Anwesha Banerjee

I attribute my success to a combination of having the right mentors and guidance from so many mentors who have helped me along my journey. It's also about being open to feedback and listening and being able to change and adapt. The mentorship I've received throughout my career has been critical. So it's really a combination of getting the right advice from the right people, taking action on that advice, and making small improvements on a day-to-day basis. That's what has allowed me to achieve what I have in such a short time.

The best career advice I've received is to have grit and perseverance and find your way through things, because it's not always that the first choice is the best choice. You need to keep an eye on the big picture and your long-term goals, even though in the short-term it seems like you're not going where you want to. It's about staying focused on where you ultimately want to be, even when the path isn't straightforward.

I think it's important to keep building your credibility, your own knowledge, your strength, and your authenticity, because that's what matters. Be authentic, be genuine, and don't feel restricted to put your opinion and voice up front. Oftentimes there is no one right answer, and we always wait for the perfect answer before we want to speak up. Just be authentic and speak your mind, and don't be afraid to put forward who you are as a leader and a person, rather than trying to be someone else. We always see others and what we see on social media, who we see as leaders, and we often try to think that's who we need to become. But what I have found is that it's important to discover who we are as a person, what is our voice, and what we want to say, and be authentic and genuine about that. I think that is way more valuable than trying to be another great leader that we see on the screen. We probably don't need another one of someone, Mr. X or Ms. Y. We need your voice as a leader and person.

I feel that women are asked to develop more stronger leadership presence and executive presence than I'm not sure how much an equivalent man would be asked to. That has been something of a struggle. Younger women who are in their 30s and 40s, who are trying to get up to the senior level, are often asked about whether they have the executive presence, whether they can actually build consensus, whether they can have more influence over other leaders. Demonstrating that has always been a challenge because we still are at a time where women are not seen in a lot of leadership positions high up there in the C-suite. That is something we need to keep working towards and understand that women have their own strengths, and they don't need to be like other men to demonstrate their strengths.

The most important values to me are to have excellence in whatever I do and have integrity in whatever I do. Those are core values that matter to me a lot. Excellence and integrity guide everything I do, both professionally and personally.