a very good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the second edition of the PR and Popcom Women Achievers Summit and Awards 2021 presented by Ad Factors Knowledge Driven Communication powered by Standard Chartered Bank, Hero Motocop, PhonePay and Hill and Nolson Strategies, Gold Partner Tude Consult. Before we move forward this morning, I'd like to play the introductory audio visual for all of you. Can we have the AV please? The second edition of Exchange for Media, PR and Corporate Communication Women Achievers Summit and Awards 2021 presented by Ad Factors PR powered by Standard Chartered Bank, Hero Motocop, PhonePay, Hill and Nolson Strategies, Gold Partner Tude Consulting. The Summit and Awards are the celebration of the contribution of women and their relentless pursuit of excellence in the field of public relations and communications. The second edition of the Awards identifies, acknowledges and felicitates those women leaders who are shaping the industry through their incredible work. Through this initiative, we also applaud the agencies and corporates who are setting remarkable examples by encouraging gender diversity in their work culture. This year's jury panel was headed by Dr. Anurag Bhattra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, BW Business World and Exchange for Media. Ms. Nidhi Hola, Microsoft Mr. Partha Khosh, Samsung Ms. Rama Paul, ABP Mr. Sanjeev Honda, Maruti Mr. Subhayu Mishra, Standard Chartered Bank Ms. Jasritha Thir, Antara Mr. Atul Sharma, Radafin Ms. Pallavi Singh, Senior Business Advisor Mr. Abhishek Guliani, Hill and Nolson Strategies Ms. Ruchira Jaitley, HMD Ms. Kavita Jagtiani, Pidalight Ms. Parachi Mohapatra, Dr. Reddy's Exchange for Media and the Jury congratulates all the winners. Again a very warm welcome and very good morning to everyone who's joined us today. It's a very special day as it's the second edition of the PR and Popcom Women Achievers Summit and I'm Khyati Kawair, host.  It is my second year in running with this IP as well. Now let me tell you something about the Women Achievers Summit. Brought together illustrious women leaders who are stalwarts, pioneers, and revered in their field of work. As per a recent report by Catalyst, in 2019 women held only 8% of management roles, 9% of business management roles, and were only 2% CEOs of India.  Women not only bring creativity, as we all know, multifaceted talents, but also empathy and flexibility. Exchange for Media through its initiative of Women Achievers Summit wants to bring fresh perspective on trends, challenges, opportunities for the women in this industry. Today we have all a very powerful session starting with five keynote sessions, six panels, and the key discussions will focus on subject of gender diversity, creativity, self-growth, world beyond COVID, PR, and communication skills and strategies, As the day unfolds, we will hear stories unheard and untold by the pioneers of the communication domain. Now before I take you on this journey, let's quickly take a look at our partner's audio visual. Can we have the AV please? We believe that every corporation and brand has a public, and today's public is more powerful than ever before. They have the power to topple CEOs, reshape strategy, influence government policy, kill products, and create unicorns. They demand truth, transparency, and the highest behavioral standards. We are embracing change, constantly innovating the way our clients and the public communicate, whatever the sector and whatever the challenge. Our client obsession means constantly evolving new products and services. We are innovating the future of public relations. Our belief is that brands with a clear authentic purpose and performance strategies aligned to business objectives are most likely to succeed. We use strategy, creativity, and innovation, driven by data and analytics, to put your purpose and performance at the heart of all communications. Together, purpose and performance drive audience preference. We call this approach 3-P Communications. Hill and Nolton Strategies, always in beta The group's flagship news portal, exchangeformedia.com, reaches over 6 lakh subscribers, who are the first to receive breaking news in the industry. The buzzing website not only covers the news, but goes beyond the obvious to bring in a fresh point of view. Impact, the weekly news magazine from the group, is the most widely read business magazine in the advertising trade, with in-depth analysis and news-based features, providing perspective to key happenings in the industry. The monthly pitch magazine provides a ringside view of events unfolding in the marketing landscape, along with media and advertising. Another monthly magazine, Realty Plus, is a market leader in repertoire on the real estate industry. Today, exchangeformedia is not only a leading publisher in the domain, but owns the IP of more than 50 events spread across Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore, making it a powerhouse of information and knowledge sharing. Exchangeformedia has curated and launched some of the most successful IPs across marketing, digital, TV, print, radio, mobile, OOH, and PR. The Impact Person of the Year, exchangeformedia conclave, Indian Digital Marketing Awards, Tech Munch, BitchCMO Summit, India Marketing Awards, Primetime Awards, Indian Content Marketing Awards, Golden Mikes, Enbar are some of the group's top-notch events in addition to niche, bespoke events, and roundtables curated especially for discerning clients. Exchangeformedia events attract stalwarts as speakers, along with a loyal audience comprising of leaders, trendsetters, and opinion makers. They are the perfect networking platform for the entire media and advertising industry. No wonder, exchangeformedia group publications and events have high credibility and reach, and are the destination of choice for agency, brand, and media professionals across the industry. Exchangeformedia Covering a range of topics, BW Business World events look to create a strong narrative around smart cities, digital India, healthcare, Swachh Bharat, human resource issues, education, banking, and finance, among others. BW Business World events provide a speaking platform to the voices that matter. You don't have to be a technologist, you need to understand how technology influences the world. He was the leader of the freedom struggle. We believe that e-governance and IoT will play a very, very important role. BW Business World is an excellent exhibition platform that helps you showcase your services to the right audience. To be a part of our legacy, write into us at partnerattheraidbusinessworld.in. Thank you once again to all our partners, and thank you all of you for joining us here today. Now I would like to invite on forum Dr. Anurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, BW Business World, in exchange for media to formally inaugurate the summit. He sent us his video message here. But before we play that, I'd like to inform all of you that we are buzzing on Twitter. So we'd like all of you to not forget to tweet to us about this fantastic morning and evening using the hashtag, which is E4M Power Women Achievers Summit, E4M PR Women Achievers Summit, E4M PR Women. All of these hashtags can be used, used all of them or one of them, but do tell us about the event and what do you feel about it. So here we have Dr. Anurag Batra's video message. Can we play that please? Good morning. Welcome to the second edition of the exchange for media. Women are in communication professionals summit and awards. This is the second edition of this initiative, which recognizes the leaders who are women in the corporate communications PR domain. The media advertising marketing domain itself has a high participation of women across leadership, across political level. The PR and communications industry possibly has a dominance of women. This is one domain where if we did research, the number of women in PR and COPCOM is tremendous. So this initiative looks at leaders who are making a difference, who are at the cusp of being catalyst to change and were making impact not only in their organization, but beyond that. We're talking on 2nd July 2021. I hope the last 12 odd weeks have been good for you and your family or you are safe for your organization. I know it's been a tough time, but as they say, tough people last tough times don't. So clearly I'm sure you have refocused, me energized and reemerged to be able to go on with whatever you set out to do. I wish all the winners today evening, 6 p.m. is the awards. The PR and communication industry possibly has a dominance of women. This is one domain where if we didn't research, the number of women in PR and COPCOM is tremendous. So this initiative looks at leaders who are making a difference, who are at the cusp of being catalyst to change and were making impact not only in their organization, but beyond that. We're talking on 2nd July 2021. I hope the last 12 odd weeks have been good for you and your family or safe for your organization. I know it's been a tough time, but as they say, tough people last tough times don't. So clearly I'm sure you have refocused, reenergized and reemerged to be able to go on with whatever you set out to do. I wish all the winners today evening, 6 p.m. is the awards. Congratulations to all the shortlisted nominees. Congratulations for being shortlisted. I'm sure you'll do well next year. And throughout the day, we have thought leaders who are women who will talk to us about their professional and personal journeys. So I look forward to celebrating the milestones of these women leaders. With all of you, I'm sure you get inspired by their journeys and their stories. I am and I will. We exchange familiar. Wish you good luck. Stay safe. Get vaccinated. God bless you. Thank you so much, Dr. Bhattra. He sets the context right for this event. And now without further ado, as we have our speaker's panelist already on board, will not waste any time, but request all of you to be active during the event. Tweet to us your key highlights from the event, from the sessions. And we're moving towards a first panel discussion, which is going to talk about women power in PR and preview on African leadership skills. We have a panelist for this discussion. We have with us, Ms. Shivani Gupta, Chief Happiness Officer, SBAG Asia. Ms. Pooja Pathak, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Media Mantra. Ms. Ashina Jain, Managing Director, PR Pandit. Ms. Manisha Chaudhary, Founder and Director, Value 360 Communication. Laveena Gujral, COO, Canada Communication and moderating this session is Ms. Tarunjit Ratan, Founder of PRPOI. Very warm welcome to you, ladies. And Tarunjit, just to give you a markup, we have 15 minutes for this discussion. We are looking forward to this very interesting discussion with all you lovely ladies. Thank you so much. Thank you, Cathy. Yes, that was a note on me making, to make sure that I keep a watch on the time. I'm so happy to be hosting this session with all such awesome ladies out here. So let's get started. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, everyone, for joining us for the first E4M session for the PR and COPCOM Women Achievers Summit, where today we will discuss and gather insights on women's power in PR and purview on affluence leadership. This is the second edition of the Women Achievers Summit and awards, and it's a celebration of womenhood and a contribution of the relentless pursuit of excellence in the field of PR and communications. And today to talk to us on the subject, we have with us a remarkable panel of women who have made an impact in the industry across segments and generations. Without much ado, let me introduce you to our panel. We have with us Shivani Gupta, SBAG Asia, Pooja Pathak, Media Mantra, Archana Jayam, PR Pandit, Manisha Chaudhary, Value 360 Communication, Lavina Gujaral, Candle Communications. Welcome, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dharam. Thank you. So let's get started, right? As Mr. Mathur also said, and all of us have seen it throughout our experience in the industry, we have dominated the PR space just in sheer numbers. But for the benefit of our viewers, could you help us understand why and what makes this field more appealing? Archana and Lavina, I'd like you to kind of share your perspective first. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. I think there's a great time for women in PR and marketing. Women have the opportunity to become the driving force, take leadership positions. I think more and more companies, not just in PR and advertising, but across industries, is recognizing and promoting individuals based on their talent, rather than on their gender, right? And the same thing being emulated in our industry too. And it's nothing is more inspiring than seeing women in the industry that are willing to take risks, are coming out, maybe projecting more innovative ways to reach and influence the right audiences. And we are seeing also some inspirational sort of role models for us to follow. For example, Meenu Handa and Global Role at Google. So that'll inspire a lot of young people to come in and join our profession. I think that is what makes the profession quite appealing. Absolutely. And I love the background that you have. We're still buzzing from home. We all are. Yeah, we're working from home till the end of September right now. Awesome. And we've got to be double vaccinated. Absolutely. Pooja, would you like to add your views to that? Yeah, so as Ajna had rightly said, about the impact and how women's roles have become very powerful. Also the fact that multitasking and problem-solving skills, which are key components which women bring on the table. And compassion is something which I feel that women are able to nurture it better. So I think these are skill sets, which probably is the real thing that why the... And why there is so much of fascination for this kind of a trend coming up. Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. You know, while we all agree, this is an appealing field, there are a few key skills I feel that one needs to have, not just to make it, but to actually thrive in the industry. Can you share three top skills that you would want women in PR to focus on? Pooja, Manisha and Lavina, could we hear your views first? Yeah, so I'll start. So I think three skills, which I feel women should definitely have in this fast-evolving industry is being agile. You know, the media landscape and the way we are consuming content is changing. So we need to adapt quickly to use these media. And here's the constant need for upscale. These are the three skills I feel is required. I think I'd just like to add to that and say that because of the situation today, we are in is not something any of us have experienced before. So there is a need to be a constant learner, be to have a collaborative approach to our work, to our, you know, whatever we are involved in, and also to have a higher degree of empathy in today's scenario, right? Because, you know, people are stretched, people are in a situation where there has been no precedent that they could have looked up to or, you know, to write from leadership onwards, write down to the newest kid that you have on your team. Everyone at a different level coping with things, coping with struggle. So I don't think that, you know, we need to, I think at this point, look for newer traits in ourselves also to be able to do better at what we do. Okay, okay. That's very relevant. Shivani, would you want to add to that? Thank you Taranjit. I believe that women naturally have the attribute of creating a strong ecosystem, you know, and the three things which I think that really carry forward women very strongly are the courage, compassion, and the connection. You know, the way I think women are able to carry forward in terms of courageously multi-task things that balance, you know, the work-life balance.  