My 22 plus years long journey at Wipro has been full of excitement and thrill. From the day I joined from campus, it has been an enriching and learning experience, at every step and milestone. The early responsibilities and the amazing trust the organization has in our capabilities has made me the professional I am today. Wipro is a place with a strong value system which I can always relate to. It is ‘fun' and ‘you look forward' to work here every day. It is an organization where people can make a difference, have a point of view of their own and feel free to express themselves. The canvas is huge and you have a choice to create your own picture with various colors of experience and your passion and urge to make an impact. The opportunities are boundary-less. You have to take the plunge.

My father is a businessman he started to work early, not being able to finish his studies. My mother, a teacher, studied at night, after I was born. I’m the only daughter. At 17 years of age I started at the university, studying Industrial Chemistry in the day and Business Administration at night. At the age of 21, I finished both universities and looked for a job. I started in an audit company in the training area. I then participated in the company’s first trainee program and I was invited to support in recruitment. From then on, I fell in love with the area. At 23 years old I did post-graduation in HR Management, at 25 I specialized in Higher Education Methodology. I got married at 25, had a daughter at 27, I changed jobs when she was only 1 month old. I worked as a head-hunter for almost 9 years, in big companies like KPMG. I faced many barriers in an essentially male market. I returned from a trip and resigned after my daughter started to call the nanny her mother. Later I worked for a company named O Boticário, while I was pregnant with my second son at the age of 33. When I came back from my maternity leave, I was fired in a restructuring process. But I did not give up.

At the age of 34, I left my hometown - Curitiba (1.7 million inhabitants) and went to São Paulo (12 million inhabitants), leaving family and friends behind, in search of growth and development opportunities for my children’s future. I arrived without meeting many people, I grew up professionally in companies like Telefônica Group, Capgemini, SONDA. I gave employability and career classes at the university, took many specialization courses, took leadership positions, got involved in the start-up of an IT office in Brasilia, where I stayed for almost 1 year traveling weekly, leaving my children in SP. I got divorced at 40 years old, adopted a dog. I turned around, focused on work and my children, the reason of my life.

I took on the challenge of leading the Talent Acquisition area at Wipro in late 2019, managing a team of 15 people in order to speed up hiring and grow the local operation. My son was in high school and my daughter was studying psychology at the university. My parents taught me to be strong from a very young age, so every challenge I found in my career, every negative response motivated me to move forward. I raise my children the same way. When my children were little, I was shuffling between work and family. It was hard. Today they are adults and understand that everything I did was for them. In my free time, I like going to the cinema, theatre, I love staying at home watching series and I enjoy cooking for my children on weekends.

What does your day at work look like?

Engaging with various employees to ensure a great employee experience, supporting business leaders as an enabling function, and driving various inclusion and diversity and capability building initiatives.

It's exciting work as it gives a chance to connect with many leaders.

What makes Wipro a great place to belong? I have worked for many organizations but Wipro is the best organization I have worked for thus far because of the autonomy and endless opportunities to learn.

I joined Wipro in 2007 just after my marriage and since then it’s been a second home to me. I joined the CIS TA team (erstwhile TIS) as a recruiter and had the opportunity to work with different teams and leaders at that time which has been a great learning experience and gave me the platform to elevate my career.

Wipro has given me the right opportunities at the right time and the exposure to take up challenging assignments. From a junior recruiter to a lead and now as Head of TA for CIS, all the leaders have acknowledged the hard work and supported me to grow in my career.

It’s a mix bag here, a give and take kind of mutual relationship, it’s been 13+ years with Wipro and all my managers and leaders have supported me on both the fronts. You show commitment and deliver, rest assured the organization takes care of you. As a mother of twins, there have been several instances where my personal commitment was more, and the organization supported me to manage the same. One thing I would always want to highlight and thank the organization for, is the opportunity given to me to work as an onsite lead in the US when my family commitment required me to be there with my spouse. I always mention this to prospective candidates as how Wipro takes care of its employees.

I joined Wipro on 1st September 2014 as the Resource Management Lead for what was then ENU Consulting. My role soon expanded to cover all onsite ENU employees. It was my first global role in an organisation as complex as Wipro so a great opportunity to learn how to work in a truly global team and what it means to have a global mind set as well as travel to Houston (I was lucky enough to go to the rodeo on one trip), the Netherlands, Bangalore and Scotland! Since then I have had the privilege to move into the Head of TA role for UK & Ireland, and now into the Head of Delivery Enablementand Talent Engineering for the geo

Every role has provided me with a growth opportunity and to build on my learnings from the previous role and throughout my career to date. I believe there are very few companies that enable you to move and grow in this way, maintain a work life balance, offer the flexibility to work at this level and be a Mum (which in my case is a balancing act with my husband to manage the chaos of 2 children, 2 dogs, 2 horses and a very naughty kitten). Of course, having a fantastic team and a great manager is also key to making it all work.

When I’m not at work, managing the household chaos or with the horses, I have a great love of outdoor sports and travel. We are a very active family and we take every opportunity to go to Europe (particularly France or Austria as I speak French and German) to ski or walk or head to Cornwall to surf. We try to plan one big trip a year.

I was fortunate to be part of the Wipro Family about 14 years ago. Since then, the fabulous journey continues with success, failures and learnings, but no looking back. I joined Wipro after completing my MBA as Hiring SPOC for Data Warehousing Practice, aggressive, focused and determined to demonstrate results. In no time, I was bestowed with added responsibility of handling the BU’s - Retail/ MFG/ E&U/HLS. This enriching experience came with the opportunity of interacting with leaders like Srini Palia, NS Bala and AP. At an early stage of my career, interaction with the leadership helped in understanding the larger interest of the Organization and helped me to work as an enabler for growth of the business.

After a stint of 4 years, life took a beautiful deviation. There was a “slowdown” in the aggression and always “on the toe “recruiter suddenly became very cautious of each step! I took a maternity leave break and returned from the break with the same zeal.

I joined as a B1 Associate, handled business independently, eventually became the Team Lead, and now I’m the Tower Head for Digital. When I look back, I pause, take a deep breath and then move head high today as my journey in Wipro has been astounding. I enjoyed my successes, learnt from my failures, tweaked my ways of working, kept aggressions aside, and unlearnt the outdated and learnt new ways of working.

Exasperating! I’m sure all mothers would relate to this feeling. While always on top of work, it was imperative to extend my shoulder to my two beautiful kids, Saanvi and Aryan. I would want to thank Wipro for extending such a beautiful culture, where each mother manages to work in flexible hours to be able to take care of her family, while managing the business/work.

• Immense thanks to Vishwas, who has been instrumental and accommodating of my schedules. He had always been of the view that I was responsible and was confident that I would manage the deliverables as required. Trust entrusted was always respected, and today I stand out as an Individual who represents TA to the larger organization.

• Business Leaders / Stakeholders, who have always been supportive and integrated TA as one function, few names that needs a mention and I shall always be grateful to- Kumudha, Rajan, Alex, Chandra, DJ (Deepak Jain). Great working for them!

• Team- all my team members, without their support I would not have achieved new heights at work.

• How can I not thank my colleagues who has always been there as support- Gautam/ Mathew/Nandini/ Vishy/Sridhar/Sunil/Ramana Sir/Abhishek/Sachin/Sarah and Sai, my erstwhile boss-guide. Pooja- a special mention, as HR you have always extended a helping hand and have been thoroughly supporting.

“Owe a lot to Wipro and shall continue to do my best and always go an extra mile, because today- Srishti Lal- Digital TA Head, is only because of support and guidance from Wipro Family’!!!