Navigating the Path to Executive Leadership: Breaking Barriers and Taking Risks- Sailakshmi Santhanakrishnan, Tech Executive

Welcome to another episode of "Life Beats with Sirisha"! In today's episode, we have a very special guest, Sai Lakshmi Santhanakrishnan, a tech executive with a diverse career journey.  As women in leadership roles, we will be discussing how to navigate the path to executive positions and overcome the challenges we face. Sai will share her experiences and insights, offering valuable advice to help aspiring women leaders. Don't forget to call in with your questions and join the conversation! Tune in and be inspired by this empowering episode on women in leadership.

I just had an amazing conversation with Sai Lakshmi Santhanakrishnan, a tech executive, about women in leadership. We talked about breaking stereotypes, taking risks, and carving our own paths to success. Sai shared her journey from India to the Caribbean to the US and how she embraced the challenges in her career. We discussed the importance of supporting each other and paving the way for future generations of women leaders. If you want to hear more inspiring stories and valuable insights, make sure to check out the full episode on my podcast, available on all major platforms. Remember, together we can create a world of empowered women. Stay tuned for more episodes of Life Beats with Sirisha. Let's make a difference! 💪 #WomenLeadership #Inspiration #Podcast

Sailakshmi Santhanakrishnan's journey to success has been one of unexpected turns and courageous choices. Initially, she left India to pursue a career abroad and was hired by a company as a campus recruit. However, instead of directly coming to the United States, she began her professional life in the Caribbean, where the organization she worked for had operations. This seemingly humble start allowed Sailakshmi to develop a deep understanding of different roles within the tech industry. Starting from the bottom, Sailakshmi worked as a junior programmer and gradually climbed up the ladder. She never shied away from exploring different paths and taking risks. Instead of sticking to a predetermined route, she embraced the unknown, learning from every experience along the way. Sailakshmi's openness to taking the untraveled path proved to be instrumental in her success. It enabled her to seize opportunities, build connections with people, and continuously evolve professionally. Through her interactions and collaborations, she gained valuable insights, ultimately shaping her career goals. For Sailakshmi, this journey has been a th

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I'm a former tech executive, a podcast host and an entrepreneur. I work with Universities on Organizations to transition students to the corporate world and building successful leadership pipelines ensuring a healthy financial future.

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Transcript

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Are you wondering how to grow as a woman in corporate leadership or be an ally to these women? You're tuned in today to Live Feeds with Sirisha on Radio Caravan. 104. 1 FM, 700 AM. This is your host, Dr. Sirisha Kuchimanchi. I'm a former tech executive, a podcast host. and an entrepreneur. I host the podcast, Women, Career and Life. It's a top 30 percent Spotify podcast. You can actually listen to it on any of your favorite podcast platforms. And maybe you want to check out last interview. It was with Jen Sargent. She is the CEO of Wondry, which is actually Amazon podcast. So you can learn about entrepreneurship and pivoting from engineering into media and learn a little bit from that. I also work with organizations on enabling and building leadership pipelines and strong leaders. So if you ever want to partner, you can check out my website. I'm going to spell it because it's going to be a mouthful. It's spelled S I R I S H A K U C H I M A N C H I. So let's dive in. I am going to open the phone lines once I finish the introduction because you definitely want to call in to talk to Sai Lakshmi Santana Krishnan, who's joined us today. She's a tech executive who's had a very checkered in a beautiful way. Career traversing various things and she's gonna talk and we are gonna talk about how as women you navigate the path to executive roles, into leadership roles, and some of the pitfalls we have faced and how we can support each other. I'm gonna announce the phone line number so that you can call in and ask questions directly. The number is 214 817 3333, so don't hesitate to call in. Sai, thank you for being here. I'm so excited that we're going to chat about this because this is something very close to my heart. Thank you for being here today. Thanks, Arisha, for having me here and love the opportunity that we're doing as women for women. So it's a great opportunity to do this and share, our experiences and the barriers that we have faced so that, women coming after us at least can, I hope we've made it a little easier for them and, they can pick it up from where we have left. to make it better for somebody else. Exactly. I feel like we shouldn't have to tread the same path again and again. How do you get ahead of this place? Correct. Yeah. So can you give a brief description? I know you studied computer science and you are in tech now as an executive. So what's been your path to this point? Like most people who wanted to leave India mine has been a journey of unplanned parts. I came