These are three important aspects which I feel are the key to any woman in any industry. Absolutely. I just added another couple of points. I believe that, you know, we need to look at two other factors, which is how is it that we increase our influence?  We can be excellent professionals, you know, we can have great writing skills, being able to sort of create campaigns. But unless we are able to navigate and convince people of the value of PR and communication in general, we're not going to get that seat on the table, right? And I think to be able to influence the conversation is more important than having superior skills today. Then the second point that I think is something that the industry needs is mentoring. You know, all of us need a network of people from whom we can exchange point of views, right? If we know each other, we can pick up the phone on each other, get a point of view. As Tom Peters, really the management guru said once, two leaders don't create followers, but create leaders. So we need to nurture leaders in as women leaders. So we must support more women in our industry. And so whether it means speaking to students or within our companies or outside the companies, young managers that are trying to, maybe other entrepreneurs, that's become something that I think is the need of PR. That's a, you know, that it would be amazing if a mentorship program of sorts specifically in PR entrepreneurship were to take, you know, take place. Maybe it's another opportunity for each one of the PR firms or maybe for them to create a forum like that. That would be wonderful. But I hear you, you know, while we've all spoken about empathy on some level or the other, learnability and increasing influence. These are two crucial skills that I agree we must do so that you can get it right. So how do you actually get started on it? How do you start, you know, nurturing learnability in the teams that we have in ourselves? How does one get started on enhancing influence given the situation that all of us are working in? The question is open to the floor. If any one of you would like to start first, that would be wonderful. Ashna, why don't we start with you on increasing influence? Okay, I think increasing influence is linked very much to the mentorship, right? You have the confidence, you know, somewhere along the line. If I, if I look at it, there's been a gender imbalance, right? Because historically, there's been inequity in leadership. Men have always had the stronger role and that needs to change. And that needs to change in the way we, maybe the organization culture that we, we inculcate and we foster in all of our organizations.  If you have a, have a sort of a committee on a particular subject, make sure that there's, there's a balance. And I'm not just talking about PR because in PR, we still have a lot of women, but other industries too, it has to, something I think it's going to be systemic, it has got to be across, across society, where women kind of come to the fore. And that'll encourage, you know, more and more women leaders for sure. An area that I find is women tend to be more inhibited. You know, there's a lack of confidence. They just self-belief is a major inhibitor, where women limit their options to, you know, okay, when the opportunity drops on that table, they're very happy to rather than go chase that. And we're seeing that change, but there's a lot more that has to happen. There have to be role models that we need to, you know. So when you, when you hear of a fencer who's going to the Olympics, or you hear of Deepika, who's one of the sort of archery thing, those are role models that, you know, women, definitely we need to, we need to get more people to sort of recognize that, learn about them and therefore follow the unexpected path. And if we can, we must strongly believe in putting ourselves outside that, you know, to create an opportunity, own the unexpected and create something new. I think that'll foster a lot of change. But it, you know, so you've got to have role models and you've got to sort of break down that lack of confidence by nudging more of the young people forward. Interesting.  But this confidence that you're talking about, you know, substantially increased as they hit 40 and above. And that was a time that the confidence with men in leadership kind of started declining.  I would like each one of the panelists to, you know, recommend one thing to all our women PR and Cobcom attendees today that will help them kind of get over the self bias. Pooja, let's start with you. So, you know, I feel, Taranji, that, you know, career internet happened, the hindrance sometimes is also restricted to the way we kind of feel. So my tip would be that you got to be yourself very, you know, confident and you got to be very sharp and out there because if we limit ourselves into that thing, we will, of course, get into those things. And another thing is that a percent or 90% and still be out there. So every role you can't do 100% right. So delegate the work. If you can't do it yourself, delegate the work. But if you have a strong career that you want to foster for yourself, yes, you have to yourself get out of that hindrance block and do it yourself. So my thing would be that do it yourself, be that, you know, runner yourself. Nobody else will do it for you. Understood. Shivani, how does one, you know, get over the self bias? So Taranji, I think the self bias and self doubt begins right from the conditioning is such, you know, when you are kind of always told that you are supposed to do this, you're supposed to not do that. But I see that with millennials and Gen Z and through the workforce and I see that the softness and I see that, you know, looking up to something. I think it is very important to find a mentor to find, I don't say that you need to find one particular influencer or anybody you look up to one person, but I think pick up things from all of the places and you can kind of build at your own characteristics and attribute in yourself and all of millennials and I think most of the millennials and Gen Z are now doing that. You know, there is no one idol like earlier, always used to talk about oh, I have this role model, I have that idol now. I think people really talk about pick up attributes from different, you know, successful women, men, whoever it would be. And I think that diversity has already started, you know, in terms of taking place, in terms of, you know, the mindset of people. So that is something that I would still suggest everybody that, you know, look up to the most important attributes you like in others and learn from them. Absolutely. Having a good role model makes a lot of difference. Manisha and Lavina, would you like to add to that?  However, for women specifically, I would like to add that along with other questions, it's very important to work on our view questions and why questions. View questions is basically, you know, acknowledge your weaknesses, work on your strength and then carry forward in your life. And why questions define the purpose of your life, where I'm not just talking about the happiness, you know, but other aspects, you know, that you can actually question, you know, while, you know, thinking that how to move forward in our life.  Absolutely. Self-interspection always helps. Lavina? Yeah, I also think that, you know, we need to know our core values and our core strengths, right? Once we are sure of what those are, we can build from there on. The rest of it, a lot, like everyone has said, depends on mentoring, you know. I think, Arun. I think that the core values and our needs and what we stand for, you know, let's just keep that in focus because, you know, women are born with a few inherent traits which are, you know, like everyone has been multitasking and problem-solving and all of that. So I think if those things we try to build on from there, I think, you know, it's a great place to start. Yeah, since Arun here seems to have dropped out, I'll just continue and add on another point that, you know, yes, you all spoke about the fact that we need to play to our best skills, et cetera. But I think learning constantly is another thing that will yield a little bit of confidence. If you are sure, you know, like, because the, you know, the outside ecosystem specifically in PR keeps changing so rapidly that we need to be learning all the time, always being at the cutting edge of innovation or technology because that's what our profession requires. It's important to be looking at what trends are there, what's going to happen next, then figure out how to stay ahead of them. So how do we master new mediums like whether it be social media, podcasts, influencer marketing, only then you will have that disruptive or clutter-breaking campaign idea to impact stakeholder communication, whether it be in the B2C or the B2B domain, you know, predictive analytics and those mega trends as well. So in continuation to what Arjuna has mentioned, in 2020 we had seen the kind of challenges, you know, that were thrown upon us with, you know, pandemic, you know, we had to suddenly make changes in the way we were working and communicating with our internal and external stakeholders. So yeah, I completely agree with what Arjuna has mentioned. You know, constant upskilling and learning is very, very important. We have seen the kind of, you know, paradigm shift that has happened in the PR industry in last decade. You know, innovation and technology has taken a center stage and now it's no more about just telling a story, it is also about driving a conversation across multiple mediums that are available to consume content. So yeah, I was just backing up what Arjuna just mentioned. We think relearn and adapt to the content. You know, but it's interesting that all of you have mentioned learnability, reskilling, upskilling as one of the key skills. However, when we look at, you know, a majority of the workforce, a lot of them are finished familiar, which becomes a challenge for, you know, it again creates another hurdle or another challenge for people or towards their own growth. Is there something that you would like to add, you know, which will help women in PR and communication understand how to unlearn and relearn? Manisha and Lavina would like you to address that. No, I just see one of the things that have changed in the past few years is how much technology has crept into our lives, right? There was a time when PR and technology, unless you were working on a hardcore technology client, there wasn't too much, you know, association for PR professionals on the technology front.  On the other side, on the client side, I cannot think of a single industry today that doesn't have a technology element, right? So that in itself is a huge change that has come. So I wouldn't say that we need to unlearn what we have, but I'd just like to say that I don't think we will ever be at a point that we could afford to stop learning, right? So, and especially being a women-driven industry and, you know, women and technology is a whole different discussion and it's getting better every day. But for all of us to be able to understand the technological aspect, both on the client side, the media side and the within the agency side, I think that is one area where we will see a lot of growth and a lot of changes coming from there in the coming years. Absolutely. Manisha? Yeah, so LaVina has mentioned, you know, a good point here, but I would like to answer it from a different, you know, angle. So, yes, you know, we have to learn, we have to, and, you know, constant upskilling is important and we have discussed it many times also, but I also feel that women need a lot of support both from the organization side and, you know, a personal family side to continue their journey, you know, for a longer period so that they get an opportunity to unlearn and learn.   And at the community level, we all women, you know, we have to join hands together to extend support to them when they need it at the personal level. So, I think if entire ecosystem will work together, I'm sure, you know, we have proved our mental, we have proved our potential. There are so many women leaders also in the industry.  But I think here I feel sometimes, you know, there is a gap that needs to be filled, you know, with the proper support, both at the workplace level and at the personal or family level. Can I add, as Manisha said here, you know, when we are talking about policies and we are talking about the workplace practices, I think it is very important to have balanced policies and balanced workplace practices.  It shouldn't be just like for a woman. I think if, under Senator, it starts from having a balance between the genders, you know, in terms of even the leaves when you are talking about, we are talking about maternal, paternal, you know, if the person is a caregiver, that person should be getting the equal amount of leaves. You know, that's where I think we start building in the sense of equality. That's where we start building in the sense of, you know, yeah, everybody is in the same ecosystem and everybody is equally responsible. If we try to keep favouring one particular section, then obviously we are still, you know, on one hand we are trying to fight the gender inequality and on the other hand, we are still trying to give them the extra benefits, whereas, and we are telling, okay, you are the caregiver and men are supposed to be working, you know, which is not the fact. You know, it's interesting that you bring up this point now because my next question is directly on this.  The role of caregiver has been given to the woman. And it's been touted as the shadow pandemic. But have, and a lot of corporate law agencies have been talking about balancing this equation out. Has this changed for the better or in reality for women on the ground? Has the needle moved beyond campaign talk? Pooja, I would like you to address that first. Has that happened? Has that happened in your agency? So, you know, Tarunjit, I would also like to bring it from the client perspective. You know, there are a lot of clients that, you know, we had in the manufacturing industry that we are handling. And, you know, it was a perception that how can a woman actually lead that wing? But today, you know, they're CEO, they're, you know, in a way, so this self-talk, that awareness talk has happened for good. And also in our organization also, it is very gender inclusive and it is more talent-driven. It is more talent-oriented. But yes, you know, sometimes these conversations are also important because women themselves have to know that they too have the power to do a lot of things. So, this needle, I think, has worked out in a positive manner only. And from the recruitment phase itself, you know, if there are women, we definitely talk about the perks. We definitely talk about the benefits that we can give to them. So, in that context, it has worked to a better. Right. Okay. Would anybody want to add to this? Yeah.  