68: Roma Balwani: The leadership journey

ShownotesWhat makes a good leader? Who is a good leader? Are women better leaders? What or who shapes our leadership styles? Why do women continue to be underrepresented at the C-Suite level across the world? These are some of the questions I have been asking my guests on The Elephant in the Room podcast - in an attempt to demystify leadership and what it means because it means different things to different people. For the 68th episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast I spoke with Roma Balwani a strategic communications advisor, an Independent Board Director at John Cockerill and former President of Communications at the Vedanta Group. In 2021, in India just 4.7% of the CEOs are female (slight increase from 2018) and there has been a decline in the number of women board Chairs. The regulatory requirement for listed company’s to have women on boards, has definitely helped increase the number of women directors board numbers (2021 - 17.1% up from 9.4 in 2014). But, women leaders in India are decades away from any kind of parity in the C-Suite or at the Board level.In this episode I spoke with Roma about her journey, the challenges, opportunities and mentors who helped her build and progress her career. We also spoke about leadership, women and their leadership styles; barriers to women in leadership in India; challenges facing leaders in an ever changing world; the skills aspiring women leaders should focus on; people who inspire her……….Listen on any of your favourite podcast platforms.Memorable passages from the podcast👉🏾 Morning Sudha, I'm really delighted to be invited to share some of my personal stories of my checkered career in your podcast.👉🏾 Sure. So I have been the President of the Vedanta Group for almost seven to eight years, and just recently moved into an advisory role as a communication specialist. I was looking after brand and communications at the Vedanta Group. Prior to that, I was also the EVP and Chief communications officer at the Mahindra Group for communications. So both these have been very large part of my career and of course, the career, as I said, is checkered because I've dabbled in many things which are to do with creativity. 👉🏾 So I've been a creative consultant in the past. I have also lived in Norway and worked as a communication specialist there as well. My education has been largely in Mumbai. I've been an economics and political science graduate from a leading college in Mumbai, from Bombay University, as well as done my post-grad in Marketing from Bombay University. And then generally we have been very well exposed to executive education at the Harvard business school as the Michigan Ross school of management, so those have been very insightful leadership training that I have received. 👉🏾 I have over more than three decades of experience as a communications specialist, but frankly, my career in PR started, it was a chance which I took on at the time when I was not a PR specialist. I was a marketing communications manager in a computer education company, which was a very small company at that time. It was just a 500 crore company led by Ganesh Natrajan, and he offered me that role. And I said, I don't think I'm really suited for it because I'm very candid, outspoken, and he said, you know, Roma, that is your speciality and that will hold you in good stead in this profile as well. I said, well, I'm willing to try, but I'm not sure whether I'm a perfect fit for it, but frankly, I think he felt that I could do it more than I could, and I don't think I've looked back since then. And I guess he was...

Om Podcasten

The Elephant in the Room Podcast is a curated safe space to have uncomfortable conversations about the pervasive inequalities in society and our workplaces. The idea of the podcast was born from my sense of conflict about identity, self and the concept of privilege and fuelled by my own need to understand how my overlapping identities and experiences had impacted and would continue to impact my life chances. Two years ago I decided to ‘opt out’ to find my own purpose and focus on passion projects including learning about the systemic biases that are endemic in business and society. The Podcast is my very own listening project, a step towards being more intentional in my learning. The Elephant in the Room Podcast is for people who want to be a part of the change, for those who want to step up & speak out, for those who want to learn more about biases, barriers and best practice, for business leaders and for individuals, anyone who is interested in a fairer, more inclusive and compassionate society and workplace. Each week I will interview inspiring speakers from across the world on issues that are taboo and deserve to be mainstream including(but not limited to) systemic and institutionalised racism, discrimination based on further eight protected characteristics, poverty, mental health, climate change. The podcast will also talk about cognitive inclusion, culture, purpose, ethics and the importance of empathy, cultural intelligence and how conversations on identity and disadvantage would be incomplete without considering intersectionality. With the podcast I hope to share stories of people with lived experiences, stories that may have never been told, stories that galvanise us to take action for change and keep the conversations alive by raising the decibel on issues of inequity, inequality in our search for a fairer and more inclusive world.