BONUS | Sangeeta Shankaran Sumesh - Women in Finance

Contact Sangeeta Sumesh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sangeetasumesh/
Sangeeta's Website: http://sss.coach/
"What the Finance" Book: https://www.amazon.in/What-Finance-Easy-learn-entrepreneurs/dp/1645467961

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Adam: (00:00)
Welcome back to Count Me In. IMA's podcast about all things affecting the accounting and finance world. This is Adam Larson, and I'm your host who will be introducing you to our bonus episode's guest speaker, Sangeeta Shankaran Sumesh. Sangeeta is a chartered accountant and management accountant with over two decades of experience, including leadership positions with multinationals across geographies, and most recently serving as executive director and CFO of Dun & Bradstreet Technologies. In this conversation by cohost Rouba Zeidan talks with Sangeeta about various aspects of being an influential woman in finance, including gender equality, rising up the corporate ladder and the importance of leadership and career optimization amid COVID-19. So to hear more, let's head over to their conversation now.

Rouba: (00:59)
So good morning Sangeeta, and thank you so much for joining us on Count Me In’s podcast this morning.

Sangeeta: (01:07)
Very good morning Rouba. It is great to connect with you, and pleasure being on your show.

Rouba: (01:13)
So I have so many questions for you because India is one of our biggest regions for IMA globally, and we're very keen to learn more about your experience as a seasoned finance professional and a woman. So women in finance in India represent a mere 11% compared to 16% globally. I personally find these figures a little shocking and an indication that much work, I mean, even on the global stage, don't get me wrong and that much work still needs to be done to establish gender equality within the finance sector. But what comes to mind when I mentioned this to you? I mean, what is your takeout from this.

Sangeeta: (01:50)
To be honest I find it ironical and surprising as well because you're right to say that the percentage is pretty less, but you know, if you look at women, I think woman are actually so good with money management. It is woman who are actually running them,  how big or small the budget, maybe, you know, they like to fit everything in within that, and it's so beautiful and they're so efficient and they don't even need assistance there. To come to think, logically speaking, there must be a lot more women in finance, which I find it surprising that it's not the case. But having said that I think  there are a lot more of the women who are a lot younger who want to get into finance, and I think there are  already quite a few of them in the finance domain compared to lets say a you know few decades ago. So in that way, it's kind of promising, and I think it all it needs is I think most women have to overcome this mental resistance. I think some of them tend to get bogged down because if you look at the CFO's nominee, you know the number two position, you know right hand of the CEO and stuff like that, so woman need to come out of this mental resistance and at the same time, I think they need a lot more motivation and they need to be encouraged by the seniors, the male colleagues, and definitely their family as well.

Rouba: (03:08)
From your personal experience. Have there been any particular challenges that you faced when it came to promotions and climbing up the corporate ladder? I mean, as you mentioned, it's important to have a support system at home, as well as within the companies that you work in, but for you personally, how has it been? Has there been a limitation and you know, the, the facilitation of you're climbing up that ladder, professionally?

Sangeeta: (03:31)
I think I have been really blessed, you know, because the kind of mindset my parents in calculating within me when I was younger was that gender has never been an issue. So it's either that you are capable of achieving what you want to achieve or not. So it was like, you know, coming down to my individual cells and I think ignorance is bliss because, you know, during my growing up years in, especially in my career, it was not this so much stops on this gender equality and all that. So, and coming from this background and the mindset, so it was more like, you know, am I capable of achieving this? Can I do this? Can I grow? Can I balance my family and my career? It was always those types of thoughts. So I strongly believe that, you know, a person, I mean, male or female, whoever is able to add value. I think, you know, all the promotions and everything else becomes secondary. So firstly, you must have the confidence in you. You know, I always say, when you want to start off your career, you should just take a pause and ask yourself, why do you want the career for yourself? What is it? Yes, yes. So you need to first be aware and clear of why you want to get up. And of course, if not, you can always explore other options, like, you know, work from home or entrepreneurship or anything like that. So I think this gender thing, you know, I think a person must remove doubt and, you know, focus on adding value. And what is it, how are you contributing to the organization. Then I think your growth becomes quite automatic. In my instance, I think I was really, really blessed. When my son was born, I was promoted as assistant manager, my daughter was born, I was promoted as a manager. You know, everything happened at the same time and yes, I must admit, yeah, it was actually overwhelming because I was a new mom and the new responsibilities at work, and you already facing the postpartum blues as well. So it was a bit of a challenge that way. But I think, you know, once you're able to tide over that and you know, you have your set career goals, your own self. And go by that, I think that's a lot better.

Rouba: (05:42)
Brilliant and very empowering advice, by the way, in the Arab world, we have a saying that every child comes with his own fortune. So I guess that manifested in the promotions that you are in

Sangeeta: (05:53)
Yeah.

Rouba: (05:53)
So you've done really well in your career and as a leader in your industry and amidst such a turning point in history, not just on the Indian economies platform, but also globally. So what kind of leadership transformation are you looking to implement or at least propose and suggest and facilitate within your organization? And is that something that you're working on currently in your capacity?

Sangeeta: (06:19)
Right, before we even dive into this.. You know, I want to talk about this wonderful experience that I had. So I'm also a high performance business coach. So I think about a year ago, I conducted a leadership workshop for some of the CXOs. You know, we have a CXO club here and I did like a workshop on leadership. So it was all very senior leaders from different industries were present. And what emerged the end of the workshop was something so beautiful.  They came of with five very important aspects for any leader. This will get more out of self realization and everything, and the reason I want to share this here is I think, you know, in respect to the current crisis,  or anything you know as a leader, I think these are very valuable things. So the first thing that they said was, you know, the listening skills. Many times leaders, you know, we're so caught up in our own things that, you know, we don't even listen to what the team members feeling, what are they viewpoints? Yeah, so that becomes very important. So it was surprisin...