I have to say I got to where I am today because of mentors that were in my life right, and it was very, very important. Thio to shape Thio Come across People who I think came across a certain moments of my life and thereby, you know, created the trajectory that I thought that I would not be at today. So I met my I came across someone who spoke about advertising in my college and loved what he was talking about so much that I literally walked into his office as soon as the graduate and said, You have to give me a job. You have to give me a job. You have to try me out. I think I almost stopped him and thereby got my first entry into into, you know, my first role, which was an advertising as well on. But that's how I ended up on that particular career path. Till then, I had had opportunities to join the hospitality industry, had had opportunities, joined the airline industry and by the head of the department, kept saying that I should not. I should not take any of the jobs because, you know, he wanted me to take something that is more cerebral. Is this modeling it? The the Are you able to see this? The the team's things. Are you able to see that? No. Okay, good. Okay. I mean, they were going to quit it, so that doesn't bother me. So coming back to the question right on. Duh. It really? I think you meet certain people who influence you on and, uh, impact you with their passion and their cause for a particular subject. And that is how you get hooked onto it, right? And you want to kind of borrow from the energy and you want to borrow from the experiences, and that's how you end up being where they are.

I would have. I'm trying to think whether my answer would have been different based on the fact that we were not in the middle of a pandemic, and I have a feeling that my answer would not be different. So the only difference would be that I would be traveling to New York, which is door to door for me one or two hours. I think one way on, I think this is a situation that many of us face globally, like travel and especially work. Commute is a part of our life, right? And we need to because we come to places that are outside of where we were born off a better opportunities. You might always be away from the place that you work at. So one is, I think, in a job like mine there really never wasin 95. So it's not like you could start your day at nine and ended five because it's always being a customer centric, a customer facing role on especially today. And one needs to realize that, um, you are no matter what kind of job you do, you will always be in a customer focus role. So whether you are front end back end. Whether you are another aspect of the organization. At the end of the day, you are working towards that end consumer or the end user. So whether you like it or not, your customer facing on because you're customer facing you will always, um, you will never be in a 9 to 5 job. They're very few jobs left in the world that are 95 and so a typical day for me, in terms of responsibilities and decisions, is to make sure that, um, I shared equal responsibilities for the things that keep my clients up at night on. As you get more and more higher up in that hierarchy, it it is also your job to make sure that you share the responsibilities of the team that reports to you. And so, for both of them, hopefully, you're spending some of your sleepless hours that reflect their hours, right? So the good news is that they feel the buck stops with you. At some point in your life, you realize that there's no one else to pass the buck to, so the buck really does stop with you, Onda. You know you'll have to own up to that responsibility of saying, Well, the only way this issue will get solved is if I get into it and get my hands dirty, right? So So I think that is really, really important. And I think that is something that is common to most jobs today, right? So most managerial jobs will will have that commonality. What I'm a top three priorities. My number one priority is to ensure that I take care off the business issues that my clients have to solve. So in my role today, I, um, the business development Onda account management lead for the customer experience offering for Ryan on the customer experience offering basically means that we have to make sure that a new user, no matter what the businesses comes in Andi is, you know, is able thio navigate the process, whether it's a b two b b two c. But that's a banking solution, whether it's a retail solution, whether it's an infrastructure thing, whether it's someone trying to get a phone, whether it's an Internet, you're only as good as a solution that you give right, and that's only as good as use experience and so my job is to make sure that it's not just about design, but it's really about helping solve a business problem. So so when the moment you come into the mindset, you then become the person that the client calls in the middle of the night or in the middle of the day on Did you know your team calls in the middle of the night in middle of the day? So I'll, you know, I'll talk about a particular example that always fascinates me. At that time, it was a chief digital officer at DuPont, and we had just gone through a multibillion dollar transformation. This was before DuPont was sold to Dowdupont on Japan is about two hours from my house, right, So I had to start for a meeting, and I think on that particular day I was not supposed to go in, and I made the mistake off, not answering my phone for 30 minutes. Like I think I must be going for a shower almost going for breakfast or something on the CDO. The chief digital officer who have worked very closely with who was spearheading this entire project and obviously therefore her life was, you know, pretty stressful. Tried me two times and then try to send me an email