Tell us a little about yourself – your early days, where you were born, your schooling, college, your major, when you moved to the US, how you landed at your current role.

I was born and raised in India, in a family that blended its traditional roots with a healthy dose of progressiveness, all the way to the grandparents. I completed my schooling in Jamshedpur, home to many of the Tata group of companies, with academics, independence and self-sufficiency as core building blocks. My father was a senior finance executive with Tata, and was instrumental in framing my early interest in the field.

I moved to New Delhi after high school to pursue a bachelor degree in business (BCom) in the Shri Ram College of Commerce, and followed that with a Chartered Accountancy degree while working with Arthur Andersen (now Ernst& Young, post Enron) specializing in international tax and transaction advisory. This was an early and formative introduction to the entire ecosystem of companies making investment and capital allocation decisions, to try and maximize the value of their enterprises……one that shaped my interest in pursuing a career in investment management.

I completed my MBA from the Indian School of Business, in Hyderabad, and started my career in investments as a private equity professional with an India focused fund based in the US (The Chatterjee Group). I subsequently moved to Fidelity International to pursue public equity investments across Asian markets, and build foundational skills in identifying value creation opportunities backed by rigorous fundamental analysis, understanding macro investment cycles and risk management. I then co-managed Asia-ex Japan investment portfolios for ING’s Asset Management (NN Investments), and moved to the US in 2017.

I currently work with Nuveen Asset Management where I invest in global (ex-US) equities, [and] I am based in Minneapolis. 

Have you drawn professional inspiration from others? Who/what inspired you to pursue your current career and why?

My first inspiration for a career in finance came from my father and a close cousin with whom I enjoyed several insightful interactions on the subject in real life business settings that they were in.

While female leaders, especially in finance, were few and far between, Kalpana Morparia and Kiran Maumdar Shaw in India, in the early 2000s, were my very early inspirations in the broad field of leadership.

On the subject of investments, as I got deeper into it, my primary inspiration was the very idea of the multiplier effect of capital, and the principle of compounding value creation through sound investments and risk management. Warren Buffet and his simple and intuitive investment principles have always provided important guardrails to my thinking.

Leadership is a broad term and can mean different things to different people. Describe your leadership style and how you “lead” others.

Leadership to me is about influence and collaboration. It starts with “thought leadership”: in shaping very broad ideas and providing flexible frameworks for further collaborative thinking. It is then about providing the right nudges to engineer the most effective confluence of thoughts and efforts within teams.

I truly believe in the power of diversity of thought and solutions, especially in my line of work. At the heart of effective leadership lies unwavering intellectual honesty, the ability to listen, inspire trust in your teams and raise the bar for everyone including yourself. 

How do you define success?

Success to me is to be content with yourself and who you have managed to become. It is a constant journey ; I am still striving for my version of success. 

How do you balance career, personal life and passions? Is there such a thing as balance?

Here is my take on this very consequential question – I look at life as a “pie” with slices of work, family, personal well being and passion. The sizes of these pies ebb and flow dynamically, and involve conscious choices of how you want to cut them. It is a finite pie, and one just needs to make peace with the way one cuts their own slices.

I have constantly tried to optimize these, and am still learning how best to. The “passion” slice in the last 2 decades of work was very small for me, and I am now consciously trying to add more to it. 

But at the end of the day, the happiness of cutting the “biggest available” slice for my family has been the most gratifying, and always makes this pie the tastiest for me!!

What are the most important qualities you look for in people? Why?

Authenticity, kindness and openness in people is a winning combination for me. Most of the time, incompatibility within personal and professional teams stems from broken trust, respect and misunderstandings, which in turn stem from strong and often inflexible opinions and false egos. The 3 qualities I mentioned have, in my opinion, impenetrable resilience against these classic relationship pitfalls, and the ability to bring people together irrespective of deep differences in backgrounds, status and beliefs.  

How important is it to have a mentor and/or sponsor to grow as a leader?

Mentors and sponsors are both great catalysts for a fulfilling professional career. I do believe that sponsorship from within one’s organization is potentially more important and impactful in the path to professional leadership, while mentorship can be less structured and is usually more accessible in and outside organizations. 

What factors in your opinion impact a woman’s ability to lead others? Have you personally been impacted by any of these factors?

I want to talk about 2 factors that impact women leadership progression: one being self-cultivated and another more societal.

Firstly, most women hold themselves up to higher standards than their male counterparts and tend to have big impostors in their minds. They are therefore often unable to demonstrate full conviction in their abilities as compared to their male colleagues.

Secondly, women leaders/or aspirant leaders are mostly in huge minorities within their circle of influence. The lack of being among ‘their own’ often impedes their ability to be influential social coworkers. Similarly, the lack of familiarity with women colleagues often pose roadblocks in effective negotiations and understanding, top-down, among male managers, ending up in women being more often misunderstood.

My journey to overcome some of the above issues was real and now largely behind me. I have been helped in this process by a combination of improved awareness of these biases, introspection, women mentors and male allies.

What’s your favorite way to relax and unwind? 

Playing board games and cozying up for family movies.  

What is the best piece of advice you have ever received? 

Listen more than you speak.

Rapid Fire:

You’re a new addition to the crayon box. What color would you be and why? Pink. It always feels fresh

Your biggest pet peeve Daylight savings!

Who would you switch places with for a day? My dog

What’s the first concert you ever attended? Jagjit Singh, New Delhi

What is your favorite hobby? Walks with my girls

What does Neythri mean to you?

A thriving, inspiring and cozy group of women leaders who get each other, and want to be there for each other.