that you can remedy and move ahead."

What's work-life balance

"I hardly ever knew what work-life balance meant as for me it was always work," Kalpana Morparia, chairperson of JPMorgan says it like it is. But her drive and interest in the work has never been divorced from how others see themselves. As a solid professional and leader, Kalpana allowed her teams to grow and maintain a healthy work-life balance. But in the quest for the same, she insists on not losing sight and keeping ambitions burning. 'Feel the drive to make your company win. For you to say if I do this job I won't be fair to my child or in-laws or whatever, it's not that way. You can figure it out. So just don't give up. Seek help. You don't have to always go through challenges or experiences yourself. You can learn from the experiences of others. So don't give up."

Team player

Arundhati Bhattacharya is a task master. Her dogged push to sort out nonperforming assets in banks is now well established. Bhattacharya is known to be a team player and her followers believe she has a unique ability to keep relationships with every constituent of banking from customers, employees to regulators. A champion of women at work, she believes having women on board is advantageous because they play a harmonizing role and are better listeners. She's been quoted saying no society can call itself truly progressive and developed, if its women are not given equal opportunities to participate and show their worth. She makes special effort to bring fair access to means and opportunities for women.

Take more risk
"If I was to go back to being an 18-year-old today, I would take more risk and experiment is a little more. What's increasingly becoming more important now is what you do rather than just how you do it, in an ethical way," says Anuranjita Kumar, chief HR officer-India at Citibank. In addition to this, she advocates a great degree of clarity and purpose for anyone who is entering entrepreneurship or any form of work. "I think having clarity of where you are headed, is important. Directionally one should know where one is headed." Kumar calls diversity as another cornerstone of her beliefs. "The idea is well beyond just gender diversity and includes generational diversity, regional diversity and much more."