"Career Choices, Social Impact and Remembering Dumbledore" | IIT Madras | Girish

So, very quickly, what I hope to do with you  in the next 20-30 minutes is just share some reflections on how you think about career  choices, how you think about career options, share a framework of how you can think about  these things, give that framework to you so that you can use it in your own lives, and  talk a little bit about certain practices that you can start doing now to help you have  a sorted life, career, etc. Does it sound good? [Music] Hi everyone! Can you all hear me?  Can you

all see me? We're good to go. When I was invited to speak, I thought a lot about  what I wanted to say. After due consideration, I decided that one thing that might be important  for you and interesting for you was career choices. One thing that was important to me  was social impact. And one thing that I just wanted to see if it would get you through the  door was Dumbledore. If you know Dumbledore, he is a fictional character in the Harry Potter  sequel. A very wise Headmaster who has a lot o

f meaningful things to say. So, I thought I  would take the help of the character's voice sometimes in the conversation. The most  famous quote he has is, "Happiness can be found even in the darkest of places if  one only remembers to turn on the light." So, very quickly, what I hope to do with you  in the next 20-30 minutes is just share some reflections on how you think about career  choices, how you think about career options, share a framework of how you can think about  these things, give t

hat framework to you so that you can use it in your own life, and talk a  little bit about certain practices that you can start doing now to help you have a sorted life,  career, etc. Does it sound good? Very quickly, just background, not so that why am I  talking about this? What is the context here? So, I wrote the JEE and the Humanities and  Social Sciences Entrance Exam, got through both, and then decided to join for B.Tech here. Got  into Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering and did a b

ranch change to Mechanical Engineering,  graduated as a mechanical engineer, and then did my MBA from IIM Ahmedabad. In all of this time,  if I look at what was one thing that I felt was critical in my journey, it was this. How many  of you know IViL? IIT for Villages. Awesome! So, IViL is a student initiative on campus in IIT  Madras called which works towards as an action platform and a discussion forum about rural  development and developmental issues. For three years of my four years on camp

us, my blood, sweat,  and tears were going towards working towards IViL. It was here that I probably wrote my first minutes  of a meeting. It was here that I first-time edited a website, and it was here that I learned about  so many different perspectives around what is social impact, what is development, and how do you  build an organization. Armed with a lot of this, I then joined a corporate consulting firm  called McKinsey & Company. It is a large consulting firm that helps organizations rea

ch  their goals by supporting them on important strategic elements. Over there, I think I  got trained on structured communication, on thinking about problems at scale and how to  solve them at scale, and implementing with rigor. After four years there, I moved on to an  organization called Peepul. Peepul is an education nonprofit that works with governments  to strengthen learning in government schools. I worked in Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, and we  were working across 300,000 teachers and 10 mi

llion children in one state, Madhya Pradesh, in  India. A lot of what I had learned at McKinsey, as part of the leadership team of People, I was  able to essentially use the same hammer but use it on a nail that I cared about. I joined 6  months before COVID, 5 months before COVID, and I think I was in the right place at the right  time where there was a certain set of skills, there was a phenomenal team around me, and we were  able to do a lot of meaningful work during COVID and after. The orga

nization grew, there was a lot  of good work done, and four years later, I felt like I've been working on social impact for so  long, trying to understand, trying to experiment, doing a lot of things, but maybe I want to take  a break. I want to take a career break and take some time to reflect on what is, you know,  ask the big questions, reflect on my purpose, all of those good things that a lot of people  want to do at some point. I decided to do that, and a few months in, as people were like

