Hitachi Data Systems India as part of its global social responsibilities, presented a panel discussion at NMKRV Women’s Degree College, Bangalore, on 16th Sept 2014 . The panel discussion was on higher education and successful career options for women. It was attended by 500 college students.

1. HDS CSR Awareness week 2014
 Hitachi Data Systems India as part of its global social responsibilities, presented a panel
discussion at NMKRV women’s degree college, Jayanagar, Bangalore on 16th
Sept 2014 .
This 40-year old college is a pioneer in women’s studies and focusses on all round
development of women.
 The panel discussion was to trigger debate and discussions on women leaders, factors
responsible for successful careers, inputs from women achievers and student interaction with
corporate execs. I had invited 3 women achievers to do most of the talking. Corporate India
seeks and promotes diversity was the key message to budding women leaders
 This panel had the following resource persons
– Maya Culas, Marketing Director, Hitachi Data Systems India
– Bhavya Ram, Director-OEM, ISV alliances, VMWare India Ltd
– Kakoli Roy, entrepreneur, content writer and ex-banker
– Avinash Kulkarni, HDS CSR lead as the moderator. Narayan Shetti from HDS HRD
helped us in coordination. Satish, an upcoming entrepreneur from DICCI helped us in
event management
Close to 100 girl students from final year graduation [3-year college degree program] participated in
this discussion. Both moderator and students posed questions to the panel. They asked many
leading and interesting questions. The feedback has been very good about the program content. We
conducted the discussions on these themes:
1. Influences and role models for your own personal learning. Did travel, friends, different
cultures, teachers, etc help you shape your skills? Students need to move out of comfort
zone and mix around.
2. How do we make students pay attention to attitude / skills rather than only knowledge.
Degree oriented /exam oriented success is not ensuring good jobs
3. Constructing career goals and sticking to them
4. Options of other countries as work location and cultures compared to India
5. Risk taking in different roles, entrepreneurship, outbound work rather than desk based jobs
6. Leadership qualities of women: caring, multi-tasking, ethical behavior, allowing for more
diverse opinions in the team.
7. Maya used Sheryl Sandberg’s /Facebook COO autobiography book as a case study/ref point
8. hiring and best practices at VMware India
9. Cultural traps, stereotyping women in to pre-disposed careers, work-life balance
10. Using influences from sports, music, arts, adventure, travel into our learning.
11. Core values of individual and organizations
Few photos from the event are enclosed in next pages-