Take Challenges Positively, Convert Them Into Opportunities

She is the Global Head of Product Management, Corporate Banking at Finastra. She has over 25 years of experience in financial services and started her career with ICICI Bank, where she built skills across project finance, corporate banking, forex treasury and relationship banking functions. Veena Rao will be taking part in the Asian Women Leadership Summit (AWLS), in Mumbai, which will take place on November 15.

Rao believes that each individual has 'tremendous potential' and you should persevere to achieve them!

Did you ever feel like backing out and letting it go at any point of life?

I have never felt like backing out and letting go at any point in life. My strong belief and experience is that each one of us has tremendous potential and if we don’t persevere to achieve it, we will be standing in the wings and watching life pass us by. Take up a career which matches your passion or calling in life, it will spur you to overcome any hurdles which come in the way.

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My advice is to not fall into the trap of self-limiting behaviours by accepting 'societal norms' as a given. When you step in to the corporate world or take up a career outside of home, cast aside all thought of gender-based limitations. The only thing that should matter is the role/objective that you have signed up to achieve and garnering the skills required to fulfil it to the best of your abilities. I had the opportunity of working under the close guidance of senior women leaders in the early stages of my career, and realised that most 'challenges', come from within and are best overcome with the developing the right attitude and outlook.

Many say that the scenario for women is changing. Your comments.

My view is that it is for each woman to drive the change that she wants to see and not wait for change to come from outside. It will take generations for gender biases and perceptions to change at the level of society or culture. We should take challenges that come our way positively and turn them into opportunities, rather than wait passively, hoping for a change to happen.

When we cast aside the lens of looking at the world from a 'gender' view, things begin to happen. After all, bias comes in many forms, and gender is only one of them. We can change the quality of our lives simply by changing the quality of our thoughts. An easy first step is to stop dissecting our worlds in so many ways! As fulcrums of our family structures, we, in turn, should make our efforts to effect changes in the way we bring up our children. Engage in conscious parenting and stop typecasting our daughters and sons, providing them with a chance to grow up in a bias-free family environment. If every family makes this effort, we can accelerate this change as a society, culture and nation.

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Her Message To The Women Today

I would like to share 3 messages from my own experience:

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• Find your passion and foster the courage to follow it. Love what you do and do what you love and success will follow. If you find yourself in a situation where you no longer love what you do, find the courage to make the change.
• Invest in yourself. Don’t let grass grow under your feet. Learn from every assignment and opportunity that comes your way. Take up as many new and challenging tasks as you can and drop your preconceptions of what you can and cannot do, especially in the context of gender.
• Success is a journey, not the destination: Develop the ability to break down complex assignments and focus on doing each task to the best of your ability. Success is the cumulative result of several small tasks, well accomplished
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