,  'Look, I wish I could also take a break, you're having these interesting conversations,  you know, is there a way in which I can also access them?' I started a video podcast called  'Raahi: Impact Journeys,' and I've been doing a set of other experiments to strengthen the  development sector, strengthen the social sector, and help people work with each other. So, I've put  it all under this umbrella of Raahi:Impact, and that's what I'm doing now. Conversations include  speaking with one of my

professors from Ahmedabad, with someone who's an IIT Madras graduate and  is running an Alternative Learning Center, a Community Learning Center in Hyderabad, and  so on. Very, very interesting conversations which help me reflect a lot, and it's up  on YouTube, and you can also access it. So why am I talking to you about career  choices? I have had the privilege of seeing a lot of different journeys over the  last many years, talking to a lot of people whose journeys I've tried to understand, t

ry  to help on, as well as my own journey where, just like you, I have had many reflection  points, questions, concerns, insecurities, spares as I have navigated the journey.  So whatever it is that I am able to share, I thought I would share today. So why should  we talk about career choices? Why does this matter? Anyone? Oh, yes, got it, good one.  So the time that you spend is going to be a large chunk of the time that you spend. What  else? Any other reason? Why should we talk about career c

hoices? It's a major source of  income. Your career is probably going to be a major source of your income. Very important  consideration, yeah. We shouldn't go with the flow of whatever is surrounding us. Most  importantly, that is also an important point. We should not necessarily go with the flow; we  should be mindful. By the way, that there is a flow and that we're going in that flow and see  whether we like it or whether we want to swim, take a little bit of effort. I'm going to take all  o

f these points, and I'm going to work with that. If you look at a typical lifetime, we are broadly  talking about 5000* weeks. That's your life, right? And in those 5000* weeks, if I just  break it down, 50% of it is spent taking care of yourself, sleeping, eating, cooking, shoving  if you want to, all of those things, right? And then 20% is gone in childhood. Only by the time  you've gotten here, 20% is already gone. Now, what does that leave? That leaves something about  30% left, and that 30%

, let's say, and again, you can debate on how much you want to spend,  and that's also in consideration, a good part, a good 20% of your life is actually spent on  what is called career or work, and another 20 or let's say 10%, 15% is spent with your friends,  family, and yourself, your free time, right? So, it is a large part of the discretionary time you  have. This is a large part of what you can use to express your identity, to actually understand  who you are, what you want to do in the wor

ld, and your contribution in many ways. By the way,  I know some of you are shocked that it's only like 20% left, but yeah, and not sleeping at  night is not the way to solve for it. So before anything else, let me just take a second to just  share that having career choices is a privilege. Why do I say that? To have career choices,  that means that you've had a solid education, you have financial space, you have, for whatever  reason, been born in a peaceful part of the world, and you have enou

gh options in front of  you to choose what you want to do. So, the question becomes, what is it that you  want to do? But I just thought it's really important that we don't forget that there is a  full pie. It is not only that 20% that is there; you need to think about your life, your  personal situation as you navigate these things. So, can I get this is a second question for  all of you, what are the typical choices that you have when you graduate, whether you are an  undergrad or a postgrad o

r a PhD in the room? So, if you look at a lot of these options,  no, I tried to kind of categorize them, and I realize that it's not easy to  categorize. Right? So, what are the different axes of decision? What sector do you  want to work in? Like, do you want to work in science and technology, healthcare, research, or  academia, development sector? Second question, what role do you want to take? Do you want to  be an engineer, a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, right? A management professional. By

the way,  everyone says management; if you do management, anything goes. You can do whatever. That's  actually what I've realized is this is also a specialization. You are a management  professional. The type of organization, do you want to work for a private organization,  do you want to work for the government, like in the civil services, do you want to work for an  academic institution, like come back and join IIT Madras or some other institution, and do you want  to do it in a startup, a mid

-sized firm, a large bureaucracy? What fits you? How do you decide?  There are so many axes and so many decisions. Right? And so, I think this is when I will invoke  Dumbledore to remind you that it is your choices that show what we truly are and not our abilities.  And so what I want to leave you with is slowly coming to the framework that I mentioned. And,  by the way, don't beat me up saying this is too simple. Why? You know, it's not a framework. But  fundamentally, from everything that I've

seen, there are a few factors that you have to think  through. There are four questions that you have to ask yourself. First question, what are your  values? What are your identities? Who are you? What second question, what inspires you? What  do you love doing? Third question, what are your lifestyle needs? And final question, what  is the impact that you want to see in the world? And let's go through each of these and understand  what is behind each. First thing, know yourself. Every single o

