A panel of five women leaders from Indian corporates emphasized about the pressing need to get more women into leadership positions into Indian companies at the first session on ‘Women Leadership Lecture Series’ held at premier B-school the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) on Monday.
The panel consisted of Ruchi Kalra, Associate Partner with Mc.Kinsey and Company, Guntaz Randhawa, Brand Manager, HUL, Neetu Vasanta, a Principal with the Boston Consultancy Group, Meetali Jain, Vice-President in the Investment Banking team at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) and Sonali Dhawan from P&G India.
While the speaker session was organised jointly by IIMA?s Women?s Leadership Society (WLS) and Confluence – IIMA?s B School Summit; to be held later this year; the audience comprised of young MBA students from city-based colleges such as MICA, B.K. School of Management and Nirma Institute of Technology and IIMA students.
As per a release from the institute, Sonali Dhawan added impetus to the discussion, by exploring diversity and inclusion. ?If your company leadership wants to choose from all the best you have, you need to be inclusive and support this diversity in your organizations.? Dhawan described that the essence of the session is to understand that women need to ?lean in? and take up matters in their hands. Every woman has a right to ?Expect more?, she said.
Supporting this, Ruchi Kalra argued that ?start with 40% women and have only 3% women in the top leadership. No organization can afford to waste so much talent.?. Meetali Jain further added, ?a leader is anyone who has a vision and can communicate this vision to otherwise. If it can be articulated so simply, why does one then need to distinguish between male and female leadership.?
The series which aims at developing and supporting women leadership within the IIMA community through continuous and engaging dialogue with women leaders across the country.
