I had the honor of cohosting and emceeing the Women in AI inagural event of Deloitte’s Leading conversations in AI series on March 8, 2021, International Women’s Day. Here is a recap.
I was honored to participate in the Tartan Alumni Oral History project of my alma mater, Carnegie Mellon university.
Carnegie Mellon University’s social media team gave me two prompts to answer during the Women’s History Month. The short tweet: Who influenced Shantha Mohan? Here is my long answer.
Q. What motivated you to go into Integrated Innovation as well as teaching?
Continue readingDelivering a toast is one of the speeches I had to give as part of my Toastmaster journey to Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) award. I chose to do it on an imaginary toast that I would have given at the launch of my daughter Anita’s book, Love Songs for a Lost Continent which was published in 2018. This short story collection won the 2016 Mary Roberts Rinehart Award.
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This is a speech I delivered in my Toastmasters a while back, pretending the audience to be my fellow alumni and students from my alma mater.
In 1978, a family of three arrived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with 700 dollars to their names, and all their possessions in two suitcases. They knew one woman in the city, the one friend they had made in India when she was passing through and needed a place to rest in-between flights. Now they were relying on her to put them up for a night or two while they found housing. You could say they were naïve, you could call them foolhardy, but they had aspirations. The man was going to do his higher studies, and the woman and the one-and-a-half-year-old daughter tagged along.
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Earlier this afternoon, while cleaning some old papers, I came across a limited edition print (one of 20) about a scene from Madurai, titled “Hay layden bullock cart near Madurai” and a few postcards. I have now spent the rest of the afternoon reminiscing and reading the news about the Padma Shri award conferred on the author, Manohar Devadoss, by the Indian Government.
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“Sometimes the people whom we’ve know for only a short amount of time have a bigger impact on us than those we’ve known forever.” – Maya Angelou
I have known Prof. Natarajan only since the end of May 2020. He had just been appointed the Dean of the College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG) earlier that month. The CEG alumni had compiled the results of a student survey and wanted his permission to share it with the students and alumni.
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When I answered a leadership questionnaire to determine what my primary leadership style is, I was not surprised by the discovery. The result said my leadership style is Coaching. This is good because I currently do a lot of coaching and mentoring. But I am also very much aware that leadership style is highly situational. How many of you are aware of the theory of Situational Leadership?
Continue readingBharathy Bhaskar is a household name in Tamil Nadu. Her motivational talks draw thousands, and her YouTube videos are seen by millions. She is a celebrity and needs no introduction. Why would she agree to a webinar to inspire the students of an engineering college in Chennai? Therein lie some great leadership lessons – a lesson in modesty, a lesson in compassion, and a lesson in the spirit of giving back.
I had the opportunity to talk about Roots and Wings with Hari, my fellow alum from College of Engineering, Guindy. I am thrilled to have four of the women from Roots and Wings provide their takes on what it meant to them to study engineering. Thank you, Nalini, Radha, Kalpa, and Indira! You can click on specific links (in the video description) to hear them talk.