ne of us is unique. Take a moment  to think about your wing in the hostel. Just take a second to think about your friends, right, or  people in your Colony if you're not staying in the hostel. Every single person, if you look at it,  if you try to put one person's career into another person's life, it may not fit. But that's hard  for us to also realize that the same is true of us also. We're also unique. We're also with our own  propensities, and this campus is one where people sometimes find t

hemselves and sometimes lose  themselves. And this is a space and a time where you actually will be able to engage, understand,  and explore your identities. So, for example, are you maybe, you know, is Girish what is Girish,  right? Like someone I was speaking to today said, 'I am a caregiver; I am an academic, and I am an  activist.' That was her set of identities. For me, it might be, 'I am a management professional;  I am apparently a podcast host now, and I am an aspiring musician, and I am

a voracious  reader.' Once I define that for myself, I have to spend time on those activities that  will say that, you know, I cannot read books and call myself a voracious reader. So, I  think one part is understanding what makes you tick. The second part is understanding, like  someone was talking about the flow, right? One thing that I've realized is every organization  that you are part of holds a certain belief, holds a certain point of view, and it's really  important for you to just know

what your values are for you to connect with that and understand  if those are the values that you will enjoy. There have been times when there's been one short  period of time in my life when I had to pretend to not be a social sector person. I can tell you that  was one of the hardest times of my life because it's really hard to pretend to be somebody that  you are not. And those of you who have pretended to be somebody or not will relate to what I'm  saying, and those who haven't will be lik

e, 'What is this guy talking about?’ You are the  lucky ones. But it's hard. Embrace who you are and try to work with that knowledge of what you  value. If I say that I might enjoy something but what do I love doing becomes a question very  quickly. Number two, what inspires you? What makes you feel awesome? I remember people used  to ask me how are you doing, and at one point in time during my career, I'd be like, 'I'm  doing well.' And then I shifted organization, shifted spaces, and then peop

le asked me one  day, three months in, somebody asked me, 'So, how are you doing?' And I said, 'I'm happy.'  And I was like, 'What did I just say?' My answer changed, and I didn't even realize it.  So, I think finding things that inspire you, finding things that you enjoy, finding things  that give you meaning just makes life much easier. Imagine you are someone who loves sports, and in  campus, instead of allowing you to go to sports, they say that you have to go to the library  every day or th

e other way around. I don't know if you would be okay with that, and if you're  not okay with that when you are on campus with the freedom that you have, then I wonder how you would  feel if you had to do that for 20% of your life. Right? And this one again, calling back to  Dumbledore, it takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but it takes as  much courage to stand up to your friends. On the first point about knowing yourself and knowing  what inspires you might lead you dow

n a path that may not be the typical path, and it will  take you a lot of courage to say, 'It's okay; I'm going to try this.' You need to just be  sure, and you need to be clear that these are your decisions and this is the cost that you're  willing to bear for those decisions. And you may have to stand up to your friends, to your family,  to be able to do that. And that doesn't mean a confrontation; that doesn't mean that you have  to act without kindness. It can still be kind, but it can still

be firm. And there are so many  stories of so many people who are from my batch and before who now have 10 years of runway. And  you can see one person that, as I was reflecting, came to mind was an amazing senior called  Hariharan Mohanraj, two years senior, Engineering Physics branch, good at physics,  good at math, but brilliant at music. I mean, for an inter-hostel western music competition,  that group ended up making their own song, like they composed a whole piece just for inter-hostel 

Western Music. And a brilliant song. And so what he did is at the end of four years, he went to  study Sound Engineering in New York University. And he has an article in The Fifth Estate,  which was IIT Madras magazine, which I found still online where he has written that there are  things that you're good at and there are things that you love. You can do what you're good at for  a really long time, but once you get tired of it, you'll feel like shooting yourself. And in his  case, I think he's

still into music; he's still working on it. And you should read the article  where he says that. But that's just one story of so many where people have taken unconventional  paths, taken twists and turns, and moved away. Third one, and this is me sharing the best piece  of advice that I got at the end of campus. In my fourth year, I got into IIM Ahmedabad, and  everyone said, 'You have to go.' So I said, 'Okay, I'm going.' And someone came up to me and  said, 'You know what, many, many years ago

