Continues learning and upskilling are essential to power ahead your career. Read more to learn about Sowmiya Desikan’s journey with Great Learning’s PGP Data Science and Business Analytics in her own words.
Learning Agility and being a Continuous learner is an important quality for a leader to have –
With about 20 years of experience leading a function in the World’s Leading Shipping Company, MAERSK handled a gamut of roles around Business Excellence, Operations Management, Strategic Transformation, Digitization, People Leadership, and a Performance coach, and our organization was going through a transformation in Customer Journey and Digital transformation.
Staying Relevant and Continuous Learning are things I strongly believe in. The question kept rising in my mind, “How should I upgrade my skills to stay relevant?”. I realized that the number of years of experience is not important, but, how you stay relevant to the industry and development around you is important.
The bold answer to this pondering was Data and Technology, that are here to stay. Then what and where to pursue data and technology was to be pinned down. After a lot of exploration and consulting, PGP-DSBA by Great Learning popped up. It was surely going to be a change that I need to sign up for, amidst handling a spectrum of functions and roles at work, and managing a three-year-old at home.
What kept me motivated was my belief around being relevant. And if not now, there is never going to be a better time. What happened after was a deep revelation.
A well-curated course that gave an insight into all aspects of Data Science, topping up with functional applications as well. We were offered an able team of Professors bringing not just theory but more experience to the classroom on how to solve complex problems through data and technology. I admit that the first learning from this course for me was how much you don’t know!! Thanks to Dr. PKV and the faculty members who helped deliver this for us. Despite the expertise, how they made the learning easy for us speaks volumes of the team of lecturers.
While there are many who would have talked about the course, I want to share an important milestone in this program that really helped me with my career transition, especially when I have a baggage of 20 years of experience, but little has worked with data in these times. The career counseling session was truly an eye-opener for me. The sessions very subtly, but strongly delivered the message around companies that won’t just hire you because you finished this program. It’s important to look at transitioning into roles in your own organization, learn and contribute before you could explore opportunities outside, especially when you are not fine to let go of your experience and start as a fresher in this area of data science. This is so true for people like me with work experience.
I was fortunate that I had an opportunity in the function that I lead, where we had complex problems to solve involving huge volumes of data. A USD900 million spend, 1 million transactions a month, time-sensitive deliverable. It’s my organization and manager, I am thankful too as well, where I could literally apply the tip from the Career Counselor. The same one year of this course pursuit, I also worked on developing data-based Products partnering with Startups, data teams that helped apply the learnings.
In parallel, the CAPSTONE project is another imperative part of the learning which paved the way for people from different domains coming together, to apply the learnings and solve a real-time problem. The diligent follow up and coaching from Mr. PV Subramanian, a great team to work with resulted in immense learning to carry for a long time.
Finishing the course in July 2020, I have transitioned to lead the Analytics and Metrics team for an InfoSec function at CitiCorp since Oct 2020 as a Sr. Vice President.
To those looking out to join these programs, my suggestion would be:
Please be clear about the WHY and WHAT you would like to do post this program. The program will offer you learnings and exposure; however, it’s our clarity of thought, time commitment, and continued pursuit of learning that will take us ahead in the journey.
“The capacity to learn is a gift, the ability to learn is a skill, and the willingness to learn is a choice.”
For more such success stories, watch this space. Upskill today!
