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...