when I did my MBA, it was something that I thought  of, and I want to share that with you.' He said that be careful that your need base doesn't  increase. What tends to happen is when you get a bigger paycheck and you get a bigger salary, and  when you do an MBA and you get into that world, your lifestyle changes, and then your needs  will increase. And when your needs increase, it's very hard for you to go back. For whatever  reason, something that was told to me ten years ago has stayed with

me. And so, if you look at my  lifestyle, it is broadly the same as it has been, unrelated to the paycheck that has been coming in,  whether it's zero or whether it's much more. And I think that I find that a powerful thought. At  the same time, the second aspect of it is, yeah, again, every single one of you has your own  story. Some of you will have ailing parents; some of you will be the first-generation  learners, and you will have people who you need to take care of at home. You will  have

financial responsibilities. You may not have any of these things today, and you might  have it tomorrow, starting tomorrow. You know, I have met people who care deeply about something  and they want to do it, but they are mindful that they are not able to, and sometimes they beat  themselves up. I just wanted to call that out to say it is not necessary to beat yourself up  because it's important to also understand what you need for your life to sustain for your loved  ones, your family, your fri

ends. What is it that you need? Some people need a minimum level of  income, so they can't afford to just go off. But there are some of us who might be privileged, who  might be able to do it and then maybe should. And that leads me to my favorite point, which is what  is the impact that you want to have in the world. I'm not talking about doing work in an NGO. I'm not talking about doing work somewhere else.  Any job that you do, whether you're working in engineering, whether you're working in

corporate  finance, whether you're working wherever you're working in your career, your work is going to  have a social and an environmental impact. You might give employment to a thousand people; you  might end up improving healthcare facilities; you might end up being the cause for trees being  cut; you might end up standing in the way of someone who is, you know, causing oppression. But  the thing is that you will, just by the fact of your actions or your inaction, will be, with your  power a

nd your privilege that you have just being where you are, you are having a social impact.  And I just wanted us to be mindful of that because one of the things that I've noticed is there are  people who I couldn't initially understand, but when I understood where they were coming from, it  started to make sense. There were people who said, "I will not work for this type of companies" or  those who were disillusioned with certain types of companies. Where they were coming from is they  were actua

lly saying the work that I will be doing and contributing to through this organization is  not the vision that I have for the impact I want to leave on the world. That is not the direction  that I want to take things. And I think I just wanted to, you know, break this boundary we  have between social impact organizations, which are usually nonprofits and foundations  and CSR arms, etc., and people who are like a data analyst in a large tech firm or who might  be, I don't know, sorting through pa

pers in a government office, or someone who is doing  research. These are usually not considered to be social impact work. But I think I just want  to bring home the fact that the choices that you make have a tangible impact on the world,  though you may not see it in front of you. And there is a brilliant example. So, there is  this academic called Roger Fisher. There is a very interesting thing that happened when they  were talking about nuclear war and deterrence. Roger Fisher had this intere

sting idea of how  to prevent all-out nuclear war from happening in the world. You know what he said? He said  that the nuclear codes that you need to launch the nuclear missiles in the U.S., you should put  it in a little capsule next to the heart of a volunteer who will walk around with the president  of the U.S. at any given point in time. And if the president wants to order nuclear bombs to  be put out, he needs to take a knife and say, "Listen, George, I'm really sorry, but we are  doing th

is to save tens of millions of people," and have to put a knife through the man's heart  and take out the capsule. And people are like, "You're crazy. The president is not going to kill  someone just to launch a bomb”… and kill thousands of millions of civilians who are innocent. And so  be very careful when the impact of your work is very far away in distance and very far away in  time, like you putting a plastic bag out there and having a deer eat it. I keep seeing that  sign outside, so that

comes to mind. That's not happening the moment you put the plastic  bag out there, but that has its own impact. You helping somebody may not have an immediate  impact, but just keep that lens in mind. And I really like the Roger Fisher story because  I found that to be a very powerful thought. So, if you are looking to make career choices,  this would be my four-part set of questions to ask yourself to decide what would work. And to  close this, just some practices that I would suggest that you