to times and because I didn't respond in micro mini seconds called up my boss, who then called up my boss's boss. So by the time I checked my phone in 22 minutes, right, it was already a national level crisis. It was like we can't get in touch with Annika. We don't know where it is. We're trying to get, you know, reach. And I'm like, But, you know, no one's delivering a baby and no one's having a heart attack. I mean, it's just 22 minutes, 22 minutes. And at that moment, I was rather frustrated because I was like, Imagine if I wasn't here today, you know what would have happened. But now that I look back at it, I think it was a reflection off the strength of the relationship, right? I mean, she thought that there was one person she could reach out to E. I mean, she could not reach out to the person. All hell broke. Lose, right? So it's a It was a great reflection on the solidarity off our relationship, but It was also a reflection on the dependency of that relationship, right? So coming back to what are my responsibilities, My responsibility to make sure that our clients are able to handle business issues on If I can't help solve it, Then what are the teams that I could bring to the table to solve it? Right? So I'm a problem solver. What are the weekly hours like the weekly hours never end. So the normally start at nine in the morning, and sometimes I have worked on things at 1. 30 in the morning. Many times I've worked on weekends on. I think our because especially today during the pandemic, because we're almost living baby working and vice versa, right? I think there's no difference between you get up and you get to work, right. Many of my colleagues said that they're like, you know, Annika, we get up, I brush my teeth and then if it all, I get five stretches and then I'm at work. The other thing I think that has happened is that people have started, you know, uh, talking about meetings earlier and earlier and later and later. Right? So they're like, Well, you know you. How about having a meeting at seven o'clock? I could do it on the moment you say. Well, I can't. People would be like, But where you going? It's not like you're going on a holiday or something, or it's not like you're traveling. I mean, what else can you be doing? You have to be available to us. No, I actually have a life outside of work. And just because I'm not able to get into a car, it doesn't mean that I don't have that life. Right, So So I think, uh, you know, But even like I said in the beginning of this conversation that even though, uh, my hours were long as it is before, right, it is important to make sure that your weekly hours are something that you define right So you can put in and say I'm out of office. I'm not available having a mental health day, and it's OK, people will actually appreciate it. So two days ago, I think we were three days ago. We try to fix a meeting, and there's somebody on our team who has a two year old child on. We were trying to say, Well, you know, we could do it at 5. 30 because I'm busy the whole day And she said, I'm so sorry, but I have a You know, I have a young kid and I can't do it. At that time on, I thought it was very practical, but also very brave of her to not be judged for it. I say, I'm so sorry. I mean my child. And yesterday we were in the middle of of Webinar a lunch and learn with the more senior people across the organization on the person who was presenting you could hear the person's child call out to, you know, and would not stop tell. His father paid attention, right? And he came back and said, I'm so sorry. My Childs is having a break from school and obviously is looking for his father. So these are really things. It's no longer dogs and babies that are, you know, are coming in and into zoom sessions. These are actual places where you know families have to meet and work has to come together and ours are getting fluid. So it Z you know, in a situation like this, you will have to establish your mental health hours and weekly hours on It's okay to do so. So I actually think Gen. Z who is the generation? Hopefully that is gonna be watching this Or Millennials who are trying to reinvent themselves. Will, Will, will be, will feel empowered to take that opportunity to say it's okay to say that, you know, I'm gonna take a mental healthy. It's it's okay to say that, you know, So, uh

all the major challenges I think are I'm more of a nanny and less of a manager, right, because my job is to make everyone happy, right? So after sometime, you'll see that your dog gets knocked because students are coming to you. People are coming here, and I also adjunct faculty teach at the end by you Stern School of Business a teach digital marketing and social media. So I have undergraduate and graduate students. In fact, today graduate student of mine who graduated about two years ago, just reached out to me and said, Professor, can you help me with analytics? I have a real problem. I'm in a real job. Do you think I could reach out to you and makes it really happy? You know, another student reached out to me from 2002 and said, Were you teaching marketing management? Because I think I was one of your students and I said, Yes, I waas on. I was just so touched that he remembered something that he had learned from 18 years ago, right? So the pain points and the challenges in both rules that I do as faculty member as well as in my day job or as, say, a mother to two kids who are, you know, teenagers now and think their mother is not cool anymore. But you are definitely the generation that should be watching mental students dot argh! You realize that the pain point is that the buck again coming back to the buck stops with you. So after some time, you cannot escalate it, right? I mean, you will have to be the solution provider. After some