here Was picked up from, as a campus recruit moved in to technology didn't come to us directly. I actually came to Caribbean. I was there with an, an organization that was had a presence in the Caribbean, but they called it near shore operations for the U. S. and Wall Street. So it was a very humble, simple journey. I started ground up. I had worked in different roles from a junior, programmer to where I am today. So it's been a journey of exploring a lot of different parts and one led to the other. And I think what has helped me to get where I am is because I was willing to take travel the path untraveled. Take risks not knowing or expecting anything out of it, but just learning from the experience. And I think that has actually helped me and worked in my favor to find the next opportunity to integrate with people, to work with people, learn from people, figure out what I want to do. So I think it's just been a wonderful journey of adventures. I, the thing that I picked up is like taking risks and learning because Those are things we have to step out of our comfort zone often to do that. And you get so many rewards from it. I know the fear of trying something new is always there because you're wondering, Oh, am I good enough? Am I going to fail at it? But I see that as the best way because most often that So no one knows how that's going to work out. And you always learn something you, even if I did this podcast interview last night with the steam podcaster from Australia. And we were talking about it. And even if. You say you don't do well at your job and you get demoted. Your skills, your network doesn't go away. So those things are always with you. And no matter besides your title. So definitely leading into that risk and learning. So were you always lived that way in a way? Or did this is something that you developed over time? I think I was a rebel. So I came into tech. I came into computer science just to break the stereotype that we all had in India growing up. That we had to become doctors or engineers and if it was anything less than you became a nurse or a, teacher. So I think when I first came into this field it was just, breaking the barriers and I was a rebel in that sense. I picked up computer science at that time. So that led into a lot of the work that I've done too. So when I came into, from a domain expertise perspective I am a senior leader in cybersecurity, risk compliance, governance, regulations. So I've done it all from different roles that I've led. But again, it was not a field that was open to women. So I'm talking about we'd hear about cybersecurity now, but before it was just information security. It was like information, how do you secure your information across? That's hardware, software, across how do you even, have somebody, taking care of the data center, for instance. What kind of security guards do you put? What kind of controls do you have there? So I've grown up with the field, and again, there was nothing like this when I started my career, as much as I'm dating myself. But, so I think I came in there because I was denied. I was told that, hey, Girls, women cannot come into this field. I think that kind of also was one of the aspects of what led one into the other of me taking the risk. I, if you ask somebody who knows me very well I play, I'm not a huge risk taker from that perspective, but I think I go by the gut feeling that I have. And the opportunity to learn and grow because I did my master's actually after working. in the field. I went and got my master's from Boston University in security. And because I fell in love with the field, I, I realized what was good for me in the sense, so it was more an exploratory path. And I think that has led me to where I am. And I continue to do that. Yeah. And I, it. Going back to school after your work for some time, it definitely reinforces and the path is much more crystal clear. I stayed in graduate school directly from school and then went back at some point, but I think your takeaways and the mindset you go in with and what you want out of it is very much different, right? Even the faculty and all know, understand when returning students come back as I think it gives you a perspective. What are you in love with? Because it was one like a lot of people find security to be very dry in the sense, correct. It's not coding. It's not. But for me, I think the years that I've worked in the field allowed me to understand because I've done every role. I've done being a business analyst. I've done the junior programmers role. I've done client relationship. I've done vendor management. I've going into, being on the other side of understanding requirements. So I've played around with all of software development life cycle. I've played in every space, but I loved what I did, and I still continue to love what I do because it gives me the big picture. It doesn't restrict me to a particular domain. It's not. And that has given me the. to play around different domains because I worked in financial sectors, I worked in health care, I worked in media, everywhere you need it and it's a horizontal fact. And I think that's what I loved, but it took me that journey to do it. And I would have not done it if I hadn't raised my hands to do the, people because you're looked down because you were never there for you. You're always there's these tears off, respect that you get when you're in a corporate world where, everybody doesn't have to be a CEO, but you can still have the