can do now, which will help you  get there. First one, and this is something that I keep telling people: keep a journal. A journal  is essentially a diary entry. What they say, I have been keeping one since 8th standard.  And what I have found it to be powerful for me personally is a) it helps me to remember  who I am and things that I have done because many years later, your neurons can fool you. You  can think that you were actually unhappy when you were actually happy; you can think that you

were  happy when you were actually deeply unhappy. And you might have forgotten things that you  have done that had a deep impact in your life. And for the Harry Potter fans out here,  keeping a journal is like having a Pensieve, where you have too many thoughts crammed in  your head, and you can take those thoughts out and keep them aside so that you will  have time and space for other things, but you can always come back to it and relive  those memories. I have found it to be helpful in prepar

ation, and I have found it incredibly  helpful in pattern recognition. I kept getting professional feedback while I was at work, and  then six months later, I'm looking through it, and I suddenly realized that actually, there  was an underlying theme for all of the feedback sessions I had. And I would not have realized that  that's the case unless I had my notes with me. Second, if there's one takeaway from this entire  conversation, it would be ‘try something’. Very often, when we think about t

hings in abstraction,  that's very different from how it actually feels. So, the best way to know if you like something,  if you are inspired by something, if this will be a good fit for you, is to find a way to do it  in a reversible way. Think of it like a one-way door versus two-way door. It's like a door that  doesn't lock, for example. If you feel like, 'I don't know if I would like working for a  small company,' do a three-month internship with that small company and see if it works for  y

ou. So, an internship is an easy way where you've invested 3 months, but it's not like a full-time  employment that you've taken, right? You're like, 'Yeah, I'm thinking I'll move to a village and  live there for the rest of my life. I would like that. Do that for one week and come back and let  me know how you feel.' So, but remember to try and not be always lost in abstraction. It does not do  to dwell on dreams when life is there to be lived. Third, I would say just learn as much as you can 

without boundaries. Some of the best learnings that I have had has been in conversation with  other people. It has been sitting through lectures that I haven't actually enrolled for. It has been  in random Instagram reels that I was watching. But do not put any filter or prejudice around where  you are going to learn from. Every single person, irrespective of age, of career, of orientation of  any sort, can be a good mentor, and you can be a good mentor for the person as well. So, I really  thin

k it's important for you to keep learning wherever you can, whatever you can. As an example,  I will just go back to what I said about IViL, IIT for Villages, the club at IIT Madras. Whenever I'm  doing anything somewhere, I see echoes of things that I've tried and learned to do there. I look  back at the emails I've written in my third year, and I'm like, these are professional emails that  I've reached because I kept writing emails with updates and reflections and month updates and  all of tho

se things. I learned to document when I was doing that. I learned to speak because of  IIL because it was a place where there were like 5-10 people at the time that I was getting active,  and 2 years later, we had 40-50 people. And so, every time we would meet under the Knowledge  Tree, which is a tree outside the library, I would reach 15 minutes early and I would take some  time to kind of get my thoughts in order, be like, 'Okay, how is this meeting going to go? What will  we talk about?' All

of those were muscles that I was building without realizing which helped me to  become effective and efficient at the workplace, which is helpful for me. And I wasn't doing  it for the CV point. One of the things that IIL had was there is no CV point, there is  no hierarchy, there is no rat race. And that somehow was good because I was following  what inspired me, and I ended up learning. Finally, and this is what I would  really want to leave you with, engage with diverse perspectives and dive

rse  people. Again, think about your wing, how much time have you actually spent getting  to know their lives, getting to understand them, how much time have you spoken to final years  and seniors to understand how they've been thinking about life? How much time do you  spend with Ph.D. students if you're a B.Tech and Humanities students if you're an M.Tech? I'm  just making slightly distant connections here. How did they make those choices? What do they  believe in? What are their learnings? Ag

ain, try to engage with people who you might not agree  with, and it's totally fine to not agree with them. Their life experiences are different,  but engage with them, ask the big questions, figure out if you really question your own  values, question your own beliefs, and see if you will become a different person at the end  of it because who I was 20 years ago at the age of 13 is very different from who I was 10 years  ago, is very different from who I am today, right? And finally, this is th

