When we examine the overarching global vision of AnitaB.org India, which talks about inclusivity and increasing the headcount/ratio of women to men, it becomes imperative to understand where women possibly drop off the radar. The journey looks something like this: Education in College – Work – Marriage – Mother – Returning mom (can become a full-time employee again, a freelancer, or a part-timer). At each stage, there is talent leaving the workforce due to multi-various reasons and as a result, gender parity continues to remain a challenge.
We at AnitaB.org India Chennai, want to create programs where each stage is addressed/engaged to help minimize drop-off rate at that particular stage in their life. With that as the background, AnitaB.org India Chennai is working towards “Widening the sphere of influence to ensure inclusivity and continuity of journey of women in the workplace,” through various strategic initiatives.
TM2 – Technology, Me & Metaverse
- Sunil David – Digital Technology Consultant, Former regional Director, IOT @ AT&T
- Gayathri Devi Jayan – Global Business Head, Metaverse BU, L&T Technology Services, Chennai
- Kavitha G – Anchor
- Siddharth Kumar – Moderator
Inaugural event at Comcast on 15th Feb, 2019 featuring
- How to CODEsign the future–A fraction of reflections – Keynote by Kuppulakshmi, Chief Evangelist, Zoho for Startups
- 5G networks – Tech talk by Krithika Raman, Senior Manager, Comcast
- Art of building a Highly Available Large Scale Payments Processing System – Tech Talk by Poorna Vaidyanathan, Engineering Manager, PayPal
- Industry 4.0 and the transformation in engineering – Tech talk by Gayatri D Kalyanaraman, Agile Evangelist and Digital Coach, PM-power Consulting
Deep dive on June 21, 2019 at Verizon
- Demystifying Blockchain–Shobana Mahadevan, Manager Research and Innovation, Ford Motor Company
- Financial planning for the working woman – Sundari Jagadeesan, Personal Finance Expert
- Diversity initiatives at Verizon – Krithika Krishnan, Sr Delivery Head, Verizon
- Industry 4.0 and the transformation in engineering – Tech talk by Gayatri D Kalyanaraman, Agile Evangelist and Digital Coach, PM-power Consulting
Deepdive on safety, Sep 2019 at PayPal
- Is your digital money and identity safe-attack and prevention at the application layer –Anuradha Narayanan, Senior Manager (Security Engineering Team) at PayPal
- Securing your web applications – Attacks and Mitigation steps – Muthu Karpagam, Security Principal at Symantec
- A healthy way to being fit and fab – Laveena Madan, Certified Expert from Institute of Fitness Sciences Pune
Deepdive – AI & ML, Dec 13 2019 at KLA Tencor
- Introduction to Machine Learning techniques and hands on demo –Kartika Kalyan, Sr. Manager, Qualcomm
- A beginner’s guide to Natural Language Processing – Padmapriya Mohankumar, Sr Tech Project Manager, PayPal
- Introduction to Self Defence in the Digital Age – Shorei-kan Assault Prevention and Evasion (S-K.A.P.E)
Deep Learning and Effective Ways of Dispersed Working
- Deep Learning 101 –Vivek Viswanathan, Sr. Engineer – Amazon India
Effective ways for dispersed working
Moderator:
Maggie Inbamuthiah, MD AnitaB.org India
Panelists:
Senthil Natarajan – Sr Engineering Manager, Amazon India
Vishweshwar Hegde – Mindfulness coach, PM Power Consulting
Vijayalakshmi G – Digital Business Transformation Leader
Virtual Hopper, August 2020
As part of the National Hopper 2020 event, here is AnitaB.org Chennai’s session:
Going GLOCAL: The Global success strategy of a Local product – Putting Chennai on the world product map
Excerpt
Several Chennai based product companies in the IT industry have made it big in the international markets. Getting here has been no mean feat. There have been numerous challenges, heartburn and near shutdown in some cases on their way to the top. But they did not give up. They took these challenges head on and built companies that are recognized and rated tops when it comes to innovation, design and user-friendliness. Listen to some of the best minds from these companies and get enthralled by their journey. You never know, you may become one of them or perhaps get inspired to chase your own product dream!
Moderator:
Madhavi Ravanan, SI Delivery Head – Telco Cloud at Nokia
Panelists:
Arundhati Balachandran, Customer Success Leader, ChargeBee
Gayathri Aruswami, Senior Customer Success Manager, Kissflow
Kuppulakshmi K, Head of Zoho for Startups
Mentorship Program, September 2020
At AnitaB.org Chennai, we are working towards ‘Widening the sphere of influence to ensure inclusivity and continuity of journey (for women) in the workplace.’
Given the vision, we understand and believe that a strong network of people to tap into, lean on or simply share milestones with plays an integral part of this journey. To that effect, we have drawn up a Mentorship Program that will provide the community with this kind of support in a very structured fashion.
Mentoring is sharing knowledge, skills, and life experience to guide another to help them reach their full potential. Mentoring is multi-faceted; it can be formal or informal and may change and evolve as the needs of the mentee change. A mentor can be several things – a role model, coach, voice of reason, counsellor, and confidante.
Mentors also act as sounding boards. When people have strong sounding boards, solutions to challenges, new perspectives, and out-of-the-box thinking can happen as a natural outcome of the discussions.
With that in mind, AnitaB.org Chennai created the following categories of Mentors
- Technical mentors: These mentors are experts in their chosen field of technology.
- Life skill mentors: These mentors are experts in the general field of life skills like communication, soft skills, personal branding, career anxiety, stress management, career counseling and the like
- Student mentors: These mentors will be dedicated to specifically helping the student community
We handpicked and invited over 15 mentors across different organizations and skill sets in the above three categories.
Candid Coffee Conversations, April 30, 2021
Work from home, calls online and chasing many agendas and timelines, had certainly stripped away the candid conversations with friends around the coffee machine. The virtual Candid Coffee Conversations was all about providing that Coffee Machine / Water Cooler set up so we could all get together over our favorite brew and get talking!
This was a no agenda, simple catch-up that saw discussions happen around a completely wide range of conversations from ‘The relevance of March 8th’ to ‘Books I recently read’ to the very happening North Madras songs like ‘Vaathi Coming!’.