We are proud about that. You know, we've always, and I think we've built that because from way back in 2004-2005, we've encouraged and welcomed women back to the workforce after they've had to take break to start a family or to become caregivers in any situation. You know, the flexibility to work from home has been consciously sort of encouraged. I think those simple measures have, you know, it's only now that the government has sort of come in and said, okay, now we have a six-month maternity. But at that point of time, I remember two of my very senior colleagues today who had to, you know, had babies to nudge and they said, we are not ready to come back to work. But we want to get stimulated. So we said, yes, continue working from home in a limited manner.  And I think those options, once available to women, will certainly, I think the pandemic will assist this because in a way, the metrics of evaluating work from home have, each organization has kind of figured out a way to do so. And I think that will be a really good point in the long run for women to sort of be integrated back into the workforce once they take a break. Absolutely. I just want to add that no doubt gender diversity or inclusivity is very vital for any workplace. But it is also important to understand, you know, that gender diversity, it is more than maintaining the fair number of genders in your workplace. It is very important that, you know, at an organization level, we actually empower women and, you know, pave the way for them so that they can take leadership roles in the organization. So yeah, and, you know, there have been studies that, you know, the companies, those who are maintaining healthy gender diverse in their organization are actually performing better growth-wise or financial outcome ties. And in the basis of financial outcome, they are performing much better. Why? It is also because, you know, you're having a wider talent pool in your system. You know, you are having people from multiple experiences who are, you know, adding a lot of value or giving different perspectives to your work. So yeah, it is important. But yeah, it has to be taken beyond just maintaining the mere numbers. We have to empower our, you know, women, you know. Absolutely. Sorry, since I have such amazing, you know, women on this panel today, it'll be, I'll be a mess if I don't ask you this one question. What is that one leadership trait without which, you know, moving ahead and heading an agency or heading a department will not be possible? It'll give our audience a clue about what to work on. One skill. Could I go first? Yes, absolutely. I think listening. I think that's seriously something that women are good at. But I think it's also something that we need to consciously channel. Communication does involve a lot of creativity, writing, strategy, et cetera. But the skill that can put all of this into action and channel it towards success is listening. So listen to your customers. Listen to your clients. What are they talking about? What are competition thing? What is the feedback that you're getting on a particular campaign, right? How can you, as you strengthen this, you know, and input it, you would be able to adapt your into a much more stronger campaigns and strategies. Interesting. All the years that we have been taught to be good little girls and listen can actually be turned into advantage. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Tarujit, I would like to talk about that. Yes. So one skill would be, hello. Yeah. Is the puja going first or am I going first? You go first. That's fine. Okay. I just wanted to add here to in continuation of what Alcina said, you know, it's all in terms of creating a series of belongings. When we talk about, you know, that's an instrument that I can really have. And that's what we think we can do as a deep respect when we talk about, you know, being a good story. Awesome. Prioritization. So I feel once you're able to prioritize things, you know, it just kind of, you know, helps you streamline a lot of things. So prioritization for me, I think is that once you get which should not be a miss for sure. Absolutely. One quality which I would like to add is to, you know, as a leader, we should have an ability to convert an obstacle into an opportunity. I think I learned this lesson when I started my company, which was at the peak of global economic slowdown and then fast forward to 2020 when the pandemic happened.  Yeah. Absolutely. Very good advice. Lavina. Yeah. I think for me, the one key saying to keep in mind is to be able to build a narrative at any given point of time, regardless of what the situation is. I think that would take into account many factors like listening, like empathizing, like, you know, whatever, converting an opportunity, obstacle into an opportunity, all of those things. But you must always know that, yes, I have the ability to be able to build a narrative. I have some inherent skills. I've developed some skills. We have the potential. I have the means to collaborate, all of that. So I think if we keep in mind the fact that, you know, building a narrative is what PR is all about, whether internal or external. Interesting. So while we've spoken a lot about the past and the present, let's end the panel on a note from the future, right? What are the changes that you see happening in the next couple of decades in the PR and communication industry? Ashina, let's start with you. I would hope to see more women leaders, okay, on this forum. I can't but say that, right? But really on the professional side, I think COVID-19 has fast-tracked everything, including the evolution of the digital landscape. And as a result, PR has undergone a lot of changes. Right. It's a narrative for professionals to stay ahead of the curve in this digitally savvy world that we're living in. And how to leverage technology for the benefit of our craft. Absolutely. Manisha? So I feel that, you know, technology will keep playing an important role in the next decade as well. And I feel that, you know, authenticity and transparency will take a center stage, you know, dealing with very smart audiences and, you know, they are aware of fake news and other things. I think it is, for us, it is very important, you know, even technology will keep playing a central role, but authenticity and transparency will, you know, will become a key, yeah. Absolutely. I think that is, that will be a key factor in helping change the reputation of the entire PR industry as well. Yeah. Shavani? Apart from of course technology which we have been talking about and, you know, going forward, that's going to be the thing, you know, I think a lot of focus is also going on you know, purpose driven campaigns.  So that I think is definitely very important, apart from, you know, working, having hands on with the technology. Absolutely. Lavina? I think for me, agencies need to be more wholesome in their offerings to clients, that is what we'll see happening. We'll see a lot of experiential stuff coming into PR. We'll see a lot of creative, you know, things happening in PR. It could be technology enabled, whatever. But I think overall the industry is moving towards a single point of contact for their marketing requirements. And I think we will see a lot of, you know, consolidation on that front. Absolutely. Pooja? Yeah. So, you know, as we already have seen that post-pandemic, PR has already started taking a center stage at most cases. And now I think the role of PR would start from the boardrooms. So that is how it's going to be and up-search that we see and how the dynamics of communication would really change. Right. Very, very, you know, to see all these trends come into play in the near future, maybe in the next couple of years, I'm hoping we don't have to wait for a decade for all these conversions to happen. Yeah. So on that note, we'll bring this discussion to a close. Any parting shots that one of you would like to, sorry? There are some questions in the Q&A. Just check. Hold on. Okay. So there's one question for Manisha. Why are women domination number of PR and COPCOM, why, okay, why do women dominate in the field of PR and COPCOM? Any discrimination and why this trend? There is no discrimination. I think we are very good in storytelling. And you know, we have some inherent qualities that make us fit, you know, for the profession. However, I do not believe in being gender specific whether male or female.  So yeah, so I feel yes, PR is a female-dominated industry. But yes, I think still a lot needs to be done at the leadership level. We are seeing a lot of leaders, but as Arjuna mentioned, we want to see more women. Interesting. But it's interesting to note how the word discrimination, I think for the first time associated with women, it's never been like that. It is interesting. I will see it from the other end. I'm sure men wonder the same thing. Another question, you know, do you need to be a pastry personality to be in the PR industry? Say not. My answer is very clear. Absolutely not. Because, you know, maybe the clients that we work with are primarily B2B, you know, so really there is no page three concept in the B2B world. So no, we are very happy to be behind the scenes or just so far as the client knows that we, yeah, I so far as the client knows my importance, I'm happy with that. I think you need to, you know, what he's probably trying to understand is whether you need to be a center of influence. Yes, we need to be a center of influence in the kind of industry that we are, we are in and be able to sort of table trends to our clients. So whether it be in the B2B or the B2C, if you need to be networked, and that is very, very important, right, to be able to sort of open doors for our clients, in industry chapters or on the right platforms, then yes, sure, you need to be certainly somebody who is a center of influence. Very, very well put, both of you, you know, on that note, I will bring this discussion to a close. Khyati is on the screen. That means thank you to a wonderful panelist for sharing such insightful views with us and a big shout out to the entire E4N team and Karan for putting this event together. We at PRPOI have been delighted to moderate this session for you today. Thank you for joining us and stay tuned for more interesting discussions on this forum today. Khyati, over to you and I did this in time. Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for keeping it crisp and thank you all, all of you ladies for bringing out such great insights. I can see from the Q&A and the audience interaction happening on different platforms that they really enjoyed this session. So thank you so much for your time and being here on this platform. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, Tarunji. Thanks, ladies. Manisha, Shivani, everybody. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. With that, ladies and gentlemen, let me remind all of you that keep tweeting to us about the event, your key insights, anything that were the highlights for you with the hashtag E4M Women Achievers Summit or E4M Women. We're moving forward to our first keynote session of the day and really excited to bring on board Ms. Elzandi. She's the APAC Head Regional Marketing and Market Development from Bayer. She has done a multifarious initiative for the cause of women empowerment. And today on this platform, she will be talking on the topic of women empowerment through agriculture and food, the role of communication in supporting the cause. So very warm welcome to you, Elzandi. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It's great to be here. Yeah. So I'm going to start off just by telling a little bit about my own story. And I hope that there's some learnings or tidbits that can actually apply. It was actually good to listen to the previous speakers on the panel because it's very different. The world that I'm operating in is very much a mild dominated world, agriculture. So if you walk into my office, you would think that I have an ordinary job. That perhaps I graduated from high school, went to college and started working my way up the corporate ladder. But my career did not take such an organized linear path. And yours certainly doesn't have to either. That should not be the expectation.  So where am I from? I was born and raised in South Africa. I have a bachelor's degree in genetics and mathematics and an associate's degree in teaching. So I taught mathematics for six years for postgraduate math college students and grade 11 and 12 students while I was still educating myself. So I went on to get a master's degree in plant breeding and an MBA. The first two degrees was full time while being a student. And the others were all happening while having a full time job, getting married, starting a family and very, very aggressively start to build my career. To say my career path was unexpected is an understatement. Every job I took had some uniqueness to it. Either being the youngest, most of the time being the only female and always the one with the least experience for that specific job. This was many times, as you can expect, a surprise to others and the people around me. For me though, it was not even a consideration. And that brings me to the second topic that I want to touch on and that is what drives success. And this is not just something that I'm speaking from my own experience. For many years, I've been advocating for females in career for women in the workplace and working with students at all levels to try and figure out what is it that makes up that magic recipe and how do we support and enable women to optimize their contribution in the workplace. And for me, really, it all boils down to equipping yourself to be the absolute based candidate which leads into how you navigate the competitive job market and how do you differentiate yourself from others. It's simple. You have to be authentic, be real and live with passion. Make the world see and know what you're passionate about. Don't try to mimic what you see around you. Don't necessarily try to mimic and become the leaders that you see are successful. It's really about who are you and what do you bring to the table. So the first step and I've touched on it and in one of my previous comments is you have to ensure that you are the absolute based qualified candidate. Educating and daily learning, looking for those opportunities to equip yourself with skills and qualifications and being a lifelong learner, it's a mindset and a lifestyle that you have to adopt. So always think about what is it that I have in my toolbox? What are the skills that I've really cemented in me as an individual and where are those areas that I can further bolt out my skill set? So that's the hardcore learning skill set part. Then once you have done that, you have to identify the job that is a balance between requiring the skill sets that you've got, utilizing your natural strengths, but at the same time offer opportunities for you to learn new things to further develop yourself. I myself have not taken a job where I had already done at least 50% of what the job required. So if you look at the job description, I can check the box on 50% of what's required for this job. The other 50% I view as my learning and development opportunity and I'm very clear on how I use my strengths to