The Department of Economics in collaboration with the Internal Quality Assurance Cell, LSR held a guest lecture by Nandita Bakhshi on October 20th, 2022 in Manju Bharat Ram Hall at LSR. She is currently serving as the President and CEO of Bank of West, a BNP Paribus company. The session commenced with the introduction of the guest speaker given by Ms Reshmi Ganguly.
Ms Nandita started off her lecture by sharing her academic and professional journey so far, from completing her Master’s in International Relations from Jadavpur University to moving to the US. She pointed out the challenges that come with starting a ‘new life’ overseas and taking a challenge and charting it out as an opportunity. At the beginning of her journey, she started at the bottom of the corporate ladder as a part-time finance teller which helped her understand the foundation of the banking system better. She considers herself an ‘accidental banker’.
The audience learned about her ‘1/3rd Rule’ where she encouraged everyone to take up a task which is in 1/3rd of their comfort zone, which generates 1/3rd stress and 1/3rd white knuckle stress. She believes that this results in high performance and accomplishments that are connected to financial results as well. Further, the guest speaker shared her philosophy of ‘Leadership and Empathy’ which translates to creating a safe and comfortable environment for the constituents of an institution as she strongly believes in the phrase ‘people serving people’. At the end of her talk, she shared her experience of being a board member of ‘The US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF)’ which is a US-Indian Alliance where they meet, interview Indian ministers and Chief Ministers and share visions of future growth and strengthening the partnership between the two nations. She shared a few information bits with the audience from her recent interview with the Minister of Women and Child Development of India, Ms Smriti Irani.
The last segment of the session was a Q&A round where the audience asked her questions based on the theme of economics and questions regarding her vision and outlook as a CEO. Ms Nandita shared her employment philosophy on how she hires the right people for her institution, people who are committed to supporting the cause and have the potential to become a head of a very large enterprise. Moreover, she gave her perspective on the wide-ranging current economic issues and how the banking sector institutions are planning to deal with them. For instance, the rising inflation rates, formulating long-term strategies, current currency exchange rate fluctuations, inclusivity in the banking sector by supporting the LGBTQ+ community, the fall in female labour force participation in the last decade, the energy crisis in Europe and her experience of being the new board member of Grameen Bank USA.
In the end, the guest lecture session was concluded with a vote of thanks speech by Dr Anjana Singh and a token of appreciation presented to her by Dr Har Simrat Kaur.