Swati Koul

I think my ability to take risks is something that I would say makes me successful. It all starts from there, that do you have a growth mindset? If you have a growth mindset, you are okay to be a little bit uncomfortable to charter a new territory, and that means you kind of put stakes and you say, okay, I'm gonna take a new challenge, it's fine, it may be risky, but at the same time, you're comfortable and you know yourself that you can put the hard work, you will put your mind to it to be successful. So, taking risks, but at the same time, knowing yourself that you are a risk-taking person, but you backed up with your hard work.

One of the best career advice I receive is in the power of comfort versus courage. Whenever you are in any job, comfort is important so you make sure that you are working on a project and spend around 40% of your time being comfortable and driving things which you are really good at. But at the same time, take around 60% of your time towards taking new opportunities which will make you a little bit go beyond your comfort zone, and have more courage, get into a new area, so that you keep expanded. So comfort versus courage in that 40 to 60% ratio is something that I receive as an advice, and I keep giving this to others.

My biggest advice to the young women who are starting in the industry would be building your personal brand. It's how people associate you, how people think about you. It's a lot of work on how do you kind of build those, and I've written some articles around it on my LinkedIn profile as well. You need to kind of work on your persona, communicating to others, and then keep refining that, but at the same time, making sure the values that you stand by are always kind of guiding you towards building your brand that others can pursue and talk about you when you're not in the room.

The biggest shift that I'm seeing right now in the industry, especially the enterprise customers, is that with AI, there's a lot more that can be harnessed towards improvising your operational expenditures, but as well as gaining new revenue streams. My biggest challenge right now is to work with these organizations and really tell them what is the benefit of AI that they can leverage to improve their business operations as well as drive new revenue streams. Educating them on AI, making it real for them in a day-to-day use, the process changes that they need, the top-down mandate which comes, and then making it real at the grassroots level.

I believe in the value of working hard and manifesting. I believe there is nothing that cannot be achieved if you put your mind and your body towards it. So, manifestation is big, something that I work towards, envisioning your goals, envisioning your dreams, and then working towards it, working hard towards it. And while you do that, you know, you put your morality as well as the guiding principles with you which help you kind of stay on track while you're working hard towards achieving your goals. So those are some of the values I really kind of are very important to me that you dream big, you manifest, and then you put your mind and your body towards achieving those goals with keeping your morality intact.