overcome my gaps and we'll talk a little bit more about that later on. So first of all, equip yourself to be the base, identify the job that offers a balance between you adding value and you having a development and growth opportunity. Then thirdly, once you have secured that role, focus 100% on performance. Ensure that you exceed everyone's best expectations. Focus on your team and what the team jointly and individually need to accomplish. Go that extra mile to ensure that you do everything in your power to help your teammates and the joint group to achieve and be successful. This is really critical and this is also how you will distinguish yourself from the rest. You will earn and build a lot of trust and credibility and most needed the recognition and the support that you need from your peer group to be recognized as someone that can advance their career. People recognize great leadership in those that serve the people around them and this is something that I want to leave with you and it really worked for me in the tough environment that I had to build my career. If you the odd one out, if you're the one that people question what you bring to the table, this is a really great way to prove your existence and the value that you can add to the team. And then lastly, if you are successful in the first three steps, the fourth will follow and that will be to find that next opportunity. How do you advance to the next step? That opportunity will present itself. And it will be well-deserved and the timing will align with your personal readiness to go after the next opportunity, which brings you back to step one where you start thinking about what is my skill sets? How do I further build out what I can learn and then you go through the whole cycle again. Now, these are all easy things to say. It's a little bit harder to actually execute. And it makes me think about what challenges do women face and how do we behave to take ownership of our own destinies? The one thing that I can say that my own career and many of the successful females that I observed around me, that was you have to do things your own way. Do not wait for others and try to do things the way that others previous generations have done it. This is a different world and we have to recognize that if we want to have it all, having it all does not include doing things the same way that previous generations did it. You have to get creative and be bold and really own how you want to achieve what you set out for yourself to accomplish. We must get creative and find new ways of doing things. So what am I talking about? That includes finding ways on how you partner with your spouse or your life partner. Roles in the relationship and the family life and setting is going through an evolution at last. The world in totality around us have been evolving and changing for many years, but somehow the male female roles in the typical household have been frozen in time. Now, here's the great news ladies. It's time to change and the change will be for the better, especially for the people on the school. That though is very closely tied to your confidence. You have to build your confidence and confidence comes really from within.  Be in favor of your strengths, your weaknesses, and your opportunities for development. Take time to really think about this and be brutally honest with yourself. If you do not know what these are or you struggle to pinpoint these different facets of the individual and who you are, ask the people that you love and trust and that knows you very well. You must thoroughly understand what you are good at and how those strengths could compensate for your weaknesses. Be clear on where your development opportunities are and really look for ways to improve in those areas. And once you have this, you have to be able to tell your story and tell your story in two minutes with a lot of conviction. So what do I mean by that? What is my story? Just to illustrate. My story when someone say, who are you and why are you doing what you're doing? This is how I explain it. Growing up in South Africa and traveling the world through many different roles at Bayer, I was privileged enough to meet and see how different people live in their local communities around the world. Working with agriculture and farmers, you go to local villages and you really get a flavor for the country, the culture, and how people build a life for themselves. The one thing that was very evident is there's great need and severe poverty out there. I can tell you a career in agriculture is meaningful in many ways because you can touch and change people's lives. Having a great passion for children and elderly, these are the two segments of the human population that must really rely on others many times for their prosperity. And not everybody in this world have a great sense of responsibility. And that's really something that I'm passionate about. Almost half of the world's population live on less than $2.50 per day. And according to UNICEF, there's 22,000 children that die each day due to poverty-related reasons. I feel like I can make a difference in this industry. I can change people's lives. The agricultural industry is working to address the challenges that directly impact these people's lives. And this is why I'm doing what I'm doing. In conclusion, there's five things that I want to leave with you. And if you take away these five things, I strongly believe you can have a very positive impact on your career and your future. When you think about having it all, what does it mean to you? You have to think differently. Do not allow society and the outside world to prescribe what having it all should be for you as an individual. The second thing. Who defines what matters and what I can accomplish? Here's the thing, ladies. You own that. You write your own destiny. Do not let obstacles that other people perceive as hurdles and limitations limit your future and your potential. So what do you do about this? You own it.  And where do you find your confidence to execute on all three points that I just laid out? You find it within yourselves from the fact that you deserve everything that you are willing to work for and go after. And where do you go from there? You're early on in career many or you have some choices to make to think about how do you optimize your career life? You go to a place and an industry where you can potentially make more of a difference than anyone else, anywhere else. The same way that I feel about agriculture, that's how you should feel about your career and where you go and what you do with your potential. If you take these five pieces and you cascade it in separate parts, you can feel good about it. But if you take it together and it's clear, if you define it, if you own it, you can have it all. So with that, I want to pause there. And any question is welcome. Any thought that someone have that you want me to address secretly? Great. Thank you so much, Alzandi. That was a wonderful session and so many insights to how to move forward as a female in your particular careers. We do have a few questions that have come in just for you. One of them being about your own personal journey. Have you faced any kind of discrimination in terms of treatment at your workplace personally? May it be lack of opportunity or a pay gap, gender pay gap, anything on those lines? Yes, I obviously have. And it's actually stretching over many years and I would sort of break it up into two different parts. There's the softer part of discrimination and then there's the hardcore part that's very evident and go across industries. And I faced all of them. Whether it's you think about the fact that I started off my career in field-based roles. What does this mean? Just give me one second. What does this mean?  And in a cornfield, there's no restrooms for the main. It's not a big deal. For females on the other hand, it is a big deal. And nobody necessarily wanted to discriminate, but it's just not a thought that naturally comes to mind when it's one female and 120 men at the meeting. So there were some of those just physical realities and then there's the softer parts of a definite discrimination that was systemic. And let's talk about the pay gap. Being the first female in role, there was risk to the business. So what do they do? They start you off in probation, you start off with a lower base. If you advance your career fast, like I did, I changed jobs every two years, you never catch up that gap until you reach a point where you can have a very candid conversation with HR and your direct manager to say, I need to understand where I am at from a base salary viewpoint compared to my peers. And if I'm at a disparity, which in my case was the situation, how do we fix this? And then have a clear plan because many times a company cannot make that big of an adjustment in one step. So you need a structured plan to then close that gap. So that's the one part. The other part that I want to call out, I've made my second job, I had direct reports reporting to me. And I've made sure since day one, that I have a very strategic and transparent process to ensure that I correct base salary disparities in my own reporting team. So that's something that all of us can do that have people reporting to us to ensure that we correct if there's incorrect things that needs to be adjusted. Absolutely. And I just want to point out for all our viewers who are mainly females for this particular summit that the transparency that you spoke about while speaking about the pay gap, I think it's so very important to have that conversation with HR, right? Sometimes we don't even open up and talk about it to our own peers or our managers or the HR managers to even have that discrimination eradicated from the system. We don't have that clear transparent communication. So thank you for bringing that point up. We have another question for you. As a female leader, what has been the most significant barrier in your career? The most significant barrier that I had throughout my career was probably convincing internal stakeholders that the fact that you are a female or the only female and the least experience should not feed into how people judge performance. And I alluded to in my talking points earlier on how I approached it is, I tried to identify the people around me, my biggest critiques first. And how I overcome this viewpoint is I try to identify what is it that they're trying to accomplish? What does success mean to them? And are there specific areas that they're struggling with? And then I will dedicate my time and energy to help them be successful in the areas where they have issues. That way you build a very strong report and relationship and you build a lot of confidence. So someone that's not necessarily supporting you might change completely their view. And that's how I overcome some of the challenges that I face throughout my career is by making friends of enemies. Wonderful point to retake in everybody right here. So I have another question which is in terms of the context to India because being an agricultural major country, India is highly dependent on its farming infrastructure. Women do contribute a significant amount but lack basic healthcare facilities which you just mentioned in your career as well. So what steps can you propose to enhance health infrastructure for the female farming community? And how can communication play a role in it? Yeah, this is a great question. And we're actually initiating a project where we try to really understand the females within our customer base agriculture. There's a lot of female farmers and it's either from a farming viewpoint or it's from a labor viewpoint. In many cases in smallholder world the females play a very big role from a labor viewpoint. And there's a few things that's clear. Many times socially they're not allowed to access training and learning opportunities. For example if there's a farmer's meeting the females many times is not allowed in the decision room or in the training room. Or if they are allowed they can't come because then at that time when the guys goes to the farmer meeting female many times attend to the family needs. So we have to think differently in how we support and reach out and touch these females within our industry. And we're having a deep dive now to figure it out. Now it's too early for me to give a plan but there's a few thoughts that I have around it. It has to be an ecosystem. One company or one stakeholder can't make enough of a difference. We have to take hands and build an ecosystem in which we can support and help these females in agriculture. Us at Bayer are in a privileged position in the sense that we do have the agricultural side but we also have a pharmaceutical business and a consumer health business. So by partnering across these three divisions we can address a lot of the issues that we're having out there. And I also think we have to be realistic in how we approach them. We have to find females to reach out to females. To open up a clear communication path and also to create an environment of trust and comfort for the females out there to speak up and share their challenges with us so that we can find ways to support them. And just lastly I want to touch on the communication piece. It's critical that we communicate broadly. Now if you think about us as a company we're probably going to communicate within the scope that we can reach people but there's other ways through partnering on communication that we can go much broader. So I want to be very clear that the communication is the one factor that will drive success and usually the stakeholders that can have their hands on impact do not have a sophisticated communication channel. So that is something where we can really find a way to collaborate and make a difference. Absolutely wonderful points there as well. I just wanted to just reiterate the fact that there has to be like a two-way communication where the females can you know bring out their challenges and then we create a path for them and as well as create the compassion and trust with the workers as well. Beautiful. I have one last question for you which is how women role in agriculture saw a change with Bayer's initiative that the work that you have been doing. Yeah so there's a few things technologies that we as a company brings forward is quite advanced and it's really bold and heavily invested in building and developing new technologies to make farmers more successful but the reality is most of these technologies have been adopted by the countries the governments the regulatory systems and the farmers on the western side of the world. Smallholder farmers is still very much relying on very old school technology regardless of whether you're thinking about seed and traits crop protection products that help them to yield more or the agronomical advice and predictable tools that we have today to predict before a disease actually hits their crop how can they manage and steer it proactively and that's our mission. What we do is we are working with regulatory systems and countries to ensure that we can take these new technologies our know-how and our wisdom to help these smallholder farmers to be more successful. Wonderful and because this is a communication PR and communication summit as in the some parting thoughts for all the people part of this community how through communication and through PR we can create an impact