brains to do the job, correct? Because they're all dependent as a team. So I think my thing take away for anybody listening to this is Play by your guts, play by your, your strengths. You can't be somebody else. Each of us come with a special package, and that's who we are. And, learn to accept that and you will find rewards. It may be slow, but you'll definitely find it very true. And understanding what you can bring to the table, because, many of you may, when you're getting promoted into a role, this was my experience, especially when I went into roles where I was essentially replacing my prior boss. One of the things the hiring manager told me was because you're going with the mindset thinking that you have to do it the way they did it before, especially when you're replacing someone in the same organization. And in both instances, they told me, we're not hiring you to be them. We're hiring you to be you and do what you do well. And I think that's what we can tend to forget because we are looking at the corporate structure and thinking we need to mesh it. But not always. There are things that you will have to accommodate around it, but you still have to show up as who you are and what you want to do when you come into this place. And if there are women listening, or, like I said, allies listening to this talk, there are a couple of ways to raise your hand. Don't forget to raise your hand and ask for the challenging project or for that role and have that conversation with people. And I know I'm making it sound very seamless on understanding what we want. Sometimes the harder part is trying to decide what we want to do and explore those roles, talk to people. You can call into this call in and talk to Sai and find out what she's working on or what I've worked on and see what that event looks like and find out where. You have to have those conversations and don't restrict yourself to your vertical, like your management structure, go talk to other organizations within your company and outside, because then you're going to learn so much more. And I found that the more conversations you have, the more lingo you learn, then you get a better perspective. And it opens the doors for you never know which door is going to open. Like today, I spoke to someone I had worked with 20 years ago, and we wouldn't have thought to cross paths again. And it was a wonderful conversation on something completely different than where we started. Keeping those doors open and asking for what you want, I think, enables even management in some ways to understand where to help you and support you. I agree. I think being, open to opportunities is one important thing, to go the path of untraveled. Go knowing that there is unknown, but there's always a learning. You could be successful. You could, have a failure. But the experience of traveling that part, it's just like going to a new country. Correct. We don't know everything about the country, but unless we step the foot there and many of us as immigrants, that's what we've done coming to us. We had a picture of us. We studied about us, but it's very different living in the U. S. And I think because we took that first step. All of us have done well for ourselves and in our respective careers, and I think that is what I would encourage a lot of people to do. The other thing that I've seen is very helpful is having mentors. It's a great place to start, and I don't think that was formalized from, in where we studied and we grew up, but I think knowing that people And they come from anywhere. It could be your kids, it could be your grandparents, it could be your teachers, it could be, your peers, your tech folks. It doesn't matter who they are, but be open to learning from everyone and anyone. I think mentorship and. Learning ability to learn from each other is very important. I learn every day from different kinds of people, I, the oldest lesson that I've learned to give back is from my grandparents. I still remember, I have an image of my, today we talk about sustainability and how important it is to, conserve food. And I still remember seeing my granddad. Pick up single pieces of rice that would go, fall off a cart, which they would take from the farmland to, to be processed. I still have that image, and I learned so much from it. It's just that you never know when you'll connect the dots. So always be open to learning, and from anybody. And I think my kids, my daughters, both my daughters, are my biggest teachers in many ways. Yeah, life comes full circle, right? The role of teacher and student is constantly changing and it's changing on a daily basis. And more so now with everything going on with tech and media and platforms that you never know where you learn and what is important to learn to keep up with technology. It's just so fast that it works through all the processes. Mentors, right? For those of you who are wondering how to navigate this path of mentorship, oftentimes your organizations could have a formal program or maybe you're part of a community like in a size and part of a cyber security community. Maybe they have a national organizations, see where they have conferences, see who's part of that community. Reach out on LinkedIn and stuff, but I would not ask, say, can you be my mentor? Because that's not really how mentorship works. You build a relationship with somebody and then it evolves into this mentorship. And it's also based a lot on trust, you are giving to them as much as you're taking away. So