Ep. 91: Deepika Chawla - Women in Finance

Deepika Chawla is a business woman, presently serving as Vice President of a Fortune 100 company. With 27+ years of rich and diverse work experience in Financial Shared Services and Banking Industry, Deepika believes She believes “Your legacy is in the leaders you create and the knowledge you share”. She is a Qualified Chartered Accountant who is extremely passionate about supporting women and the community she serves. Deepika has won various recognitions for promoting Diversity in the workplace & society.  She has been named as one of the 25 most inspiring women in the Coffee Book ‘Big Dreams Bigger Achievement’s and has also been decorated with the Champion Award from ‘We Are The City, Organization in collaboration with EY, for her passion, resilience and tenacity in supporting diversity. She is actively involved in mentoring youth / next generation leaders across organizations & colleges and has attended a number of events at various universities and colleges as a speaker and panelist. A TEDx speaker, Deepika supports multiple NGO’s of Cancer, Education & Thalassemia and is also on the advisory board of two of them. A mother of two children - boy 24 and girl 20 - she recently celebrated 27 years of marriage.
Contact Deepika Chawla: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepika-chawla-181a319/

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Adam: (00:00)
 Welcome to episode 90. One of Count Me In, IMA's a podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and I'm here to introduce you to our next featured guest Deepika Chawla. Deepika is a senior finance professional and qualified chartered accountant in India. She currently serves as the vice president of a fortune 100 company and has over 27 years of diverse work experience in financial services and the banking industry. In this episode, she speaks with my cohost Rouba Zeidan about her journey to the top, and the challenges she and other women face in the finance industry to hear Deepika’s, perspective on how women can make the most out of their careers and finance, keep listening as we head over to the conversation now.

Rouba: (00:55)
So good afternoon, Deepika, thank you so much for joining us.

Deepika: (01:01)
Hi Rouba, thank you so much for having me here to talk something, which I am so passionate about.

Rouba: (01:09)
Same here. I'm looking forward to your thoughts and your experience. So, women in Asia occupied just 1.1% of CEO and CFO positions and country held positions, according to a 2012 capitalist study, why do you think that is?

Deepika: (01:29)
Yeah, good question, and really close to a lot of women's heart. So, most of the people feel that women spend more time performing unpaid work in childcare and housework and may not be able to handle a senior position. Remember they feel that they may not be able to handle this a senior position. Not to shatter the unconscious bias that assumes women should be the sole caregiver or associated with housework organizations should really create a safe and inclusive workplace where men feel comfortable being with [inaudible] and do duties and household activities, giving both men and women an equal opportunity to look at their by supporting each other. Now, really from that perspective, it is so very important that that comfort should be there to the women that they can go and work or, you know, they could be CEOs and CFOs because somebody else can do the caregiver job. Now, secondly, as you go higher women themselves have self-doubts and this will come into our conversation very often because whether they can do the job or not, and they hold back because that is very, very important. They have this self-doubt. Should I be perfect before I applied to a job? While men, at the same time even if they are at a 60% at that job, they convince you that they're the right candidate. And thirdly, and lastly, in my mind, you know, unless the top leadership does not drive the message, this may still go on as these numbers, only what you shared with me. Whichever news you're hearing today, whether it is Uber, Fidelity, lots of companies or, you know, otherwise senior women positions are coming up. When you open the LinkedIn these days, you would see one announcement or the other coming. Now that's primarily because the top, you know, the top leadership approach is to focus on the, the women candidate on the CEO positions. So, I think that's really important. And in my early career, I have seen women having children and taking promotions in the same year. So, you need both the women and the company, and of course the men to believe in that they can do it. So really that is what I think.

Rouba: (04:07)
Makes a lot of sense, actually. I mean, that's, that was a, I'm going to ask you a bit more about your personal experience as a seasoned professional who's been at the forefront of your sector throughout your career. How do you find the industry has changed over the last 20 years? And what are some of the plus points that you've noticed, which mark positive elements of change, evolution and progress.

Deepika: (04:34)
Yeah. Good question, you know, because, let me share because it's important to let people know, and they say, you know, women shouldn't share the age and I always feel very proud of sharing that. So 27 years back Rouba, I'm 51 now this year, but 27 years back when I completed my chartered accountancy, I was really one of those few women who was trying to enter the finance field and not to an MBA, but see basically like a CPA from US, right, or a CA in India. And when I went on to do my first job, I landed up in a different city from my hometown, and trust me, I went through interviews where they actually called me to say, we don't hire women, and I was in shock.  Big, big financial companies. And, I had just completed my CA. I was one 22 and a half years old, and I was in shock. I thought I was like super. And it had really hit me hard, but really, I'm not going to get a job up to doing such a qualification. And from there to where now the plus points, which I noticed to the journey, which I had, and now where we see, we are creating flexible and adaptive operating models, right? We, as companies, we are actually saying focus on diversity. In India, diversity primarily is gender that, right? And then you go on to other things, but primarily first you're looking at women because that itself is a small number. And today we actually have our own focus, making sure that you have equal number of CVs on the table so that you give an equal opportunity to them, right? You ensure that at least they get a proportion to be interviewed, and then you keep tracking till the end to see how many people were hired and was there, you know, some biasness of making, you know, not having always  men into the positions. So that's the second piece. The first one was creating flexible and adaptive operating models that, which never existed that today you would have a daycare center in a lot of cities, right? Under the place of work, where you can think in nuclear families that I can leave my child and pick it up. Virtual has become a very big reality. This is a good opportunity also that I can work, and I can take care of also.  Third is really drawing on nontraditional resources and partnerships. Where I really want to bring the focus on that, you know, we never used to look at secondary means where we want to get women back, but a lot of finance companies are looking at women coming back, from there, after childbirth, or if they have taken a break for getting married at or whatever. It is promoted, it is really well accepted. Adopting a growth and innovation mindset. Which is from the company's mindset, also...