Well, to begin with, my ambition in life is to build a large network which includes people from all around the world, with an intention of being influential enough to help people around me and perhaps even make a change in the world. This is something I’ve been working on since my undergraduate days, at Madras Christian College.
I used to be a reserved child in my youth, so it was often difficult for me to engage in conversations with new people or even face a crowd on stage. My dad noticed my difficulty and put me in multiple positions where I started gaining my confidence until I was confident enough to face these challenges on my own. One of my first and proudest on-stage moment was when I got to proclaim the word of God in our church, during the youth week, during our school days.
Soon after, I joined my undergrad, at Madras Christian College, Chennai. Since I was raised in U.A.E., a new environment lowered my confidence. However, our college followed a fraternity system where we were taught to endure and overcome all obstacles that come your way. I started participating in more events and opening to new opportunities and a variety of people. We also had strong alumni relations in our fraternity and college which really widened my perspective.
After my UG, I was placed at Deloitte, which really helped boost my opportunities. The massive employee count really helped me get around and meet a lot of people from a variety of backgrounds. My ever-developing communication skills lead me to get the opportunity of organizing the hosting of Deloitte Audit’s cultural event. This caught the eye of members of the managing team and I was inducted into the Social and Events Committee.
I further used my networks to get in touch with other functions under Deloitte to help me understand other opportunities to a more relevant field. I was able to identify corporate communications and started interacting with employees in that area to gather more insight. I even got in touch with the alumni for my fraternity who also provided other leads.
It was decided that I pursue my master’s in management to be able to shift into that role to utilize my position and achieve my goals. This is only the first few chapters of how a quite boy will one day, bring people together, for the change we need.
