On Becoming a Better Person (Version) 1 - My Career Journey

A person is a dynamic being, that’s why I can mention as of Feb 2022, I am a lifelong learner, an educator, and a developmental leader. According to Carl Rogers, a renowned Psychologist’s book titled “On becoming a person, 1961”, a person is a product of experience and learning. I am a reflective practitioner who strives to construct learning from experiences to be a better version of myself continuously, and therefore, I shall write a series of articles presenting my learning from my career experience. This first article is just describing my career journey.

My career is situated with a deep desire to make an impact/ a difference. Note that all the points in the next sections highlighted in bold letters represent my learning - not described in-depth, just focusing as an overall integral part of my career. The next set of articles will present in-depth learning details.

Experience in India

PhD Program

The major professional milestone in my life was the novel PhD program from ICFAI University, Hyderabad, India. I was in the first batch of the PhD program, completed it in 2006. I am proud of my PhD program due to the tremendous knowledge, skills, values, and attitude constructed from the learning in this program. The program taught not only about research, but also about curriculum development, teaching, consulting, and institution building. It was indeed a unique program and one of the toughest programs. I was fortunate to get selected in the batch of 20 students from thousands of applicants. And I was fortunate again to be one of the 10 students who could complete the program successfully. ?I should mention the credit goes to my supervisor, professors who came from around the world to teach us via the Indian School of Business, and the founders and designers of this unique and rewarding program.

After serving ICFAI, Hyderabad as Assistant Professor and Associate editor of the ICFAI flagship Marketing journal till 2008, I joined Marketing Research Company, Tayler Nelson Sofres (TNS), a UK based Marketing research MNC, now known as Kantar TNS as Associate Research Director in its international division. It provided me real-life industry experience, a must for management educators. Later due to the relocation of TNS to another city, I moved to Audience Measurement and Analytics (aMAP), a media research company competing with Television Audience Measurement (TAM) in India, as Associate Director, Research. Unfortunately, aMAP company could not survive the competition, and after its closing, I joined back academics in IILM Delhi and worked there also as Head of Department for Marketing.

I have always wanted to get international experience and learn from other countries and progressive institutions.

Learning in Malaysia

In 2009 I joined Swinburne, Sarawak in Malaysia, a foreign branch campus of Swinburne Australia using a Transnational education system. I worked as Associate Dean, developed new programs from Diploma to international MBA and work for accreditations too. I was the leading member of the team to launch a credit-bearing Industry Consulting Program for the final year of undergraduate students with partnerships from Industry in that region. I supervised PhD students, provided consulting, and studied the program of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, a compulsory program for all educators in the University to learn about modern non-traditional teaching methods like experiential learning, flipped teaching, and students centered teaching. A compulsory program on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning for all educators is an appreciable approach, I advocate all Universities to have such programs to regularly upskill educators like other professionals. My teaching style and practice transformed completely there due to my learning in the program, and I started research in the areas of Teaching and Learning.

Work in the Philippines

After 4 years of working in Swinburne, I obtained an excellent opportunity to work with the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) in the Philippines. I worked there for AACSB accreditations and upgraded the Executive MBA program as Program Director. I also worked as head of marketing programs apart from teaching. My notable learning there is the industry-academia collaborations and MDPs being conducted there. I learned from Harvard professors case study method directly from Harvard professors by observing their classes and started using the Harvard case method in my teaching extensively.

Contributions in UAE

I joined IMT Dubai in 2015 and led the team to relaunch and revive the 2 country MBA program there as Program Director. I also worked for American University in the Emirates in Dubai and learned about the American liberal Education system and UAE accreditations apart from other learning related to teaching students of multiple cultures.

Transformation in Ghana, Africa

In 2019, I joined BlueCrest in Ghana with a mandate to change and transform it from an institute that evolved from diploma providing organization to a world-class degree-granting higher education institute with new programs, new processes, systems, re-structuring through change management. I am glad and thankful to my team here that this mission of transformation and change is successfully completed. Funding agencies and investors are interacting to partner, and almost all the good practices and characteristics of a progressive higher education institute are reflected here now. With this experience, I see myself transformed as a confident Institution builder too. My leadership style is developmental as my strive is to develop new leaders in teams using personal and group coaching of staff members. I can see myself as a person who can lead with calmness and patience to navigate successfully the time of crisis like Pandemic Lockdown and other turbulent situations while maintaining business continuity, restructuring to optimize costs, and developing high performing teams with goals, objectives and chalking out and implementing strategic priorities with co-creating ways of design thinking with the team and developing and using shared vision.

I am becoming a better person (version) due to my strive for continuous learning through regular reflections on my experiences. Please find my next set of articles focused on learning from the experience of my career journey described in this article.