What, according to you, would be the first milestone of you career, the breakthrough moment?

I imagine you are expecting an answer involving work, but it isn’t. I had been chugging along, doing rather well at O&M, and then I joined Trikaya Grey. Two months into that assignment, some of us went on a weekend trek to Ambavane, where Ravi Gupta was building a small stone house for his family, before he acquired the farmlands. That was several years ago, and is now unrecognisable as Amby Valley. He took me for a two-hour stroll along the pristine clean hillsides, it was a dewy day in September, and described to me media and values as I have never thought of them before. Two pieces of advice stood out – “don’t be afraid to create your own path and follow it – those who question and criticise the most will follow it too, later!”, and “your chair is not you, the day you equate yourself with the chair you occupy, you’re finished”. That conversation shaped many things about the way I managed my career, my passions, and my life, since.

Amongst all the assignments that you have handled, which is the one work that you would always cherish as your best work – a lifetime favourite?

There are no lifetime favourites, and my best work is yet to come. As a rookie, I enjoyed working most on J&J, and I was at my most innovative at Trikaya Grey, working with a creative genius like Chris D’ Rozario, and the strategic brilliance of Ravi Gupta on Lakme, Bayer, Real Value, etc. At Lintas, the clients we have worked with have been the most inspiring. Our work years ago on Britannia, and lately on ITC’s Bingo, the print and digital innovations for Maruti, the recent MyIdea campaigns, are ones I feel proud of for my teams.

Some years ago, I helped develop Owle’s World, our knowledge intranet, which was different and fun. The creation of the Northpoint postgraduate programmes based on practical sessions with mentored internships at Lintas Media Group was also pathbreaking in a way, and dealt with a different resource – talent.

Of late, I have truly enjoyed enabling our web-based media management system, which is a first of its kind in India.

What would you say are the challengers for a woman leader for working in the advertising industry?

Like most creative and service professions, advertising does employ many women. Thirty-four per cent of our company’s workforce is female. However, only 12 per cent of senior managers are women. I am sure this is true for other agencies as well. This means that as a profession, we are unable to encourage women to stay in it and grow in it. Media agencies do better in this aspect, but the industry is still quite male dominated where it matters, there is a strong ‘boys network’ that may or may not always be comfortable to venture into, working hours are long, there is always the high stress attached to any service business – of not always being in control of your own time, or your own results, since we always need to cater to the demands of our clients first.

What is the one thing that a woman ad professional can bring to the table that the male counterpart often lacks?

There is no one thing. They say that women tend to be more empathetic, inclusive, multi-tasking and right brained, and bring a degree of compassion and honesty to the table. But I have found many men with all these qualities, and many women without them. It’s difficult to generalise such things only on the basis of gender. But on the whole, I do find the average female employee more financially honest, and the average male employee has more stamina.