At BrilliantRead Media, we always strive to bring meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community. As part of this endeavour, we invited Deepika Chawla for an exclusive interview with us. Deepika is a Mentor, Entrepreneur, Leader, Speaker, Moderator and Vice President in Fortune 100 company. Let’s learn more about her incredible journey, background, and advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Deepika:
We are aware of your contributions to the ecosystem; talk us through your background and your journey, please.
I am a businesswoman, presently a Vice President in a Fortune 100 Company having 28+ years of rich global experience in Business Transformation & Governance, Financial Shared Services, Banking operations, Inclusion & Diversity & People Leadership. I am a Qualified Chartered Accountant. I have worked with brands like HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank Ltd and SPIC group of companies.
After my CA I was in Chennai and started my career with Foresight Financial Services Company (a SPIC group of companies) and in a year’s time opened their office in New Delhi and learnt Entrepreneur skills by setting up, hiring, running the office at an age of 24years.
In two years, I joined Times Bank (Now HDFC Bank) as an Assistant Manager. I worked for 1 year took a break of a year as I had to relocate to Switzerland with my husband with my first child who was 10 months old and we did not want to live separately with a small baby. Came back and I was offered to work with Times Bank again due to my customer focus and relationship management skills. I was also learning the skills of a mother of two children alongside.
In a year’s time, I moved to ICICI Bank and worked with them for 6+ years. Learned marketing, business development, Control & Compliance, Relationship management, Personal branding and many more skills. As I had done front end retail branching there was a keen interest in learning Backend and hence joined a Fortune 100 company which again contributed to helping me grow and become the leader and Human Being who I am today. Along my career journey, I have been extremely passionate for women & society. With extensive work experience, my colleagues see me as the powerhouse, diva, role model and a great mentor.
I have won various recognitions for promoting Diversity in the workplace & Society. I have been named as one of the 25 inspiring women in the Coffee Book ‘Big Dreams Bigger Achievement’s and won Champion Award from ‘We Are The City, Organization in collaboration with EY for her passion and 50 under 50 achievers award for resilience and tenacity in supporting diversity.
I am humbled to be admired as an inspiring leader for mentoring Youth/next-generation leaders across organizations & colleges where I contribute as a speaker or a panellist. I am a TEDx speaker where I spoke for the youth on the Prevailing Presence of Passion. I am also the creator of Speak Up Lady Mentoring Program for mid-management women. I have been mentoring for 15+ years, this program I started last year and this month I complete 100 women in the first year.
The program is designed to help women get the confidence to speak up in personal and professional life, work on Personal brands, build professional relationships and design a career roadmap for themselves.
I also support multiple NGOs of Cancer, Education & Thalassemia including being on the advisory board of one of them. I am married and a mother of 3 children, son 26 years, a Daughter of 22 years and a beagle of 9 years old.
How did you discover your passion?
I am a vivacious person. Over the last 28 years of my life journey including my career, I have learnt that I get energy from people around me.
In 2013 one of my mentors asked me to introduce myself and I shared where I work and what are my skills in that job. He said that’s your job, but you are more than your job. Who are you? What is your story and that triggered me to challenge myself to know myself, know my story, how can I use my strengths to make an impact and create leaders. I brought my wholesome Authentic self forward and my journey became more impactful. Thanks to the mentors in my life who navigated me through my dreams
I believe that you don’t have to wait for retirement to discover or live your passion. The new generation lives this better.
How do you manage to keep going despite the challenges? What drives you?
What has kept me going is I fall in love very often (oh my god what would you think ?) that’s the point I fall in love not necessarily with a person but with an idea, a dream an ambition …and then I follow the way it becomes the reason for me to wake up in the morning with a smile. Excited about what the day has to bring. Bring it on I say!
Being “Passionate” about what I do, being Resilient, Tenacious, and having Self Belief keeps me going.
