Pallavi credits her professional achievements to her self-belief, focus, resilience, and her ability to form meaningful connections with people. She loves her current leadership role and emphasizes the importance of bringing in more intentionality in one's career by taking a moment to reflect, learning from the past and carefully planning your future path.
As Head of Education, India, at Tietoevry Industry, Pallavi Bhat is responsible for the unit’s operations in India and delivery of products for the education sector. Her primary focus is on building empowered teams, improving engineering practices, ensuring operational efficiency, technical excellence, and continuously improving product delivery in the Nordic Education domain. Tietoevry Industry Education unit leverages technology to build products that simplify everyday school life and provide a great user experience for everyone, including guardians, parents, teachers, and school management.
“For me, the most important part of being in the technology space is that I get the opportunity to find solutions to real-world problems that have a purpose and a positive impact on society through digital transformation and innovation," Pallavi says. She continues, “As a leader in tech, I find motivation in nurturing talent, providing suitable learning opportunities to my team and building a high-performance culture through mentoring."
A warm and empathetic leader, Pallavi shares her career experiences, emphasizing the importance of finding a harmonious balance between work-life, continuous learning, strong teamwork and navigating through challenges to relentlessly pursue one's aspirations.
Overcoming challenges became imperative as I sought to strike a balance between my work and personal life
My professional journey started slow, as I prioritized personal responsibilities including maternity and childcare, elderly care and supporting my husband’s career advancement which led to frequent relocation in my early days. I took a 1.5-year long maternity break as I was determined not to miss the small, precious moments with my child and hence delayed engaging daycare support. When I restarted my career after this break, I experienced a lot of self-doubt as I saw that my male colleagues were performing better because of better focus on learning and reskilling, while I juggled between my professional and family duties trying hard to be perfect in all my roles. I had little time to focus on my health and mental wellbeing, and even less to devote to upskilling. All this affected my self-confidence to the extent that I began to question my ability to assume challenging roles and have a successful career.
There was a point when I recognized the absolute necessity of taking action if I wanted my career to take off. I started by identifying the most pressing challenges I was faced with and figuring out ways to overcome them. I realized I needed support to manage my domestic responsibilities along with my work, so I started to actively seek help from my family members, who most willingly offered it. To overcome my self-doubt regarding my suitability for leadership roles, I met with women leaders in technology both within and outside the organization and sought to understand their journeys and draw strength and inspiration from them. I attended women-centric technical conferences to gain insights from other women leaders’ success and failure stories and learn how to make difficult choices and maintain a good balance in work and life.
Since finding extra time to dedicate to upskilling was difficult, I found innovative ways to maximize the value of the time I had. I used every opportunity to connect with people – seniors, colleagues – who were experts in the areas of my interest and actively sought mentorship. I even used my commute to and from the office to engage in discussions with my co-travelers and made every effort to learn and grow. I made efforts to establish a strong network by contributing to various employee committees, women’s empowerment clubs, and leadership forums.
I discovered my strengths and learned to use them to advance my leadership journey
As a woman, I recognized that I have high empathy and emotional intelligence both of which helped me understand and connect with the emotions and experiences of others. I believe in championing diverse perspectives and promoting the unique contributions of individuals from diverse backgrounds Additionally, the ability to multitask, prioritize, and strike a good work-life balance is a natural strength that I bring to my leadership role.
While my efforts and abilities helped me move ahead steadily, I also got ample support from the organizations I have worked in. My experience is that if you have the skills and the right attitude, the right opportunities will present themselves to you in time. The support and motivation I got from my leaders gave me the confidence to take up challenging roles and deliver well.
A valuable skill that has helped me as a leader is the capacity to build trust, meaningfully connect with stakeholders and establish partnerships and networks that can collaborate effectively and drive the organization towards success.
Leadership is a journey of self-discovery and it’s important to pause, reflect and plan your future path
Leadership, to me, is a journey of self-discovery and lifelong learning that is both stimulating and fulfilling. The IT industry presents abundant opportunities for personal and professional growth. Collaborating with other industry leaders, contributing to industry forums and conferences, and sharing insights and expertise enable me to evolve into a better version of myself.
Leadership roles give us the opportunity to influence our teams and leverage each member’s strengths, skills, and unique perspectives to create meaningful impact. As a leader, it's important to stay open to new ideas and learnings. Through continuous engagement with my teams, especially young talent, I have found new possibilities to solve challenges and evolve both as a leader and as a person. We learn from our experiences and especially failures, but self-belief, focus and resilience give us the strength to lead effectively.
In my current leadership role, I love what I do. What I’ve learned from my own journey is that it is important to take a pause, to reflect on and learn from the past, and plan the next phase of your life for yourself.
My message to young aspiring leaders in technology is: Your leadership journey will be unique, and you can design and plan it the way you want. It is important that you believe in your capabilities, invest in your development, set audacious goals, and aspire. Stay strong, stand by your values, focus on your goals, embrace opportunities for growth, and support others along the way. I wish you all the best on your path to leadership!