e lifetime that we  spoke about, and I wanted to just leave you with something that I feel very strongly  about, and something that I'm working on. A lifetime that you should also be worth living.  The way that, typically, we end up—I say "we" because it includes me—we end up prioritizing  is work is more important than relationships, is more important than health. But a friend  of mine from IIT Madras told me some time ago, and that has stayed so strongly with  me and resonated with so many peo

ple: prioritize like this. If you don't have health, if  you don't have relationships, you don't have the rest. And if you don't have this, the rest may not  actually be worth doing. So, health more important than relationships, more important than work, is  something that I would remind you, request you to keep in mind as you move forward. I believe that  is it from me. Thank you so much for being such an attentive and engaged audience, and I hope  this was helpful. Happy to take any questions.

Actually, this picture here,  did you intentional choose it to show some kind of message or so? What is that? Okay. I actually want to show and tell you  a story about my sister, but then I decided that might confuse the overall conversation, so I  didn't. But now that you've given me an opening, here is the story. You guys mind? Okay.  So, when my sister was a wonderful person, when she was in 8th standard, she was in  school, and a female Air Force pilot came to school. Right? And she comes h

ome and she's super  inspired. She's like, you know what? I'm going to become an Air Force pilot. I will have a uniform  job. And this is not a story of how she crossed the Short Service Board and then she became an  Air Force pilot. No, this is a story where she went on to become the first batch of aerospace  engineers from Amrita University, went on to do her M.Tech in Aerospace engineering at IIT  Kanpur, and for the last decade, for 10 years now, she's been working with the Hindustan Aeronau

tics  Limited, as a design engineer. She's been working on helicopters, fixing snags, ensuring that the  machines are manufactured, coordinating across a lot of people. And why I wanted to share that  story was because I felt like, often, that in many ways shows me why I actually came here to speak,  because I realize that sometimes there is value in hearing other people share things. And B showed  me how passion and inspiration are important, but it's also important for you to know yourself  an

d know what your competencies and your interests lie in, because she's the engineer of the family  and she's phenomenal at what she's doing. And she followed her path, which was different from what  was her inspiration. And I felt like sharing that might be useful to share with you that that's  often how it might turn up, and that's okay. And I wanted to make sure I shared about my sister  because there's something that she told me I wish I had known 10 years ago when I was graduating.  And toda

y is National Science Day, and I felt like this is important for you to know if you're  considering, if you're asking this question should I do an MBA, etc., etc. She told me this  thing that science is like magic because science, if you really think about it, is understanding how  the universe works. And engineering is making that universe work for you, to make something happen in  the real world. Spells are the magical equivalent of equations. If you know the equation, you can  make water move

from point A to point B. You know? And I just felt like I want to share that  with all of you who might be missing inspiration on the core job front because we do need solid  engineers to come out of this institution. Thank you so much for asking this question because, yes,  I did think about this when I put it up there. A lot of the points are part of your four-point  framework mostly focus on introspection and talk about the self and what you prioritize as  such. But don't you think in today'

s world there's a lot of external influence as well,  just popular discourse about career options, career choices that one should make? Right from  the start, right from 10th grade where you choose a stream that you want to enter into, influence  from society, influence from all sides, everybody that you interact with. So why is it that your  four-point framework focused only on the self? That's a good question, and I think my answer  to that question is exactly because of what you mentioned, ri

ght? Because there is so much noise  around us, there is so much of a narrative around us, there is so much that everyone is telling  us to do, don't do. This will work for you; this worked for me. There was just so much that  is there, and every one of us is on such unique journeys. I just honestly felt like the only  way that one is able to answer such questions, to say, "Boss, you should do this; this is the  best thing; you got this; how can you not do it?" Often, the answer lies in understa

nding  yourself and understanding what you need, understanding what you like, and what you really  want to make happen in the world, which is what we ended up with. So otherwise, I mean, I would  be the next peddler of dreams, saying that, you know what? AI, guys. AI is what we should  focus on. In fact, don't even learn coding from now. I hope people don't take that clip and say  I said it. Now, yeah, right? I hope that makes sense. I really feel like the more disconnected  we feel with our own

