Kalpana Srinivasan

I truly believe it is the upbringing and the trust that people around me have in me, to be able to lead and to even give me a listening ear. I owe it to the people who trust in me and my upbringing. Trust is a two-way relationship - it can't happen just one way. It's very important to be able to feel comfortable in your shoes, and if you need to do that, and you need others to do it, it's implicit trust. My parents are my superhero - both my she hero and he hero. I came to this country 30 years ago to study, and I'm now a citizen here, but the whole value system that's imbibed in me still remains. My father always says that there is never an end goal. When you reach that, that pushes further on, so you keep moving, so there's never a limit to where you can reach.

Never turn an opportunity away. You never know what it's going to lead you to, so never turn anything away. If this is something that nobody wants to do, put your hands in it. Get involved in it, because that's where you find those hidden, raw jewels there, like hidden gems in there. You would have never found it if you didn't go explore and give it a chance. Just because it's not shiny doesn't mean that you don't explore in it. That's always been my mantra. My father always said that there is never an end goal. When you reach that, that pushes further on, so you keep moving, so there's never a limit to where you can reach.

Explore all your opportunities. Try different things before you settle on something. Get mentors - mentorship is so important. I feel like you can have as many as you want, and you can have somebody in different fields of your life. Mentors are so, so crucial in how you advance in personal and professional life. They're your go-to people. And networking - I think that's something that our younger generation might not do well because their reach is very different. Go meet people, talk to people, reach out to people. Don't limit yourself. Understanding that a mentor doesn't mean somebody who's more older, wiser, or has more years of experience. It could just be somebody who is a young person in elementary schools. They can mentor you in ways that you don't think you can be mentored.

I think there are a lot of opportunities. I wouldn't call anything a challenge. The challenge would be that right now, with technology moving so fast, keeping up with the pace of the technology. But it's a challenge as well as an exciting challenge, because we want to evolve, we want to learn, and we want to keep up with everything. At the same time, it sometimes can limit us to have those personal interactions, and I think the personal interaction has the value which nothing can beat. When we look out there, there's this whole industry of how you connect with people and how you bring about change in mindsets. There is a lot of opportunities out there in the networking and connecting with people space.

Respect, honesty, and just being authentic to yourself. Who better than yourself to know about you, right? It's very important to be able to feel comfortable in your shoes. In this day and age, it's so hard for kids and even young adults to understand what that actually means - to embrace being who you are, because there's no one better at it than you.