Shwetats Shah

I would definitely attribute a lot of my success to all the mentors that helped me along the way - they've been instrumental in helping me apply my learnings into the real world and develop my networking capabilities. I also attribute it to my own hard work, my determination, and me being really focused and rigid about what I want to do. I was determined to pursue a higher level degree and be able to contribute in the ways that I can, so definitely some of that powering through hardships has been key. And at the top of everything, I would say my family - my parents and some of my closest friends - have been absolutely essential to my success.

The best professional advice I've received was 'come to me with solutions, not problems.' This really helped me shift my perspective, because oftentimes people come saying 'this is a problem, what do I do, what's going on?' But especially being in the consulting field where we're always recommending and solving problems, this advice gave me more perspective to think: this is the problem at hand, what do you think we should be doing, what do you think I can do to analyze this better, come up with some recommendations, and then present it to the team. Being more solution-oriented than focused on the problem helped me forward think a little bit. Personally, the best advice has been to just be honest - don't do anything which doesn't come honestly, naturally, authentically to you. If you're right, and if you feel right from within, then that's it. Just go for it, fight the world if you have to, but just do what comes the most naturally, most honestly to you. And don't let that go, the honesty part, however much you grow in life. That's from my parents, of course.

Just keep going, you know what I mean? Just keep going. There are going to be obstacles, there are going to be difficulties, and I feel like I live with imposter syndrome every day - you feel like you're not good enough. But I think it's those days when you just show up that matters the most, when you feel like everything's going down the hill. So just power through, stay consistent, do what you love. And I have to say this - don't take any nonsense from anyone just because you're a woman. You have to stand your ground and not let people push you around.

The biggest opportunity in my field right now is that the pharmaceutical sector is growing, healthcare is growing, and we need more people to amplify the patient voice and really develop patient-centered strategies in healthcare. Anything and everything related to patient-centered research, or even consumer-centered research if we go broader, is a huge opportunity - really understanding and going to the bottom of that food chain and asking, what is the need at the grassroot level? As for challenges, I would say consulting overall is facing some disruption. Some parts of it are being replaced by AI - we can now spit out in minutes what would probably take hours to do, like research, proposal writing, or reports. So a lot of the analysts or the doers may feel at risk, especially early career professionals who have just graduated. But the flip side is that there is hope, because the world is really challenging you to think right now. You're asked to be a critical thinker and a problem solver, because you're no longer spending hours just doing things - you have AI to support you with that. But it's making you think at a larger level: let's think of better prompts that you can give AI to support you, let's think of better ways you can use your time to strategize for a client. Those negatives can actually turn into positives, and you can use your time better.

Balance would be the first value that comes to mind - it's all about balancing, and you're just juggling. You're juggling personal life with professional life, you're juggling priorities. Especially for somebody like me with parents in India and family back home, I'm managing timings, I'm managing phone calls, I'm managing meetings, I'm working late. It's a lot of management, so balance is crucial. The second value is honesty - at work, in work-life balance, whatever it is, just be honest, just be authentic to who you are as a person. And the third value I would say is open communication. I'm a big believer that most problems can be solved with just open, honest communication. Sometimes you need to over-communicate, just don't under-communicate.