identity is often when we get into situations that are stressful for us  career-wise. And those who are wonderful are those who are extremely self-aware about what makes them  tick, what they need to get better at, and what they enjoy doing. So they make life fun that way.  Understood. Thank you. Thank you for the question. If I start to do something new and it's not going  really the way I expected it to, how do I keep up that momentum, push myself, and keep going in that  area? So you are pic

king up something new, you like it, you enjoy it, and you are facing hurdles  because it is something new fundamentally. Well, my take on that would be maybe it sounds like  what you're looking for is a little bit of time to get find your feet and a little bit of kindness  from the people around you. Because you're feeling like, I'm not able to deliver as much as I needed  to or wanted to, and you need that space. And in such situations, my sense is that an honest  conversation helps, saying, ‘h

ey, let's have a conversation. Here's what I think I'm doing well,  I think I'm going to need a little bit of time. Is this typically how it is? How am I really doing?  What are those two, three things that need to do?’ So there was one project that I did that bombed  for three months. I tried everything I could, and professionally, that's been the one big  failure or the really tough time. I was picking up something that was bigger than I had picked  up before. I was in a situation where I idea

lly should be fine, but my clients were complaining,  my team was mutinying, my leadership was like, what happened to this guy? And after three  months, I got airlifted into another project, saying this is just not working. And sometimes you  just need a reset. But then when I was speaking to the person that, you know, my manager's manager,  he was like, look, you had three months. You could have picked up a part of that puzzle every week  and learned a little bit about it. And while he was not

victim-blaming me in any way, I thought  that was actually interesting, which is, I was so busy in the everyday trying to learn it and trying  to catch it. I somehow was not able to be elevated and be strategic about picking up different parts  and still getting a little better at things in a structured way. Um, and solving—but I—I don't  know if that fully answers, but okay, thanks. Yeah, hi. So how did you find social sector was  your thing? I mean, was—is it from childhood only, I mean, that

is my thing and I have to do it?  And today, most of the students, if not all, have from their parents or friends  that you should do this and you going, maybe coming to Peepul—people like,  after McKinsey, “what are you doing”? So, okay, thank you for that. Personal story.  I think I again had to reflect quite a bit, and what I realized—I mean, what I learned to  articulate about a year ago is that I think there were three main influences in my childhood  that led me to become this person. So b

oth my parents have been working in the government, so  my dad's from IIT Madras, funny enough, and my mother worked in the State Bank of Travancore,  State Bank of India. My father worked in DRDO, and so I grew up not really—like, the first time I  heard about the profit motive was when I was in my MBA, that companies are there to make a profit. I  was like, oh, that's interesting. So that was one, and so I grew up with generally their ethos of  just being helpful, etc., etc., whatever their et

hos were. Second is I used to read a lot  of books and all fiction, and at some point you start feeling like, oh, there is evil in the  world and you should all fight that evil. And the third thing I think just the society and the space  that I was in was had a lot of diversity, equity, fairness, and somehow those values started to  take root, and you know how it is when you start doing something good people start encouraging,  you know, and then like the kid becomes like, oh, this gives me enco

uragement, this gives me  positive reinforcement, so he started doing more of it. I think civil was the first time that my  actions found feet where I was actually able to do something in a sustained way for multiple  years, and thankfully because I think it was a slow transition for people. I found my way to a  lot of social impact or social sector-related work at McKenzie. One of the projects was to work with  people as a pro bono growth strategy study, and I fell in love with the organization

when I was  working there, and I thought it was phenomenal, and it took me a year to join. And the world  was kind enough that they also structured it as a secondment where I resigned, but I had a  return offer for a year so that it was my first job transition, and that really helped me when  I was making my first job switch. It took time to make all these things happen. It required a  lot of orchestration to make things happen and a lot of kindness from a lot of people, but I think  that helpe

d to make that switch. And generally, family was supportive. Thank you, everyone,  for coming, and I will hand the mic back. [Music]