CHICAGO: Indo American Community Services (IACS), an Illinois based no profit organization, hosted its fifth South Asian Women’s conference on Sunday April 26 at Marriott Hotel, Naperville, a northwest suburb of Chicago.
This leadership and networking event was fully packed and was a confluence of women leaders from corporations, community development organizations, small and medium women owned enterprises and potential women leaders seeking to build connections. IACS has been hosting South Asian Women Conferences for the past four years
The event was kicked off by Saily Joshi and the panelists were introduced by Chandini Duvvuri, both IACS organizing members of the conference. The panelists at the event were from three distinct fields from corporate and community organizations and consisted of Amy Best, SVP human resources, Exelon, K. Sujata, CEO and President, Chicago Foundation for women and Sarita Rao, President AT&T Wi-Fi services.
Each panelist did a short presentation about their educational, family and career background and challenges they faced and continue to face in reaching where they are in their career. The common themes which emerged from each of the presentations were 1) addressing the common challenges women face in starting, 2) growing and 3) nurturing their individual careers without compromising work-life balance.
All panelists acknowledged the challenges faced by women in the current landscape of wage disparities between men and women at work in a predominantly male-dominated corporate and business world.
Sujata in her presentation mentioned a study that current wage disparity between men and women in corporate world, for the same job will even out in the year 2079. State of Illinois is faring a little better in this respect, where the wage disparity may even out by 2065. But the irony is that majority of us will not live to see that day! As a society we cannot progress unless women are equally successful. Equal pay and opportunities for women not only help them empower but also helps society and community as a whole. Sujata listed some of the initiatives planned by her foundation to benefit women.
Amy spoke about women taking up opportunities with calculated risks, even though they may not be popular or ‘cool’. She recounted her own moves at the beginning of her career where she had to take some risks in moving to a new location, adjusting herself to new environment without impacting her family. Amy also mentioned that communication is one of the key factors which may help women. Communications could be about their success, need for growth, support, mentoring and any other issues faced by women. Unless women speak up they cannot progress.
Sarita Rao narrated her own experience of working on a merger and acquisition project in her job which was deadline driven and highly stressful. She had to work with various cross-functional groups within AT&T to see the merger through. The key learning she shared with the participants are viz. 1) be yourself; develop your own personality and express opinions fearlessly after a good background work to earn the respect of colleagues, 2) think diversely; do not limit and work across groups to expand horizons and 3) thank people who worked with or for you and make it personal; send a handwritten greeting card instead of sending an email or text message as people value not only the mutual feeling but the form of expressing it, which will have long lasting benefits.
The presentation was followed by a short question and answer (Q&A) session in which panelists addressed questions from participants and pointed them to training opportunities and resources on leadership and career development.
Another interesting aspect at the conference was the stalls set up by three Chicagoland based women owned businesses at the event. These three women business owners introduced their firms to the participants after the Q&A session, with their short speeches.
The first one was Niketa Jhaveri, CEO & Co-Founder of Brave Champs. Brave Champs is a ‘monopoly’ like game which helps kids in identifying various professions such as Pediatrician, Firefighter, Carpenter, Architect etc. This game has dual-purpose of entertaining kids and also educating them on what each professional does and prepare them for their future.
An interesting fact about this game is that it is not integrated with any iPhone or Android ‘App’ as the objective of this game is to keep the kids away from any gadgets. Brave Champs is targeting schools, especially schools which cater to kids with special needs.
The second presentation was from Deepa Salem, Founder and CEO of ‘WotNow’ App which is free and works on iPhone and Android. In today’s technology driven world, every individual receives multiple emails about events and tasks related to their personal life. Whether the email is about a parent-teacher conference at school or a doctor appointment or a social event, it is challenging for individuals to keep track of events.
WotNow app enables users to sign up for events and organizations the user chooses and synchronizes event calendar for the user in a single interface. About 500 Chicagoland organizations partnered with WotNow to push notifications to users. WotNow aims to scale this app nationally once it is successful in Chicagoland.
The third presentation was from Manvee Vaid, Founder and Curator of Deccan Footprints. Deccan Footprints is an online catalogue of art and paintings. This firm connects the artists in India with art galleries in USA. Contemporary or folk artists in India, lack exposure to the tastes and demands of customers in USA. Deccan bridges this gap by helping artists fill out the relevant paperwork to enable them to participate in galleries, make the artwork ‘sellable’ and pass on the remuneration back to artists in India.
Love of art and helping artists is the motive of this firm. Profit is currently not the motive as a lot investment and costs go in coordination and logistics to get artworks from India.
Participants enjoyed participation in the event and appreciated IACS for hosting such event. Sreenivas Katragadda, president of IACS thanked all the participants, volunteers and sponsors of the event. All the panelists were presented with mementos by Vekat Majeti, CEO of Loment Inc. one of the sponsors of the event. Other sponsors included Grainger, ITW and L&T Infotech.
All the participants had post-event network opportunity over dinner.
Dave Vasudevan
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