SWE Pune celebrated a major milestone of advancing SWE’s mission in India.
SWE Pune Affiliate, founded in 2015, started with two organizations and six members. It has now expanded to more than 20 organizations and hundreds of women in engineering and technology. Being the first affiliate in India, it has pioneered multiple initiatives/programs to expand the reach of professional development and outreach agendas. This journey is strongly backed up with active corporate partners, a committed group of voluntary leaders and enthusiastic participation of volunteers.
The success of this program is evident through the multiple awards that the affiliate has received like the Professional Development Award at WE16 Philadelphia and the WE Local 2020 joint Professional/Collegiate Event award. So, when SWE Pune Affiliate completed five years, it called for a celebration.
Though the unprecedented situation of COVID-19 pandemic tried, the SWE Pune team did not let it dampen their spirits. The whole event was organised virtually and held virtually. The aim was to celebrate by highlighting the achievements of the affiliate as well as to appreciate the support provided by various entities and individuals to make this affiliate such a big success.
A team of volunteers planned a month-long celebration attended by 580+ professionals from 76 locations in India and 23 overseas locations. 12 volunteers from 7 organizations came together to make this event happen virtually. The organizing team reached out to multiple speakers and corporate partners spread globally to give the best learning experience to SWE members.
The 5-year anniversary celebrations covered the following events:
- Opening keynote on Leadership for All Seasons
- Panel Discussion on Workforce of the Future
- STEM activity for students of Maharshi Karve Stri Shikshan Sanstha. This activity was conducted in partnership with SkySciQ Educational Events and Anoobhuti Learning Solutions.
- Health Talk on ‘Managing Your Health While Working From Home’
- Closing Keynote on ‘Attracting the Advocacy of Influential Sponsors’
- Social Media outreach recognizing our Global Ambassadors, voluntary leaders, corporate partners and our HeForSWE mentors
SWE Global leadership and SWE India leadership shared the journey of SWE Pune Affiliate and their vision through a virtual kick off video. Click here to watch the video.
“Seeing Is Believing”
To achieve, one has to believe, and nothing makes the belief stronger like the sight of it! After attending the keynote session on “Leadership for All Seasons” by Leena Nair—youngest ever Chief Human Resource Officer of Unilever—almost every one of us has found the role model to look up to. This was the best session to have as an opening keynote. Her enthusiastic take on all the difficulties she faced during her career makes us believe that we can achieve and grow equally in the organization just by being ourselves, putting our best foot forward every day and having a time-bound plan to develop and get required trainings to achieve our goals.
As we speak, we are living through a fundamental transformation in the way we work. VUCA world is reality more than ever. So, a panel discussion on “Workforce of the Future” was a must-have. Rajkumar Jain (VP engineering, TomTom India), Shobha Pandey (Talent Management and D&I Lead, John Deere India) and Arvind Sharma (Sr. HR Director, Black and Veatch India) together gave us insight for the future. Stueti Gupta (Co-Founder and Director, BlueKei Solutions) moderated the session by aptly asking questions about how the technology will change the nature of the workforce and what will be the specific trends/skills that will be in demand in the near future.
A session on ‘Managing Your Health While Working From Home’ was conducted by Dr Krittika Joshi, founder and MD of DietDNA Health Solutions. She talked about her personal transformation and how natural diet can help us heal. One of the important points that stuck with me is: “The difference between illness & wellness is ‘I’ & ‘we’, when there is ‘we’ it’s wellness and when there is ‘I’ it’s loneliness and illness.” Stay connected, talk to people. This session helped us discuss through challenges of balancing health during work from home and how we can overcome those.
The most awesome month of celebration came to an end with a closing keynote session by Jo Miller—an award-winning author, eminent global speaker, and founder and CEO of Be Leaderly. Jo extensively discussed the difference between Mentor and Sponsor and why both cannot be the same. She helped us understand what sponsorship is, see value in sponsorship and how we can earn it rather than asking for it. The 6-step approach to gain the advocacy from a sponsor was discussed.
‘Positivity’ and ‘optimism’ are the two words that come to my mind when I think about all the events that I attended and all the updates that I got during the month-long celebration of “SWE Pune turns 5.” These events were organised by the women and for the women. Whoever said the “tug of war” bias among women is pulling them down will be very happy to see that we all are coming together to get over it and appreciate the trailblazing efforts by all the amazing women engineers and leaders.
Kudos to us!! Kudos to all the Women Engineers!!
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