Episode 10: Gayatri Nair Lobo

Born to a punjabi mother and a Tamilian dad, it was both fun and challenging to dabble between two cultures that could not be more different from each other. She fit in neither but she was both, she spoke neither languages, but people assumed she spoke both. In 7th grade she knew that she wanted to be a clinical psychologist.

“My career has been a series of "foolishly brave moves' and when I look back, I wouldn't have it any other way”. These are the words of our guest today, Arundhati Kumar who is the founder and the creative force behind her sustainable accessories brand BEEJ. Born to a punjabi father and a bengali mother, she’s taken the calm of her dad and the grit & go-getter spirit of her mum. She is a dreamer, a dancer, a designer but more importantly, an achiever. Arundhati has spent 18 years working across industries as a senior HR professional with various Indian and Global organizations including ITC Hotels, ICICI Bank, Deutsche Bank, Condé Nast before she decided to make a career pivot by launching her own #sustainability brand. She lives by the theory of #onelifeliveit and has created the life she wanted for herself. She candidly shares how she had to fight the inner demons first as she decided to end her marriage before she could get her family to see her point of view. Her advice of separating the ‘parent’ from the ‘spouse’ in order to successfully raise children in a #coparenting arrangement is raw, vulnerable and comes straight from heart. Without really saying anything, she is raising a daughter who believes that she can achieve anything and everything.

Despite growing up in a progressive household where her parents, especially her mother did everything to make sure she received the best in class education & became financially independent, the awareness that “I am a girl” didn’t escape her after she reached a certain age. She seethed with anger when she was told she can’t do a certain thing because of her gender. Thankfully, her response was not compliance, in fact it was just the opposite. She did things because she was told it was hard for girls to do them. The guest on our show today is Sudha Ranganathan, Director of Product Marketing at LinkedIn.

We only realize it much later that our parents were human beings too who were merely playing the role of a mother or a father, struggling to give us their very best. In the conversation today, Aarthi talks fondly about her mother, who was the force beneath her wings, fiercely prodding her to become financially independent.

"Marriage is not a 2 min instant maggie noodles, but a gourmet biryani", says Dimple Gujral, Head of Finance APAC at Dalberg. An accomplished finance professional with over 25 yrs of sprawling career across FedEx, Cleartrip and Teach For India, she talks about the importance of making small deposits in the bank account of your marriage to prevent it from being in an overdraft mode. She talks about the times when going out to play until it became dark was the default, career options were far and few, and parents obsessed for daughters to become financially independent. She shares tips on staying relevant for her teenage daughter, talks about the classic guilt-traps she often found herself in and how she quickly snapped out of them.