it's a mutually beneficial relationship in a way. So I would strongly urge if you haven't thought or you don't have a mentor to think about finding one and maybe make that part, we are on almost close to the fourth quarter. It's September. For this year, maybe if you haven't and you were thinking of what did you want to do, get a mentor because it will help clarify and they can see you for, what we bring to the table to help support you and also push you, challenge you, and also You know, call you on certain things so that you can move forward. I think you see different perspectives, correct? Mentorship is something that helps you. And you don't have to have the same mentor for everything. You could have a mentor for somebody who helps you with your technical skills. Or, you want to bounce your idea off. And it could be even your spouse, for all you know. They could act as mentors. And you don't have to have this framework. formal relationship or, finding someone, but I think just reaching, having that other person to hear you out, be there for your growth, help you out, bounce ideas, take a stance for you tell you that you're wrong. And maybe there is a way that you have to, course correct. And you could have somebody, just does that for your personal carrier building, your networking, it's any skill that you want to develop, Find different people because I think that's what has helped me a lot in the sense of resilience. I learned that from my mother being resilient. I learned what expectations you have for, from a next generation or today's generation, which we may or may not have perspectives about. And that's where I see my daughters, both my daughters giving me, giving me a very hard time to say, Hey mom, you suck. You have to think differently. This is not how things. Work or, this is another way to think about it. And they're hard on me, and I think it takes guts for them to turn around and tell me that, and for me to accept that and move on. I'm a, I'm learning still. Okay. I may not be a good with taking feedback from my kids, I'm learning and I'm, that's something that, we all relate to, but I think it's what. important is to raise your hands. And I think there are many wonderful people around us in our community who can reach out, especially for the next generation. It's more a request than anything else. You don't have to, commit to the same mistakes that we did as we traveled our journey, learn from it and do better than us. And, be there for somebody who's coming after you. I think that cycle is very important. And that's what I tell a lot of the mentors that I work with. There are like, women in cybersecurity, there's a huge forum, a huge community that's built. It's all volunteer work, people from across the globe give into it. So we encourage next generation of women to come and take part in cybersecurity. That's a beautiful forum. There's a forum here called DFW ATW. They are a big propellant of, identifying women leadership and encouraging them through many of that. There are many people here in DFW, women who are, including you Suresha, come on, starting from Silica, from your technology background and semiconductors to, coming and hosting a pod show, a podcast and, a radio show it's Impressive and in many ways correct. So you took the shot somewhere and you, somebody must have helped you. Somebody must have guided you. Absolutely. Somebody must have given you that, that encouragement. So I think just find those people and I'm gonna echo D F W A T W. I'm part of it as well, and there are so many forums We'll definitely share our information so you can connect with us on LinkedIn, DM us, we all have communities we are building constantly and thinking about it. So one of the things that I am going to continue on that mentorship conversation is about talking about personal board of advisors, a personal board of directors, like every company has. You're the CEO of your life and your career, so make sure you're building that, whether it's for a short term discussion, a long term relationship, could be family, could be friends, could be someone you meet once, so invest in these places because it's a journey of learning. That's what makes life fun, right? Trying new things. So when you're talking about investing in the younger generation. I think that's funny in some ways because I have teenage kids, one in college and one in high school and they keep you grounded. They keep you real. That's one way to put it. And there are so many other ways to describe that same relationship. And yeah I feel like in some ways it's very different that generation from how we grew up where, we didn't fully express ourselves because of the way we were brought up and what the circumstances are at that time. But I think it's wonderful if young people can express themselves. It is hard to deal with it. I have to tell you, when you're going through the teen years, it is a bit of a challenge, but it gives them the opportunity to learn how to You know, debate how to convince you and it's just you will learn so much from it. And, we have a little over five minutes. If you have questions you're interested in learning, you have a leadership question, you're, you're interested in a certain community, you can call this number. It's 214 817 3333. The number in the studio and you'll go live on air is 817 3333. You're listening to Life Beats with Sirisha on Radio Caravan. You can check out my podcast, Women, Career, and Life, which actually talks about