Avtar Group Announces “Inspiring Women Awards 2023”

* Awards announced for 5 role-model women professionals in Second Career and Industries’ Categories.   

Avtar Group, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Solutions firm, announced the winners of “Inspiring Women Awards 2023” across two categories – Second Career and industry tracks.  

Inspiring Second Career Woman Award was instituted to celebrate strong Women Professionals, who have demonstrated resilience in successfully pursuing their professional goals after career breaks. The winners were selected based on their perseverance and innovative approach in their job search and eventual successful comebacks. The second award category, Inspiring Women across Industries recognizes role models who demonstrate intentionality and purpose in pursuing their professional goals.  

The awards were announced at the 15th edition of Avtar’s flagship conference, SEGUE Sessions, conclave exclusively for women. Announcing the winners, Dr Saundarya Rajesh, Founder – President, Avtar Group said, “A silver lining in our quest for gender balance is that more women are today strategically invested in their careers, and it is great news when India is aiming to be the $5 trillion economy. This is evident in the nominations that we received for the two award categories, where we saw intentional women professionals who with their dedication and hard work are breaking stereotypes and shattering glass ceilings. When organizations mine into this hi-potential talent pool of women and spearhead systemic and cultural shifts towards gender inclusion, we would truly unlock a huge economic opportunity for our country!” 

A total of 25 women professionals whose journeys were each unique and inspiring were shortlisted by the expert jury and 5 winners were chosen for being exemplars and making their marks in their respective fields.  

In the “Inspiring Second Career Women” category of awards, Sampoorna Rath, Engineering Manager, Cognizant emerged the title winner, while Parvathi Govindasamy, Associate Specialist, KBR India Pvt Ltd was chosen for the “Choice of Jury” award.  

Under the Inspiring Women in Industries 2023 category, Manika Bhargava bagged the title award in the Manufacturing industry track, as the Inspiring Woman in Manufacturing.  Manika is the Country Logistics Leader, Indian Sub-continent at Dow Chemical International Pvt Ltd.  Shailaja D N, Enterprise Architect of IBM India Pvt Ltd is the title winner of Inspiring Woman in Technology category.  The Choice of Jury award for Inspiring Woman in technology went to Vijayalakshmi Elangovan, R & D Director, Cloud DevOps, AVEVA Solutions India LLP.   

Segue Sessions is one of the most impactful and successful confluences for women professionals, hosted by Avtar Group.  Segue Sessions is aimed at enabling women professionals build sustainable and successful career paths irrespective of interruptions and challenges in their careers. In the fifteenth edition of Segue Sessions, several women leaders and senior industry practitioners rendered their expertise at keynote address, panel discussion and workshop as part of the conference. Over 300 delegates from across industries participated in this virtual conclave. 

At the conference themed Mapping the Invisible, Dr Valli Arunachalam, Nuclear scientist and semiconductor technologist delivered the keynote on how ‘Choice is a verb’.  Other speakers at the conference included, Jay Mallya, SVP, R&D, AVEVA; Priyanka Chaudhry, EY Global Delivery Services Tax Leader; Suchita Dantre, Senior Director, Human Resources, Midland Credit Management (MCM) India, Encore Capital Group; Krishma Narayanan, Senior Director, Medical Devices, Cognizant; Tryphena Edward, Project Engineer, KBR India; and Beena Sarkar, Head, Customer Success at Crux Intelligence.    

As part of the conference, Avtar also announced HackEquity, a DEI hackathon for companies to crack the Inclusion code. HackEquity brings together a diverse group of people to collaborate and design solutions to real-world problems that impact the underrepresented talent groups. Participants from companies worked in teams to develop prototypes, pitch ideas and receive feedback from experts in the industry. Among the companies that participated, AVEVA emerged as the winner who presented a solution on how companies can look at executive sponsorship as a sustainable model to advance gender-balanced leadership.