Empowering others, challenging the status quo, breaking stereotypes about leadership, and seeing them grow to keep motivating me to do more and more. Every time a mentee of mine comes and shares her achievement or success story I feel more empowered to drive more impact.
What keeps you going every single day?
RESILIENCE and a passion to achieve something. You learn from Environment and one of the raw materials, FOAM in the factory (I ran a factory for my dad at the age of 18 years) taught me how to take pressure but be back to your form when the pressure is taken away.
Sitting there you may also be going through tough times and wonder if you can go. Well let me reassure you, we all have resilience and if you have not found yours yet, you haven’t dug deep enough, so keep digging.
Please share with us a unique challenge you faced in your early career?
Well, I want to share a part of my life which influenced my life and made me passionate. My life has never been all Plain sailing. Good and bad things have happened to me, but from every situation, I have learnt something about myself.
Learning has no age and passion to learn helps you to learn new things every day.I was 18 years old and due to a series of extreme unforeseen circumstances, I found myself running my family’s business as well as trying to get an education. Imagine a factory employing 100 seasoned workers, multiple dealers, and the manufacturing industry.
I look back and wonder how I did it. I can’t tell you how many times a day I questioned my ability to do the job, I even cried myself to sleep asking God why me. I was young; none of my friends was doing this. Hardcore workers, if I fail I would fail my family, the business may shut down, it would have huge implications.
I learned fast and made tons of mistakes. But I did it. And after 12 months life returned to normal. My father came to work and I was able to focus on my studies.
Who do you believe has been the biggest source of motivation in your daily life?
Difficult one since a lot of people has made that impact. Let me share some –
(1) My parents who taught me to work hard and not to give up – Being Passionate & Tenacious
(2) My children whose reverse mentoring upskill me daily and teaches me to Unlearn and Learn
(3) My mentors who recognize my strengths and opportunities
(4) My husband who lets me be ME
(5) My faith in God (Sai) who creates the Self Belief
What are some of the strategies that you believe have helped you grow as a person?
I unlearn & learn every day. Some of the strategies which helped me to grow are:
> How is more important than What. What will happen irrespective but how you treat people will be remembered forever.
> Surrounding yourself with the right mix of mentors called your Board of Directors
> Taking extreme ownership and responsibility for my actions
> Being Courageous & Humble
> Accepting Change and being flexible. Unlearn – Learn
> Practice Inclusive leadership everywhere – live the value
You are always positive and motivated, what keeps you going?
In today’s competitive work environment, our greatest untapped resource is our own motivation. The following have helped me:
– Understand your why. Being clear about what you’re working for can give you the stimulus to stay on course.
– Define your goal, create a clear vision, draw the big picture, and break your goals into tasks and then Action.
– Keep it positive. Positive thoughts lead to positive actions, and self-affirming statements will help you to achieve your best. (example listen to a positive podcast, surrounding yourself with motivated people)
– When stuck, think about how you solved similar problems earlier or explore a new way
– Tackle procrastination head-on.
– Starve your distractions. Do what you need to do to stop being distracted by people, tasks, or electronics. Stay in the zone.
– Choose success. Choose to be successful, then stick to your choice and see it through to a conclusion. Visualize yourself succeeding. #Breakyourbias
– Remember, motivation starts within. Find it, keep it and make it work for you.
In your opinion, what are the keys to success?
Definition of success is different for everyone. For me, it’s been different, how?
(i) Having Self Belief, being Tenacious & Resilient
(ii) Be Passionate & Compassionate
(iii) If you need support raise a hand and ask for help
(iv) External Perspective
(v) Being Accountable
(vi) Challenging the status Quo – creating new ideas
(vii) Having a Dream and then putting an end date to the dream
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
~ Be the Authentic YOU
~ Be confident of your qualification and knowledge
~ For women – Don’t try to copy men, as women we have lots of strengths and use them. Be your unique self. Use inspiring leaders irrespective of gender to inspire yourself.
~ Don’t live in assumptions that I cannot do this
~ Be fearless to ask at home and in-office what you want
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