women. So I can tell you all are specialists in an area where many people struggle and actually teams that's not successful most of the time it's because a lack of good effective clear crisp communication. So I think you have a much bigger role to play regardless of which industry you look at whether you look at nonprofits or corporate companies by effective communication we can solve a lot of the problems in the world. So for those of you that have a passion and want to get involved in areas that goes beyond just your day job and your main responsibility I truly believe the sky is the limit. Wow thanks you so much Elzande it was wonderful to have you on this platform and have your insights shared with the wilder audience thank you so much once again for being part of it. Thank you for having me. Thank you Elzande thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen if you have any questions you can put it out in the Q&A box or in the chat box comment box on whichever platform you're watching us on we'd love to hear from all of you also the buzz is on on twitter so use the hashtag E4M PR women achievers E4M PR women E4M women achievers go ahead and tell us which were your key highlights it was wonderful having Elzande here and we're moving forward to our next keynote session bringing in another stalwart coming forward for all of you miss Lucy Harvey managing director Metia Hill and Nolgen strategies Lucy has been with Hill and Nolgen from 2010 she has done several hats during her stints and today she will be talking to us about allyship be the change you want to see I'm sure this is going to be super interesting and I'm really happy to bring Lucy here very warm welcome. Thank you so much Kathy thank you and Elzande I thought that was amazing really really fascinating half hour hopefully I'm going to talk a little bit about the the other side of that as well and what we can do for other people as well alongside us so thank you Karen thank you Kathy thank you everybody on the call I'm really honored to be here and be involved just to introduce myself quickly I'm Lucy Harvey I'm one of the managing directors for HK strategies in the Middle East Turkey in near Africa it's always a bit of a mouthful but importantly for us that includes India as part of the remit I'm lucky enough to be involved with as well so I get to work with Abhishek and our amazing team at HK India on the ground here I've been working out of HK based out of Dubai for 11 years now and previously before that I was working in London as well I'm so sorry I can't be there in person I've been lucky enough to attend some other conferences in Indiana always exciting inspiring and great fun there's nothing there's nothing quite like exchanging ideas chatting creating some bonds over tea over a drink occasionally over a dance at some of the events I've been to as well and I really hope for all assets for us as individuals for our families that we can all be together soon at the next one as well so sending my love to everybody and I hope you're keeping safe and so today I really wanted to talk about how we can back the people next to us and I'm coming up to 20 years in PR and communications and a subject that is really really close to my heart is how do we fulfill the potential of everyone in the industry at every step in their journey it doesn't mean everybody's going to become a CEO but how do we all get the opportunity to fulfill our personal potential and to do that we need to look at both the challenges and the opportunities for different groups for everyone and I know that as a woman I can help other women succeed with my experiences so I want to talk about allyship sisterhood feminism perhaps I apologize for the term sometimes some people don't feel comfortable with some of those terms we should feel comfortable with them but even if you don't like the buzzwords how about just being a kind respectful person helping your neighbour whatever you call it I really deeply believe in the spirit of supporting those next to you and I think Alzandi touched on this as well herself it's not just to expand the tent invite a few more people in it's about tearing down the walls of that there's room for all of us and more to succeed so hopefully I can leave you with a few thought starters and a way that we can all be the next step in the change we want to see in our workplace and delighted to field any questions at the end so firstly what does it mean to be an ally when do we need to be an ally when do we need an ally every stage in our career comes with many many different challenges there's an intersection of our personal challenges and expectations society cultural professional whether we're a young executive coming into our first jobs at 2022-25 the middle point in our career when we may also be wrestling with families senior leadership positions or just having had longer in our careers and those career changes along the way that we bounce between so I would encourage people to think about what expectations you're managing at this point in time what do you find the most challenging to live up to what weighs on you what's actually a help for you and because at every stage in that journey what would it feel like to know that the woman next to you has your back that she wants you to succeed I think that's so important and it's key to creating inclusive workplaces feeling like someone else cares just saying that actually can feel like a big thing because there are many workplaces where that just isn't the case we're expected to be incredibly competitive we're expected to be ambitious just for ourselves I would continue to challenge all of us to be ambitious for yourself and the woman next to you I started my career I would almost say nervously I had a couple of experiences in workplaces where it was tough it wasn't necessarily always very friendly but I had some really great senior leadership there who saw that I had potential they gave me confidence they weren't actually necessarily women often they weren't but often they were from other minority groups who were struggling perhaps in their own ways as well but they took the time out to celebrate something I'd done to notice when I needed a little bit of advice a little bit of support sometimes just make me a cup of tea on a bad day but I don't forget the impact those people have they're really inspiring to me and this I know they are still there if I reached out and these are some people haven't spoken to in 15 years I know also that they must have had similar support in their lives to have realized how important that is and their panel discussion earlier mentioned the harvest business review case which I thought was so interesting that women consider themselves less confident they rate themselves as less confident than men up until they're around 40 early 40s and they also rate themselves lower as leaders up until that stage as well I hope as I turn 40 this means that um that um my confidence is suddenly going to change because I can completely understand that but yeah interestingly when judged by their peers and their managers women are generally considered in 84 percent of leadership uh requirements to be stronger than men but these are all averages but I think what it does tell us is that women do need extra extra reminders they do need some extra encouragement now and again a reminder they can succeed a reminder that they can climb the ladder so that you can push yourself to do exactly what Alexander was talking about taking that next step putting yourself forward maybe you're doubting yourself that little bit knowing that you have those skillsets and somebody's got your back those first signs of leadership those first signs of talent need to be encouraged that might be for you as a boss and many people on this call would be leaders of teams you should take that responsibility incredibly seriously as a line manager as a boss as a CEO but don't underestimate the power it has to reach out to the person next to you and say great job so smart give someone a compliment not just on the hair or their dress that day which is fantastic and we all need that every known again as well but respect people for the amazing brain power they are bringing to the table respect people for the impact they have made on the client or the challenge or the opportunity I think also an important part of um allyship and something everybody can show men or women and there are many men on this call as well is when people come back from maternity leave and I have learned a lot I have a lot to learn about being a working mother I now have three children under six so wish me luck and but I really have learned that that is a time when you can show support to the people coming back in and it's something I take very very seriously at work recognize that people feel vulnerable when they come back you don't know what the new role is going to be and your role will always have evolved somewhere or another how do I reclaim parts of that role how do I carve out a new role can I even manage this I have a six-month-old baby I'm just three weeks back into work again and it's really hard I'm lucky to have people around me who recognize that and say hey it's okay well done whether it's my husband friends back home on whatsapp and a few people in the office who really make the effort to do that but you feel vulnerable and just to be clear that's not about wrapping people in cotton wool when they come back from maternity leave absolutely not do not shield me from a tough meeting and I want the tough challenges because I am ambitious I want to keep growing but also be the person who says it's great to have you back be the person who checks in see how it's going offer me my full rollback my full breadth of opportunity because I want to take it recognizing that many many truths can live alongside each other I think is really really important here I can have huge ambition but I can also have huge guilt I can also have intense vulnerability all at the same time and that is the nature of being human so I kind of some allyship in a way is look left look right any level in any business can be competitive with men with other women but part of building a culture of allyship requires a little bit of opening up a little bit of honesty and setting an example particularly with the people in this call who are seen to be leaders not just in terms of the obvious business hierarchy but also maybe you're quite a influential person in your office it is hard and say no I'm busy I need to stay in my lane I don't want to butt in this is their business absolutely but it works for everybody as well you set one example of support every day one little example of support you're starting to create a culture of support ultimately creates a safe working space and a safe working space means better work it means more fulfilling work it means a happier day a more successful business for everybody it's a win win taking those little steps and ultimately the more people the more women who are stepping up another level who get the confidence to push themselves to the next promotion normalize it's for the women next to them and behind them and potentially our daughters coming 20 30 years behind us as well really act out the change you want to see be the first step and again think about is that culture of allyship live in your office in your organization in your meetings how do you support that and there are many many ways we can do it and you may be thinking I do this already what could I do more as I say the first thing for me is look left look right can you offer someone that encouragement can you spot something they're struggling with can you offer them at all can you share some experience if someone asks you how you are that is often a sign that they want to connect so be honest take a time out to answer honestly share something because it's possible they want to share something back with you as well formal and informal mentoring at work it's really important we have some fantastic global mentoring schemes at H&K connecting people from around the world we have exchange schemes and I'm really proud to be part of some of those whether or not you do that within your workplace whether or not you do that external through an industry body through people you work with in past roles do take the opportunities to be a mentor and seek a mentor particularly a reverse mentor which I think is a really interesting area and something I want to work on at the moment so I'm gonna capture some learnings as well um but asha during COVID is tough some of those things I've talked about it's easy to sit at my desk right now that's my backdrop screen um uh look to look left and right and I'm not looking at a colleague so how does that work and there is a danger with the working from home I think as women particularly it's given us amazing opportunities taking out the commute can release more time we can do more things there's the danger flexi working and remote working having some ways brought us all closer they've given us opportunities but there are dangers and I think the burden for women and having spoken to colleagues and friends across India is particularly true the burden has only increased this is across the world there are campaigns about this across the world do not let the situation with COVID even as we come out of a pandemic um on the other side do not let that set back the progress of women we have too many responsibilities and we can often get dragged into too many caregiving responsibilities um and suddenly the career we've worked so hard for has maybe slightly separate from our home lives can all get blurred in and become the thing at the bottom of the pile I do worry about that um that this as we become more comfortable with flexibility it could become an excuse for either exclusion because you're not given the opportunities you're not there in front of people or potentially just overwork as we try and fit in more and more hours work and caregiving into the day so flexible working does not mean always working hybrid working does not mean work anywhere everywhere um create the boundaries um and let's keep up their casual day-to-day connections with people whether it's checking in giving someone a call just telling asking someone how they are and do ask up down sideways as well um in our India team um our practices have really actually led by a super strong group of women who are absolutely fantastic at their jobs they're on the senior management team they make decisions um and we're constantly looking for ways to keep supporting those women um for one of the team who has a young child during their lunchtime management meeting um they always take a half hour out at the time when she needs to go and sit with her little boy and make sure he gets his lunch that's really important um and those are the moments you can do to show the flexibility don't let that become then creep into every single part of the day as well um and I guess finally um allyship is also about looking internally be your own best ally um as we're investing effort in others around us um and just to be clear investing effort love empathy is not a female thing men don't get off the hook on that it's for everybody to invest that time in culture uh a culture of allyship we need to make sure we're still looking after ourselves um we need to take that first step um and every little thing counts um personally