Sandhya Ramula

Warwick Business School

“My story is that of an audacious career journey filled with business learnings which compliment life lessons.”

Hometown: Kolkata, India

Fun Fact About Yourself: Over-enthusiastic about human’s space exploration journey.

Undergraduate School and Major: B.Com from Calcutta University, 2004 and Post Graduate Diploma in Project Management from ICFAI, 2008

Most Recent Employer and Job Title: EY (Ernst and Young), Assistant Director

Describe your biggest accomplishment in your career so far: Being the first promoted female senior manager in Assurance EMEIA FSO, Bangalore and Chennai teams, undertaking responsibility as India Head for a function which provides project management and administration for financial and non-financial services clients. Managing a team of over 400 professionals from Associates up to managers, across Bangalore, Chennai and Gurgaon.

Describe your biggest accomplishment at Warwick so far? Being elected onto the Student Staff Liaison Committee by my peers at Warwick Business School. Within the first few weeks, I was able to build connections with people in both cohorts and I was pleasantly surprised when I was voted since I thought the group had a lot of talented individuals. It gave me a sense of acknowledgment and motivated me to demonstrate leadership skills through various connections with teams and staff. I am able to discuss student feedback, identify queries and concerns and also drive initiatives for the class. It gave me an immediate sense of achievement with every solution implemented.

What quality best describes the MBA classmates you’ve met so far and why? Driven and Ambitious – the team is full of energetic individuals from various industries, professional backgrounds, cultures, and communities.

There have been activities where an engineer, a chef, and a financial analyst are working together on building a Lego bridge. There was a group discussion between an ex-military officer, surgeon, and a banker. A software developer, an HR business partner, and a project manager presented a business case together. This reflects the diversity and massive opportunities for collaboration.

Each of them has different career aspirations and a range of skills and competencies that they bring along to the MBA.

Aside from your classmates, what was the key factor that led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA and why was it so important to you? Warwick Business School is a highly recognized institution for global education and has earned a reputation of being a diverse, rapidly growing and successful business school in Europe. It’s the global talent recognition of the WBS brand that brought me to Coventry, England.

I have been very fortunate in my career journey to be associated with large multi-national firms that are industry leaders. Hence, I got the opportunity to have significant exposure to working in global businesses and with global teams. As such, WBS also had the right platform to provide me with a similar global environment of talented peers but all under one roof. Cohorts contribute significantly to the learning experience of one another. Being connected with WBS gives me the confidence of being able to leverage my business experience on a global platform; networking with the widest range of industry leaders and global cohorts.

What club or activity are you looking most forward to in business school? I am very actively involved in working with teams on various industry championship initiatives and competitions. I look forward to industry partnership events to experience integrated learning at WBS; from academic to industry.

What led you to pursue an MBA at this point in your career? The MBA was a clear direction for me to take my career further. This is the path for further developing my skills and knowledge and strengthening my business network. I also think it is wise to take a pause every now and then to reflect upon your journey. Thus far, not only have I gained professional skills, but also life lessons through my corporate experience and I want to use that as a stepping stone to further polish my capabilities.

What other MBA programs did you apply to? Yale SOM

How did you determine your fit at various schools? My assessment criteria was quite simple and given my work background, I tackled this as a project.

Scope: Like any project, it’s important to identify the scope. I assessed the scope of this MBA in terms of career progression, skills development, and personal growth. WBS was offering a significant advantage in terms of the program content, networking, and personal development

Plan: I started planning early, before applying to the business school, I started working on my work and life to fit the MBA program well. Both professionally and personally.

Cost and Time: Cost of the MBA was a critical decision factor. WBS being a one-year course definitely had an advantage. I was also incurring lesser opportunity cost. The one-year MBA is a good idea for a workaholic professional like me who would miss work too soon!

Brand: Having associated with reputable brands like HSBC and EY, when it came to the MBA decision, I definitely wanted a strong name to be added to my resume. WBS’ growing global positioning facilitated my decision making.

After having the preliminary assessment, I came to the decision as called in project management world: “Go” OR “No-Go” and glad I chose ‘Go’

What was your defining moment and how did it shape who you are? I was a 17-year-old kid trying to work and complete grad school simultaneously. Soon after I completed a B. Com from Calcutta University, I almost immediately got the opportunity to join HSBC’s retail banking function. And from then on, it has been an incredible career journey that I am proud of.

Although I would like to say I have evolved as a person over the course of my working life, my evolution as an individual had started long back. Back to when I was a teenager, trying to optimize my time and learn more from life. During my degree, classes would be for 4-5 hours a day and I observed that my peers and I had a lot of spare time at hand even after post-lecture reading and extra classes. I soon started to want to work to use my time optimally, gain valuable work experience, start making money, and most importantly use this opportunity to keep focused on being a successful businesswoman. I was very clear on my goals and objective from an early age. Whilst it can be tempting for a teenager to hang out with friends, attend parties and go to movies, I managed to maintain my focus on my work and my long-term goal.

For over two years, I worked the night shift in an outsourced customer service business on US credit cards. During the day, I attended college like the rest of my classmates. I used a portion of the remaining time to travel and rest. I was so busy that I didn’t have any time to get distracted. Although it was tough, I kept myself motivated and in the process gained a lot of work experience, dealing with people, experiencing US culture, market, and business transitions. It was on the day when I had reached a point of tiredness after a long night shift of over 12 hours and then a 5 hours college attendance, when I returned home at 3 p.m.  (having left the previous day at 8), I didn’t think I could do it anymore, but I wrote my long term goals and trained myself hard to stay focused. This level of determination out of personal choice is when I knew my real self.

Where do you see yourself in five years? I see myself working with industry leaders and professionals, providing business solutions to create value for consumers and businesses alike. I aspire to inspire young and ambitious talent and contribute towards whichever business that I lead by developing people and creating an eco-system of support, whilst continually growing myself as a professional and as a person.

I also believe that it’s not a role or job profile that I aim for, but I aspire to have the opportunity for purposeful leadership and creating a positive influence on people and businesses.