In our list of India's Best 50 - the 50 Most Employable Students from the Class of 2021-23, we feature MBA students who have walked that extra mile and done that little more to stand out! One of those featured in today's story, Ann Varghese, has shown an incredible amount of passion to achieve her true potential. Read on and find out her story!
The following are Ann Varghese’s set of responses to a questionnaire floated amongst MBA graduates to determine the top 50 Most Employable MBA Graduates of the Class of 2023. Amongst the massive number of entries and responses being evaluated, Ann's story and profile stood out. Here's her story in her own words.
Name an instance where you wanted something and went out of your comfort zone to achieve it OR Tell us the biggest risk you have taken so far in your life.
In 2019, during my stint at Cisco, I was assigned to a critical and highly escalated multimillion-dollar project for Coles Supermarkets, Australia, as a network implementation engineer. A few weeks into the project, the project lead informed me that she would be leaving the project and enquired if I would be willing to take her place. Although leading a project for the first time seemed daunting at first, I realized this was a chance for me to challenge myself and show my true mettle, so I accepted the responsibility.The primary challenge was gaining the trust of the customer. I proactively addressed any problems that arose in the deployment and any concerns the customer had. This experience also taught me how to remain calm and mindful in high-pressure situations and how doing so reassured my team members as well.The next challenge was learning how to be an effective team leader and how to take accountability for my team members. This involved mentoring them, empowering them to take customer-centric decisions and presenting a united front to the customer. This was definitely a rewarding experience in leadership for me.By the end of the project, the customer was thoroughly happy with our deployment and we received a 92% CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score). I received the Customer Focus Award- 2019 for my work on the project. While this is was truly a feather in my teams cap, the true satisfaction came from turning around an unforeseen adversity into a positive experience for our customer and all stakeholders involved.
When was the last time someone relied on you? OR What did you do which was purely for someone else - a truly selfless act?
During my second year of work, a batch of new college hires had been onboarded onto my team. Incidentally, one of them was a junior from college and she was assigned to my project. Within a few days of working with her, I realized that there was a substantial gap between my teams requirement and her current technical skills.Upon conversing with her, I perceived that she too was aware of this situation and was feeling demoralized. She confided in me that she felt she was a misfit in the organization. I advised her that being a fresher myself, I had gone through the same doubts and apprehensions the past year. I offered to mentor her and asked her to join the project in a shadowing capacity. I began to offer her digital learning resources that had helped me when I was getting started and gave her small assignments to evaluate her progress. She demonstrated a steep learning curve and soon began contributing to my project deployment.This experience opened my eyes to the need for a mentorship program in the organization, which could greatly aid in ramping up new resources. After consulting with our manager a few like-minded colleagues and I started a mentorship program wherein new-hires were assigned senior mentors who provided them with shadowing opportunities, learning resources and conducted regular progress evaluations. This program was very well-received in the organization, but the biggest satisfaction came from being able to resolve a problem for the benefit of my junior.
Tell us about a time when you disagreed with an opinion/idea/decision. What did you do about it?
I was once leading a team of 2-3 women employees and was simultaneously working under a technical lead who was also my mentor. He had a reputation for being patronizing and at times sexist. Once when one of the women employees in my team made a fundamental mistake, he chastised her and told her, You need to evaluate what you want to do with life. Become someone worthwhile or stay home and take care of kids. I was taken aback by his words and my colleague was reduced to tears. I could empathize with my colleague and realized that I had to stand up for her. So, I proceeded to politely tell him that what he said was not appropriate. He realized that he had gone too far and apologized to my colleague. However, I soon realized that my mentor had taken this incident to heart and was cold with me ever since. Later, he gave my manger a sub-par review for my performance for that month. Although I had no proof for the same, I knew that his actions were based on this one incident. But to this day I am proud that I was true to myself and behaved with integrity & stood up for someone else, no matter the consequences.
What is the one thing you can claim to have some level of expertise or depth of knowledge in - it could be anything - a subject, a sport, a hobby, a venture, an initiative that has led you to do deep work in that field?
I am passionate about all things Marketing! Coming from a consulting background, I had the opportunity to work with many global customers and it was here that I realized that I wanted to learn more about Consumer behaviour and B2B Marketing and Customer relationship management- Basically understanding the psyche and behaviour of B2B customers and how to attract and retain them. This is what inspired me take up an MBA course in the first place and to work on various projects in the B2B space.
If 10 Million Dollars (approximately INR 75 Crores) is given to you to use it any way you deem fit what would you do with this corpus?
Having been a part of the Social Responsibility Forum at NMIMS Mumbai for the past 2 years, and having volunteered with numerous NGOs for CSR activities durting my stint at Cisco, I am aware of the pressing need these organizations face for funds to stay afloat. I would provide seed funding to grass-root level NGOs, who actually generate the most impact for the underprivileged, especially the ones who work towards the causes of Child Welfare and Education.
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