women, getting into leadership roles and how do you strive for financial independence. And I do partners with universities and organizations and do speaking around leadership. You can check out my website, sirishakunshimanshi. com. And Sai and I've been really talking about. Not only our journey, how mentors have become important. And one of the other things is many of you may have heard about this, the concept of sponsors, because sponsors are those people when you're in organizations, you may know who your sponsors are. In some cases, you may not know who your sponsors are. They are the people who are talking about you behind closed doors. They are the ones bringing your name up when opportunities are coming along. So one of the ways for you to continue to build your sort of Brand and your creative is when you have a manager, make sure you're having conversations with what they call skip lover managers. One level up because those are the people in a lot of ways making decisions. Think about it like this. If you want to get promoted, your manager cannot hire you into that role. It's going to be his boss or her boss. So make sure you are building and expanding that network and go prepared for these conversations. See what you what they have done, what you've accomplished. So one of the things that Research has shown and you know that as such women tend to struggle with is talking about their accomplishments. We often feel like if you're doing an amazing job that you're going to be recognized for our efforts, but reality check, it doesn't happen. You have to be able to speak about it and speak out about it and apply for jobs that you think you may not be fully ready for. Don't wait to check all the boxes, just put your application in because there are other skills they're looking for other ways that you. bring to the table that could really drive that carrier. So look and continue to build on that inside. What's been your experience in this field? I think it is very true that you have to sell yourself. In a way that, people become aware of what you bring to the table, and there are many ways to do it. Correct. In the sense you spoke about sponsorship, I would also think about raising your hand for, community services. I think DFW is built on a beautiful community across, all communities, just not our Asian community everywhere. I think where they give for each other. It could be the scouts. It could be Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts. We spoke about DFW. I run, we have a program called weinspire. guru where we are mentoring kids from ages of about, six and about seven and eight, to about 19. So we still work with them as a third year for them to listen to them and mentor them. I, I work with FISD and PISD as volunteer when they come into technology and they want somebody, there's a career day, raise your hand, correct? You just go there and you give in. And this way you know what skills you bring to the table. And it may not be, your day to day job, but what can you help them with? And those are. Beautiful journeys to go with because you are giving back because somebody before you did that for you and you have an opportunity to give back but at the same time, it's also a way for you to say, Hey, this is what I'm capable off and somebody is watching you. And if there is an opportunity and if that's something that you're applying for and you're interested in, it gives you that space, correct? It gives you the safe space to play because sometimes you're learning on your skill and you may be not up for doing it within your professional environment and but doing it as a voluntary in a voluntary environment, I gives you the ability to fail. And that's another concept that I think we all have to learn from is failure is okay. It's you know it's okay to work there, try it out because it tells you what you're good at, you're not good at, maybe you need to pervert somewhere or you need to course correct somewhere. So I think those are opportunities. I would encourage 100 percent be a part of the community. I think all our successes come as a team, correct? And the team is changing constantly, and we have to lean in on to each other. I think it is a global space, whether we like it or not, there is the boundaries are breaking down. So you have to be a part of the team. And I truly believe in that, so I think your success is not your success alone, because wherever we are, we have Spouses were standing by us, taking care of our kids, encouraging us being our, our spokespeople. We've got friends. I've got my best friend who was there for me for anything. I can just fall back on. I have a community who will, who will just fall back and say, Sai, you go to the conference. I will take care of your kids or I'll pick up your kids. So I think you need to build that community and your success and leadership qualities all come from this. Correct. Being that empathetic leader comes from being that. And that's a great way to end this conversation. We have 30 seconds. So Sai, how can someone reach you? And first of all, I want to say thank you. I think that's a beautiful note to end. So for you to be an inspiration and mentor these young people, so how can people reach out to you? You can connect with me on my LinkedIn. It's Sailakshmi Asanthanakrishnan. Just look me up and you should be able to find me I'm in DFW. So you should be able to find me Reach out and if anybody is interested in the weinspire. guru program, just go check out the website