time, you look up and say, Oh, this is actually adult ing like Oh, you know, like it's no longer that I can go to Mom, Dad, a boss. I mean, you are the moment you are the dad and you are the boss, right? And even if you're not, at some point you will have someone reporting to you. And even if that person is one, you are going to have an issue because that person's gonna look to you to help solve the problems. So you better have a solution, right? The second thing is, everybody is navigating a space that is very new. So which is why it's okay to say that I don't know or let's solve this together, you know? So I think there's a more appreciation to it to say I have no idea. Let's find out the solution for us together, right? So I think that is another thing that that can navigate those challenges and pain points. Right? And the third thing I think is that the world is truly becoming flat, right? So, you know, you have peers and, um, and colleagues and, you know, senior and junior, uh, team members in various parts of the world in various time zones. I mean, look at you, for example. Right. Um, I cannot if someone is up at seven in the morning and I have students like this, right? They're coming in from China, and the day has just started in the somebody else in the Bible. It's three in the morning and then somebody else in South Korea. I cannot expect them to have the same enthusiasm levels me at six in the evening. They are catering to that time zone because the college has said they have to be on zoom, and you know, that's how the class is being done because they have to be safe. But the point is that it is putting a pressure on it, right? The second thing is, look at our our look at our days these days, right? So we're all on zoom like this are our on our video platform on we're all trying to converse with people. So what happens is that by the time is the end of the day, uh, nobody wants to be on camera anymore. And so if you're not on camera anymore, how do you even navigate what the other person is feeling? So imagine. You know, you get a text message or you get an email or you get a note or somebody brings you and you can't see them and they're in a different time zone or a different place. It's very difficult to understand what they feel right on. So how do you But And it could be on both sides, whether it's your boss, whether it's someone junior, right? So how do you even respond to something if you don't know what they're feeling? So I think the challenges and pain points are your your team is going to be global. Your team is going to be in different time zones. They kind to come from different cultural contacts. In some cases, it will be okay to eat while you're on zoom. In other cases, people get offended if you, you know, set up a meeting time for dinner time, where dinner time, maybe sacrosanct and their family right. And it's it's not expected off you to know all those rules. But it is expected of you to be cognizant of the fact that the different cultural differences right on dso again. I think one of my students asked me this two days ago yesterday, I think, and she said, How do you navigate if are you working for a company? And the company says, You know, I think she's quoting Microsoft and she's a Microsoft is allowed there, you know, team members to work at any point of time so you can decide what your hours are. I mean, it sounds fantastic on paper, right? But she said, But imagine my boss comes to me and says, Well, I wanna have a meeting with you tomorrow at nine o'clock and I said, Well, that's not my our My hour is from four in the morning to eat in the morning and then I'm back. And so how do you navigate? Then? I said, the point off, you know, with flexibility comes responsibility. So the point is to ensure that if you and your boss can work together, then the idea is to get work done. Because at the end of the day, this is job people are paying you for right? So the challenges in the main pain points are going to be about how do you use the horizontal organization, which is not hierarchy? Great news, by the way, for students were coming in, right? Everything is not about designation, but then it's also a difficult environment to navigate. And the third thing is that you are going to get people who are just gonna refuse to put the camera on, gonna refuse to be enthusiastic like you. So it's going to be your job to make sure that you, you know, put the ante up and keep the enthusiasm high, right? So I keep telling people I'm like, chill up your smiles high right on, because that's the way that you need Teoh, that you need to navigate it right? So I think that, um, that would be like I said. I think I've answered both your challenges as well as what is effective ways to overcome that. And that, I think, is the definition of empathy, right? I mean, it's not necessary that you be a mother or you'll be the junior person or you'll be this empathy is about understanding what the other person is feeling without without being there on. I think it's our job to as human gift, that other person, the benefit of doubt and said, No, I you know she's in a bad mood, but it's not because of me. So let me just understand. It's okay to say, Are you OK? Like to the morning I was in a client meeting and and I told him I said, It looks like you had a really long week and he said, I did. I did You know, perhaps it was just the acknowledgement of that. That must have made a difference to him. So I think that is some of the challenges we will have to navigate offline online always on, you know, at home, at work, everyone being in different time zone, different devices, different bandwidths kind of world on. I think that is what will help people, you know, understand the moment you empathize with it, you will be able to help navigating it.