Isha Mahajan

I would attribute my success to my colleagues and my family. I have very amazing colleagues, to be honest. I have never seen that before - our company kind of elevates how supportive they are of each other, so even if it's completely different departments, they will always be ready to help each other out, and I think that's one of the major reasons why I am successful and why I am where I am today. And the other part is my parents. I have a solid support system, and I think that's very important.

One of the best career advices I would say that I've received is in your early to late 20s, the 5 to 7 years of your career are very important, so what you do in that time stays with you the longest. So try to gain as much experience as you can, try different things. I realized that as we get older, the opportunities kind of become limited to our thought process. So we think that, well, I have had like 7 years of experience in this, and so it is difficult to change and go into a completely new field. But if in that 5 to 7 years of experience you try your hand at different things, you just try to gain as much exposure, try to form as many connections as you can, that helps you in your long-term career later on. That's one of the advice given to me by our CEO, and it has stayed with me.

I think confidence is key. You might not know something. No questions are dumb, but ask as many questions as you can. Try out as many things as you can. There is something that you will like in the end. The more exposure you gain early on in your career, the better it will be, because you would be able to take your career in that direction if you have that kind of understanding in the very beginning. Never say no to things that you feel might be good opportunity. You might be scared because it's something huge, but honestly, you just gotta give it a try. If it doesn't work for you, you can always move on, but without trying those things, or being afraid is okay, but without trying, you will never know.

I think persistence is the major thing that I always look forward to, and I also coach about, because you may wake up, and you may not feel like working someday, but there has to be a little bit of discipline and persistence. You might not like what you're doing right now, but I think one of the major things, how you get success, or how you reach success, is, I would say, persistence, and ensuring that even if you don't like some things, maybe if you're persistent enough at it, you might start enjoying them, or you identify that this is not for you, and you move on. But unless you give it a try, you will never know, so persistence is key.