have a thing where every morning I see my husband go downstairs and he takes two or three minutes to make sure he has a big glass of water he has a small juice and he takes his vitamins in my head sometimes I'm like how can he be so selfish how can he take that time he's not he's just carving out two or three minutes to do something to set him up for the day and I do think many many women and they supply for all stages not just mothers easily forget those pieces look after yourself but then the second part of self-care is care for your own career I think this does lead on from what Alzandi was talking about respect your career give it the time it deserves we're going to be in these jobs for 40 50 years um as I am just turned 40 probably halfway through where I need to be I've gone a long way to go and the industry is going to keep changing um in incredibly exciting ways I'm incredibly excited to see that happen if I don't invest in my own education my own learning learning from those around me taking the extra training course listening into that um I'm I risk becoming irrelevant and I'm not setting a good example to women around me about how they can keep growing ultimately our industry is dominated by women this is not really an issue um of getting people through the front door into our industry the issue is about making sure people keep on pushing up taking senior leadership positions taking on CEO roles being brave taking those steps that change can seem scary I just don't believe it is I believe it's about the confidence we have to grow in ourselves it's about the confidence we have for others we need to make sure we're creating the right opportunities environment for young women coming in for all those steps we need to be ambitious for ourselves we need to be ambitious for the women next to us today and tomorrow um thank you for your time um I'd love to take any questions or comments um Kathy if anybody would like to to share anything absolutely we have a few questions Lucy that's coming for you and uh I just want to start with the first one which says in course of your journey uh what key changes you saw with respect to women empowerment globally especially when we are witnessing perception change in gender neutrality and gender inclusion um I suppose I've been in the business for 20 years um probably one of the most obvious things I personally remember is coming out of university um I was lucky enough to go to prestigious university in the UK um and I remember sitting um in the library and this was a time when we didn't all have laptops they were computers lined up down the side of the library I apologize to everyone seems absolutely insane um and there were so many men young men sitting there filling in their applications to be bankers um lawyers go into the city etc etc and I remember at that time really feeling like that was something for men it's not entirely true there were women going into it as well but the huge majority of those people and I really believe that came from conditioning from their schools potentially from their parents that those are the roles they would go into and I do feel that potentially as women at that time we were slightly more left to work it out there could be an expectation to go into something slightly softer it would have been slightly harder for me to go into those roles now actually I think I found a career that I love and I'm good at and I get to balance all the different parts of my personality but I do feel at time we weren't necessarily given the the openness around that and I think probably at the time 20 years ago the PR and comms industry was seen as a very soft skill I was always passionate about brand building I was always really passionate about media and how those all come together so in the in the end I kind of saw that opportunity and but it was seen as a soft skill it wasn't seen as respected I do think over the last 10 15 20 years as particularly as social media becomes so pervasive in everything we do you have to understand that so big companies now see the need for that and I think for women who've been grown up grown up in that as long as we've kept learning we now have an amazing opportunity to sit at the boardroom table in new ways we just have to be continuing to push ourselves and saying I can sit alongside that lawyer I can sit alongside the management consultant who 20 years ago was sitting in a room tapping out that application form when I didn't know what I was going to do but it's needed and we need to have the communication story at the boardroom table absolutely another question says a lot has been spoken about female empowerment and inclusion and pay gap as well but be somewhere lack in knowledge the value this gap that still persists being creative naturally entails ensuring higher freedom of expression and celebrating the nuances of diversity what are your thoughts in the same there's a lot there right that's a lot to think about but for me I think sometimes I think someone spoke about this in the panel you have to put the fact that you're a woman just to one side you know like it's great and it brings many parts my personality of who I am as a mother etc but sometimes I can just put that to one side and think of myself as somebody who is good at being creative who's good at problem solving who's good at bringing up the table and I would hope that in our offices we are able to do that we bring together diverse groups we bring together people from different nationalities from different genders and with different life stories and bring them together and create the space for those people to create create the space for that our industry is a quite unique in its needs in a modern world we are asking for a huge array from left brain to right brain we want people to be amazing at data analytics to be able to dig into brand watch and programs and be able to pull all this smart data then I want that person to analyze that data and bring that together starting to get in the middle and give me a trend I'd also like that person to give me a creative platform and a full creative execution of how that's going to work we ask a huge amount from people it's really important our industry gives people space to explore where they sit on that spectrum and then they get space to learn and develop within that opportunity absolutely now since you spend like most of your time in the PR industry and move through the ranks what has been your experience in seeing the industry moving forward from different times I think the biggest piece for me probably is that really growing the communications mix it used to be when somebody employed a PR agency or communications agency we got a tiny little piece of the pie which actually when you're learning your trade isn't too bad because you can focus and become an expert at the media relations the creative stunts that will lead to media relations 15 20 years ago when I was kind of first working in London at a big creative communications agency that's where we were but over the course of five 10 now 15 years that has absolutely expanded exponentially and that to me is that biggest change and challenge now and I do absolutely feel for people coming into the industry it's a huge opportunity but with that opportunity comes a challenge of learning a lot being open to so much um and I would really recommend people to find the areas of passion find the areas they're interested in you need to bring all your understanding up to a certain level but then find the areas where you're going to push it to the 10 out of 10 where are you going to be the expert that you're going to be incredibly passionate about whether that's data whether your mind's literally kind of moves more that way whether or not it's creative solutions whether or not actually you find that you're in communications but then start looking at brand or other areas it's now an area where you can do that you have to increase your understanding to a certain level to become a trusted advisor to your clients and then bring those extra sparks of your passion and your talent to the table absolutely we have another question which says in leadership key aspects in comparison with male and female role play is there like kind of a comparison that you would make or in leadership people make I honestly think there are so many different sorts of leaders and I don't think you can say male and more like this or female and more like this um I don't think that's true in any part of our lives and it's absolutely true in leadership I know people try to make sweeping generalizations of women and more like this men and more like this that's partly social conditioning but actually it's just not true um I think you have to embrace and try and spend the time to understand the type of leader you are whether that's when you're leading a team whether it's when you're leading a project you bring different skills to the table um and recognizing that and being really proud of that and continuing to work on it but to um tools and this point be aware of your weak points you have to be aware of them and you have to work on them but also hero the things you're great at because the fact is you've got to get famous for certain things um and your leadership style is one of those I would definitely say though you need to and no one has any excuse not to have a leadership style that is inclusive and diverse and supportive of all people and opportunities that's not a nice to have now that is an absolute essential in any leadership style that anyone male female wherever they come from everyone needs to be working on that absolutely and because this is a women achievers summit we have this question for you uh who are the women leaders whose work inspires you are there any particular ones that you uh kind of gain inspiration from that's such a good question um yeah I mean that's there's been a few people actually can imagine many people over the years who've inspired me um I would say we are very very lucky to have um a set of women in senior leadership teams in H&K that really inspire me that doesn't I mean we are actually lucky enough to have a female CEO um who has come from a really diverse background and is really exciting so we have our CEO there who's a great inspiration to us but I also see women just on a day to day basis um a colleague a colleague of mine literally inspires me every single day by her commitment to learning she's always signing up for another course I have a junior uh on my team um who is every single day signing up to something new and telling me something new and those to be honest are the leaders that I'm talking to all the time and they remind me to push myself on so although there are senior people in the organization who kind of give me the big picture it's actually the day to day inspiration that I think sometimes works better than anything else absolutely and because we uh your topic was about allyship and sisterhood and you know just building that community would you like to give some parting thoughts for the women as she was here on how to build that community how mentoring or being a mentee can you know become like a big thing for the industry to move forward yeah um I mean I think I'd say again the the idea of the idea of ambition be ambitious to yourself be ambitious for the person next to you and talk to the person next to you about what they want to do about where they're going and support that ambition and back them and tell them that they're great um I would absolutely just reinforce that doesn't need to be huge steps change doesn't need to be everything at once if everybody is doing something extra to support the person next to them every day that is going to move us all on and that will absolutely change the culture in an office incredibly quickly if you have that sense but you have that person's back and I know I feel excited about the idea of being in an office where that is the case for everybody and I hope everyone would agree with that as well absolutely thank you so much Lucy for your time for sharing these insights with us and being on this platform thank you everybody have a really great day we're taking a quick break here ladies and gentlemen uh just about 30 minutes and we'll be back right at 1 30 p.m. till then let's sink in all the insights and knowledge that has been shared till now from all our speakers go ahead and tell us your key highlights from the session so far tweeting to us using the hashtag e4m women achievers e4m women achievers summit go tell us in the comment box in the chat box what have you loved uh the most till now and we'll be back after this short break with another keynote session by Ms. Moonmeet Sambhu head of HR phone pay till then we'll see you back we'll be back right after this break thank you the second edition of exchange for media pr and corporate communication women achievers summit and awards 2021 presented by ad factors pr powered by standard chartered bank hero motor carp phone pay hill and nolten strategies gold partner to consulting the summit and awards are the celebration of the contribution of women and their relentless pursuit of excellence in the field of public relations and communications the second edition of the awards identifies acknowledges and felicitates those women leaders who are shaping the industry through their incredible work through this initiative we also applaud the agencies and corporates who are setting remarkable examples by encouraging gender diversity in their work culture this year's jury panel was headed by Dr. Anurag Bhattra chairman and editor-in-chief bw business world and exchange for media mrs nithi hola microsoft mr bartha kosh samsung mrs rama paul abp mr sanjeev honda maruti mr supaya mishra standard chartered bank mrs jasreeth adheer anthara mr atul sharma rudda fin mrs palavi singh senior business advisor mr abhishek gulyani hill and nolten strategies mrs ruchira jadley hmd mrs kavita jakthiani petalite mrs parachi muha patra dr reddy's exchange for media and the jury congratulates all the winners hi my name is palavi and i'm glad that i was part of exchange for media pr and communication women achievers award uh it was amazing to be part of uh you know this jury because id industry peers were also part of this jury um and i think for me it was most important to look at the entries which came in and a lot of efforts everybody's put in it's amazing for all the women professionals who've put in so much effort to fill in the entries so everybody i think in in my view is a winner for taking that effort amazing shot for me the important there were two important criterias to judge the entries one is apart from the work which is your domain how have you kind of you know shown or paved the path for the organization's growth overall and how is it how your role has led to overall growth of the business in in in the role of what you've done whether it is to do with PR communication working with different peers and organizations to get your company up there in the list and second most important thing for me was how have you developed yourself as an individual because that is the key as a professional how are you changing and how are you developing that was the second one and i think if you look at for women achievers we've come a long way to what it used to be a decade back organizations are more receptive for women now especially for whether it's senior positions or for that matter even if i were to say some interesting strategy work but we still have a long way to go i mean i'm only talking about maybe 0.5 percent or lesser of what has happened till now i think organizations have to still invest a lot of time and not just do a tick box for firing women and giving them a platform but it's also very critical to help them and they should help themselves as well and yeah so in the last one i would just say i just want to say that everybody during this time has done amazing work what i read through all the you know detailed notes what exchange for media has put out and it was very very nicely done simple to evaluate and it's a great platform i think for me it's a great platform exchange for media anything to know about marketing advertising any news any new thing which is coming into the market from an industry perspective so yeah i wish them and i wish all the women who've come in the entry best of luck you guys have winners any which ways and be safe take care and let's really make this community proud i'm so glad i was part of it thank you so much let me start by congratulating exchange for media for organizing an event that celebrates power of women in the communications industry at hng strategies we are very proud to partner for the second edition of e4m we are uncovered communications women achievers award the experience during the jury meet was very rewarding and exchange of ideas very thought provoking it was a delight to be a part of an esteemed jury panel that cut across industries the entries this year for the second edition of e4m pr and copper communications award but not only exemplifying clarity of thought but also showcase innovation leadership and a remarkable zeal towards driving and contributing to the future of communications in india the entire process was very transparent and the criteria very holistic however for me it was important to see leadership skills and the future and contribution to the industry all the stories this time were very authentic women today are leading organizations are actively contributing to the success of an organization and are really driving us into the future and platforms like exchange for media women achievers award recognize and celebrate the contribution made by women it's a very good experience um when this invite had come one was wondering that uh looking at the number of people how are we going to make it happen because so many heads and so many opinions um also the nominations ran into about 140 which had come down to a short list of about long list of about 80 and from a long list we had to bring it down to a short list of let's say uh about 50 odd so one thought this is going to be a daunting task but uh full marks to the exchange for media team the planning team they've meticulously planned it out in terms of breakout rooms in terms of you know breaking us into two three different groups and then allocating about uh you know 21 order entries to each one of the you know breakout groups to do um so i think my experience has been very good it was meticulously planned well thought out um and uh the experience of meeting other jurors has also been quite enriching if i talk about the first the quantum then i i am given to understand that 140 nominations were received out of which the exchange for media team brought it down to about a long list of 80 from a long list of 80 our task was to bring it down to a short list of about 40 to 50 uh that tells you about the quantum and uh which means that this is this continues to be a very popular uh summit and award as far as the quality is concerned um i can speak for the entries which were allocated allocated to me uh and the quality was quite good the quality was very good in fact i would say because um there were a couple of entries that i was um confused about and i had to go over them at least thrice to say where where do i put them uh and and when you have this problem of plenty um this problem of plenty happens when there is good quality across board that's as far as the quality the quantum and the quality of entries is concerned the two main criteria that i was looking at is one uh how how honest the portrayal has come of the content that uh people have put together because um oftentimes what happens and especially with communicators uh one sees that there's a lot of jargon thrown in there's a lot of content which is written so basically there's a lot of english uh but when you distill it down there's very little substance that you're left with it happens oftentimes uh this didn't happen or you know in too many entries that i saw uh you know that that i adjudged so for me one criteria was that how honestly uh how how genuinely how authentic the um entry comes across as being the profile that was one criteria the second criteria was uh that giving a balance to not just the accomplishments that have been done so far uh what has been accomplished so far but also about the future potential because a lot of categories were emerging leaders emerging leader in public relations emerging leader in macomb or in copcom etc so uh future potential is also a balance between what you've accomplished and what your future potential is these were two main criterias that i had put to test while uh adjudging these categories it's a mixed bag if i would say mixed bag in the sense because when it comes to women leadership to me it seems more of a two steps forward two and a half steps backward kind of a small deal i've been around now for 20 years and it's these are these press and troughs that women leadership goes through there is a time when you see a whole lot of global leaders and therefore a lot of indian leaders it can be fsi and it is in some other sectors um and at the same time equal number of industries you see where at a basic level at an entry level at a duty level they're huge employers of women but more often than not the top is still represented by men take the example of pr um as a function public relations as a functions public relations as a function has a whole lot of women who enter the ranks you know so at the entry line at the entry rank at the ranks which is junior to management but most of these public relation firms that you can think of um are headed by men so therefore like i said it's a mixed bag um but one i think one has to do is to keep forging the head the agenda um and for that women empowering women is going to be an important factor in ensuring that how far we go how far the trajectory goes because women have to empower and when we reach wherever we reach in life it's important that we lend a hand to other women who are down the rank and bring them up um rather than just reaching there and shutting the door behind us i think it plays a pivotal role it plays a pivotal role because um see what what does this platform achieve let's break it down let's small things but small things um add up to make big things uh first of all um today in the managing team in the operations team in the managing team one sees a whole lot of women around right and and and at all uh echelons of power from uh lower to middle to senior in the team which is there a e-forum so in terms of women representation um it's a good it's a good platform number one number two look at the number of women which are there on the jury so if you see there's a very very healthy mix of a very good representation of women on the jury so therefore you again give representation and exposure to women leaders who are in um that who are in different organizations that's what it does that's the second thing that it brings to the fore the third thing obviously is that it's um it is encouraging women uh to say that uh your work is important uh you hold up half the sky uh and uh you need you know you contribute so much to the gdp um this can't be work that is just going in a big black box that nobody gets to talk about uh you need recognition you need a reward and here is a platform which will give you uh recognition and reward at a national level uh so that's what it does for young upcoming women and I think this encouragement will go a long way uh in them uh reaching out to the top so that's the third thing that this platform does the fourth thing is also honored organizations which are headed by women or which um give a lot of support to women to reach the top which have good representation of women which are doing a lot in terms of the diversity and inclusion agenda so celebrating those organizations this is what this forum is doing from their own internal organization to a jury level to a participant level to organization level um all in group saying and I I would hope that more uh media outlets more media portals and organizations follow suit because I'm sure this is one area where e4m would like others um like the safe you know imitation is the best form of flattery I don't think that your mind being blacked out in this particular aspect all the best it's a pleasure to be here as the jury member for e4m women achiever awards um I think considering the fact that 70 percent of the workforce in this industry happens to be women I think it is high time that we recognize that and I think it's a brilliant initiative by e4m to make sure that women who are leaders of in this space are actually given the deal so very happy to be a part of this great initiative um it I think I went through quite a few entries and what I found the most interesting was that it was not only around communications but also around categories like entrepreneur of the year emerging leader in uh corporate communications corporate communicator of the year mentor of the year in copcom best organization for uh women empowerment I think there were plethora of categories and what I found the most heartening was that uh you know it's not only organizations and people but uh there were a lot of interesting stories that people had to tell people had painstakingly put in a lot of effort in these entries and I was very very uh you know very happy to see that some of these entries are really really uh you know just out of their league and uh completely showcases the kind of innovation the kind of great work that we are seeing in this industry especially by women I think I was definitely pleased to see some great storytelling some great ways to capture the the outcome that you know the candidates had put in their categories I think and quite rightly so their entries stood out from the rest of the people I am looking forward I think we have a meet right now and I'm looking forward to see people who emerge winners out of this hotly contested award category and I'm looking forward to making sure that the best person win congratulations to all of you I think uh I always prefer judging you know in person where you get to interact with the candidates you get to interact with fellow jury but yes uh in the given pandemic situation I think what was arranged and the way the jury was judging was very very high quality the jury spent judicious time on each entry going through the details of the candidates that submitted and I really appreciate being part of such a jury see I think the uh number of quantities uh oh sorry the number of entries in terms of uh total entries I think exceeded 180 is what I've informed uh we finally you know after going through the second round the juries went through really about 82 entries together uh so yes the entries are there uh they're quite a bit in volume a number I think but the most important criteria for any entries that we were judging was to see how the correspondence have told about them uh how the respondents have written about their achievements have written about the future plans that they have in this field here to your query about the entries this time I think uh there were a total of 150 plus entries received uh the jury went through all of them in fact in the final jury round we judged around 81 entries so that speaks volume about the quality of entries that we have received because normally in the final list the list is slightly pulled down it's very small but this time we had a tough time going through all the entries uh you know each one is a winner in its own criteria uh participants who have participated trust me are winners in their own rights the whole fact that you're part of this event itself is commendable and the fact uh you know as a jury uh as a jury member I think the key things that uh one is looking at all the entries that you're going through are a brief detailing about the person who's filling the entry the key achievements what they've done and most importantly what are the plans for the future I think that speaks volumes about uh you know what you're doing and what you propose to do as you move ahead in this field institution is the name of the game today but I'm surprised that it had to be given a name first of all I think as a society we are all equal uh today everyone has the right to grow and excel in whatever they're doing I'm really really delighted to see uh you know many of my friends many of my uh colleagues heading organizations as women you know there's a colleague of mine who's heading Pfizer and she's right way up on the top and and you feel proud about the fact it gives you a lot of happiness to see women excelling in whatever fields they are in today and in PR and corporate communications I think it's a field really governed by them you know I am new to this field and I have no qualms in saying that I've learned from the best in this field today and they were all women I think E4M uh adding value is separate I think it's a platform that's giving so much of visibility so much of good work that is happening and a platform that has been consistent over the years recognizing women for their achievements it's our free and I really salute E4M for their contributions in this part thank you okay why should boys have all the fun bold new style zippy right but very easy handling new hero pleasure class I love her bar manati her bar When you put it on comments, when you do it, you accelerate your career.  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You don't have to be a technologist. You need to understand how technology influences the world. Mahatma Gandhi was a great man. He was the leader of the freedom struggle. We believe that e-governance and IoT will play a very, very important role. BW Business World is an excellent exhibition platform that helps you showcase your services to the right audience. To be a part of our legacy, write into us at partnerattheraidbusinessworld.in. Welcome back, everybody. Yes, we are at the second edition of E4M, PR and COPCOM Women Achievers Summit. We are ready with our next keynote session. Before we do that, once again, requesting all of you, if you have any questions for our speakers, you can put it in the Q&A box, chat box, comment box on whichever platform you're watching us. Also, there is a buzz on Twitter with the hashtag E4M, PR Women Achievers. You can tweet to us using the hashtag as well. Moving forward, it is our absolute delight to welcome Ms. Manmeet Sandhu, head of HR PhonePay. Manmeet Sandhu heads HR for PhonePay, Digital Transactions Platform, anchored on payments. As the chief people officer for PhonePay, Manmeet supports the organization's goal of scaling leadership to keep pace with its exponential growth and build a world-class HR organization with the right tools and systems so PhonePay employees can access opportunities to be the best version of themselves. Today, she'll be talking on women in leadership and PhonePay's efforts to change the equation. Very warm welcome to you, Manmeet. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot and a pleasure to be here, Cathy. Thank you. We are looking forward to your session. All right, great. Let me just get started and firstly, just acknowledge how happy I am to be here with all of you today. People who have managed to achieve so much and do so much with their lives. I know given the fact that women in the Indian workforce are less than 20%, getting to where you are today would not have been easy. But at the same time, I think it's great for us all to acknowledge that being here today is also a source of great inspiration and hope for so many women going forward. So as Cathy mentioned, what I'll be talking to you today about is women in leadership and also what we are doing at PhonePay to help change the system and make it much better and much more equitable work. But before I get started, let me talk to you a little bit about myself and how I got where I did and what I learned in all of those years. I'll start right at the beginning. The year I was born, the year I was born was the year in which the head of the country for India was a woman and what a woman she was. With her in the most powerful position in the country, I think the strength, the willpower and the competence of women was never really going to be in question again. And with that, as my starting point, and also growing up in Moficial towns all over India, the world for me at that point was small and slow. But at the same time, there was a lot of space to also dream big dreams. In the 90s, as India began to open up, there was now a possibility to make a lot of these dreams come true. And for inspiration, there was Kalpana Chawla, Sushmita Sain to Arun Dithiroy. No matter who I wanted to be, there were examples of French women right in front of me doing a lot more and being a lot more than they had originally thought was possible. It also helped, I think, that growing up, I was left free to chart my own course and do my own thinking. And as I looked at young women and girls around me at that point in time, it felt that it was more or less the same for all of us. Our mothers seemed to really be filled with this desire to make sure that girls that they were bringing into the world were filled with diligence and courage and very sure about the life they wanted to lead. We were never told that there was someone who we could not be or something that we could not do. And this, I believe, was our biggest gift. But then it was time to start being a part of the workforce and there is what you believe of yourself and what the world believes of you.  The rules of success are different, but not in a way that is immediately obvious. And like in a foreign country, what are the rules that apply to the majority don't really quite apply to you. And this again is not a new thing. For centuries, the survival and success of the outsider, whether men or women, has really depended on our ability to follow instructions, work hard, and gain trust. But the thing is this, that trust is not just about competency and credibility. It is also about being able to figure out what the unwritten rules are. Knowing what favours to call in, who to go for advice, what questions to ask, and what topics not really to bring up. This is what culture is.  The better you understand the culture, the more you try. The more foreign the culture, the more difficult it is for you to succeed no matter how hard you work. I realized that some of this, when I was actually in a foreign country, this sort of came home to me at that point in time, I spent a few years working in the US. And as an Indian, I was part of a model minority. We were a bunch of people who worked hard, who seemed to know technology stuff really well, and in general sort of kept their heads down. I got a lot of credit for knowing more maths and more computers than I really did, and it worked well for me. At the same time, I was also conscious of how much easier it was for me to make a point if I was tentative when I was not really shaking the board and when I knew when to quit quiet. And again, this was not unique to me. I saw this play out in meeting rooms again and again. Women, people of colour or foreigners generally found it much easier to succeed when they knew what were the right opinions to hold, and when it was really safe to disagree. Once I came back to India, I noticed that the same thing applied more or less here as well. In fact, I would almost say that we are much better at understanding these ancient rules of power, which you can call it that. And I think I've sort of basically come to the conclusion that women in the corporate world are in a foreign country. We succeed only by changing ourselves to suit the expectations from the others. Some of us are better at it than the others, but it is not that it is ever easy for any of us. So with all of that, when at PhonePay we decided that we wanted to focus on developing better gender balance, the goal we took on was to make the place a little bit less foreign for women to make it actually a place where they felt they could belong. And our starting point was having more women in leadership. This was not just about creating role models. It was also about ensuring that women were in positions of power and influence, so we could begin to change our under-reference. We believe that if a quarter of the leaders in the organisation were women, it would help create that critical mask, which will make it easier for women to have their voices heard. And this is such is not necessarily a new idea. It's been done before. In fact, my favourite story about this is from Obama's presidency. At the time when he first became the president, the women in his staff were a small minority and they usually found it difficult to be effectively able to make a point.  Whenever a woman made a key point, the other women would repeat it, giving credit to the author until it just became an everyday thing. And then Obama noticed and began to do the same thing until everybody felt a lot more comfortable being able to share opinions and make sure that their voices were not sort of quieted down before they had the chance to make their point. And ultimately translated into a much more equitable gender distribution by the time of his second residence. So to me, the fact that it is possible for sort of creating that critical mask was fairly strong learning. But then what do you do? What do you do to get more women into leadership positions? One thing we decided, a simple enough starting point was that we would make sure that all external hires that we made at phone pay at senior positions in the organization would only be women. So we'd take whatever time it took, we'd work hard as hard as it took to make sure that all of those positions were filled by women leaders. And this was not an easy decision. I myself was not sure if it was the right thing to do. It felt like a quota. And I had been conditioned to believe that quotas are wrong because they distort the market. But the point is, the market is already distorted in the other direction, whether you consider the motherhood penalty, the access or the lack of access to networks, or the expectations of managing the house and the husband. The dice is already loaded against the women. This little thing is just the, our mechanism, our little effort to make sure that the balance, the equations rebalanced a little. And if we did nothing, it would simply perpetuate the current system, which was definitely not something we were willing to accept. So once we take in the decision, we had to now make it happen. And that, again, had its own set of challenges because there were always good reasons to just hire men. It was a bigger pool. They were a bit of fit frequently. In fact, was turning out that we could hire them for less money that was needed just to pay the women.  We felt like we're in a big hurry to hire. And we couldn't really wait for so long to get all of the positions filled only with women. But we stuck to the principle. And slowly it has begun to give us the results that we wanted, not just in the fact that we have more women, which is also happening slowly, but also in the way the leaders in the organization have begun to take responsibility and ownership of creating more equitable cultures within their teams and to get more curious about what it would take to make sure that the women in their organizations wanted to continue to be there, felt like they were a part of the team and wanted to develop. The visibility did another thing which was possibly an unexpected outcome. It also translated into a lot more people across the organization, men and women, to really talk about their own experiences and their own means of being able to feel like they were being included. In fact, when we first began to talk about this, it was very, very hard for us to get women to share their challenges and constraints. But once we made the commitment a lot more public on creating an equitable workforce, more people were willing to come forward and share their experiences. Just knowing that this was an organization that felt strongly about this meant that people wanted to sort of be a part of the story that helped make the change happen. One of the things that we did as part of the entire initiative was also that we spent a lot of time talking to women both inside and outside the organization. And what was interesting about that was that when women talked about their challenges, they were not usually about childcare and work-life balance. Those were things that mattered, but far more frequently the challenges were really about managerial support, about being aware and well informed and having their opinions heard. The issues that women seem to care about, the things that they wanted out of work, were really not all that different from what men seem to want. So we've decided not to really pursue any women-specific leadership programs or to single women out or to identify policies that would single women out. Our goal is really to make the system better so women can contribute without compromising or limiting themselves. We're also creating the space for women in the organization to surface their challenges and constraints so we can band together and push for this change much more strongly. By creating a community, we amplify women's voices. The fact is that we want more women because we believe that they bring a different perspective and a different lived experience. But we will only be able to leverage this experience if you don't first require the women to change who they are. If people believe that they're valued and they have a voice, they will fight to make things work. And our promise is just that, the promise of a voice. There have been generations of women who have joined the workforce since I began my career. In some ways the paths are broader, there are more opportunities, there are different things that people can do. And careers are not just about means to independence but are also frequently about having a calling. And there are so many more role models all the way to the vice presidents of the most powerful country in the world. But women are still only a small part of the corporate world, still much harder to find in the most powerful roles. Only 8% of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies are better. Although this mind you is a 1900% increase. In 2000, two out of the 500 women were, two out of the 500 CEOs were women. And today that number is up to 40. So things have gotten better, but then as I look at the successful women, I know my managers and women leaders across the organization, across various different organizations, whether in India or abroad. The common factor, invariably, is the support systems around. Frequently it has meant that whether as fathers, managers or husbands, the men have made the space to build the collaborative relationships that puts the woman first. Sometimes it is about the advice, encouragement and faith that they demonstrated the person. Sometimes it is about opening those that they have access to. And sometimes it is simply about getting out of the way so that the women can shine. And it has to be acknowledged that it takes courage for men to do this. It requires them to stand up to society's expectations of themselves. But in the process, I believe that these men and women are creating a generation of boys who have role models, not just in their mums, but also in their dance. So as successful women yourself, you probably have examples of these people in your life. I certainly do. People who, for me, both men and women who opened up doors that I wouldn't otherwise have had access to. So as I think about what it takes to build a world where more women can play to their potential, I think about little ways in which I can make an impact. In how I engage, not just by me, but also with many of you. And the conversations I have with young women, so they know not just to be diligent, but also ambitious, not just hardworking, but also willing to take risks. And also, of course, in the system that we build at home, that helps them all below. So today, ladies and gentlemen, my ask of you is just this. As people with power, please help tilt the world a little bit more towards equality. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Manmi. That was really interesting to hear you talk about so many aspects and we have many questions that just jumped in on our Q&A box and also we have from other platforms. I'm just going to take a few minutes to ask you this. Our first question is, since HR involves a larger gamut within the organization, what are your views on role women play? And is there any kind of discrimination, pay gaps issue, an inclusivity in leadership? What has changed in these last few years, if you'd like to throw some light on that? Okay, so if I understand the question, it is about women in HR or is it about women in leadership? Women in HR and also in the leadership groups. Okay, so I think there are multiple different things and to me, I think the starting point is kind of this thing that there are certain things that women are good at and there are certain things that men are good at. That unconscious bias, a lot of us just start off with men and women. And I think that's possibly the one thing that if we can get over the question about more women in HR, actually even more women in media sometimes. It's because you're good with kind of talking to people, you're good with being somebody that people can rely on and all of that sort of stuff. We've found that when we've been able to create those systems and we've tried to sort of nudge people towards working with their biases and be more open about giving people opportunities about not deciding for them and letting people decide for themselves. It has resulted in better output. So it's really just about saying that if you think that, oh, maybe I should not give this piece of work to this woman because she's just coming back from eternity, don't decide that yourself, ask the person whether they'd like to take on that challenge. And that sort of helps. On the other question around pay gap, I think I have a little bit of that in the conversation that I just had as well. I think it's interest