Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening wherever you are joining us from.What an honor to be here at the Women in Tech Global Awards celebrating the journeys, the impact, and the legacies of women across our industry. As the closing keynote, I want to share a unique reflection, one that connects the stories we grew up with the way we build careers and legacies today. So let me ask you this. What if your most powerful leadership lesson has been hiding in your favorite childhood story? Not in a textbook, not in a strategy deck, but in the tales that shape how you saw yourself long before you step in into a career. I'm Rita Munarvi, director technical program manager at Microsoft. As Laurie mentioned, I'm also the host of Unspoken Wisdoms and the author of Fun Fact for Success Tech Edition.

Over more than twenty years working and living across Singapore, Germany, and United States, I have seen how the stories we carry from our childhood continue to shape the way we lead, the way we build, and the way we sustain. What I have discovered is that those stories don't jay don't just stay in childhood. They crystallize into principles that guide us long after. And for me personally, they refill two anchors of leadership, leading from within and empowering beyond, which means leading from within is about knowing who we are, our strength, our clarity, our identity, while empowering beyond is about ensuring our impact doesn't stop with us.

It scales, it sustains, and it leaves others along the way. So together those principles form what I call my arc of leadership. And today, I want to share the top three childhood stories that shaped them from me. The ugly duckling, the three little pigs, and the giving tree. I'm pretty sure you are familiar with these three stories. I'll show you how they became my sworn moment, my brick house lesson, and my giving tree realization. We start with the first story. We all know the story of the ugly duckling, a little bird that never quite fit in, mocked for being different until one day it realized it was a swan all along. Early in my career, I felt exactly like that duckling. I sat in rooms where my ideas seemed smaller, my background less impressive, my voice less certain.

I tend to compare myself to peers and convince myself that I didn't measure up. And here's the thing, this isn't just about early career. Imposter syndrome follows many of us, especially women, even into senior leadership. You can be sitting at a table with a title, with decades of experience, and still feel like the duckling surrounded by swans. But my turning point came when I stopped waiting for someone else to validate me. I start shifting my focus from what I was not to what I uniquely was. I asked myself, what do I bring that others don't? For me, that answer was the clarity. In fact, the ability to connect vision to execution, to see the bigger picture and make it real, that was my sworn moment. And here is the truth.

Recognizing your sworn moment doesn't always happen overnight. It might take a week, if you are lucky, a month, still lucky, a year, or even several years like myself. But once you see it, everything changes. This is the first step in my leadership journey. I call it leading from within. It begins with identity clarity, knowing your strengths, claiming your voice, and leading from authenticity, as the previous speaker doctor Ewa mentioned, even when imposter syndrome whispers otherwise. But here is the thing, clarity alone is not enough. Once you recognize your sworn moment, the next challenge is building something that lasts, because leadership isn't only about who you are. It's about what you create. And that brings us to my second favorite childhood story, the three little pigs. We all know the story of the three little pigs.

One builds with straw, one with sticks, and one with bricks. When the storm comes or the wolf blows, only the brick house stands. In big tech companies, speed is often celebrated. Deliver fast, ship early, move quickly, and yes, speed matters. But speed without scalability is like building with straw. It looks fine until the pressure hits. I learned this lesson the hard way. I built an automation program that worked beautifully for my team. And in fact, I was proud of that because I delivered that early then schedule. But when the leadership asked me to scale it across the organization, it collapsed. It solved my team's need as that was the initial request for me to enable. But at that time, I was only focusing on those problem. I failed to see the bigger picture. What is the capability to cover what other teams that seeing that my my team or my own team doesn't see?

So it was not basically designed for complexity, feasibility, or growth. So ended up, I had to rebuild from scratch. That was my break pay moment. I realized that resilience in leadership isn't just about surviving storms. It's about designing for scale. Now even with strong scalable foundation, Leadership isn't just about what we build. It's also about how we give and how we sustain that giving. For that, we turn to my third favorite story, The Giving Tree. Please give me a thumbs up if you are familiar with The Giving Tree story. So the Giving Tree story is a story of a boundless generosity, a tree that gives everything until nothing is left. As leaders, we are asked to give constantly, mentoring, sponsoring, advocating, serving.

And for me, saying yes has always been my default between delivering my KPI, leading the society woman engineer or chairing woman at Microsoft, and being a mother of two. I pour myself into everything. But here is the tension. When yes become automatic automatic, impact can thin. I've lived this basically for quite number of years. And as any mother knows, giving feels natural. It's instinctive. You pour yourself into your children, your family, your work, but when you give without boundaries, you risk depletion. That was my giving dream moment. And I realized that generosity without limits leads to exhaustion, and exhausted leaders cannot build legacy. So what do I do? I had to learn the power of a strategic no. Not a selfish no, but a purposeful one. I call it sustainable generosity, which means designing systems where our giving multiplies without burning us out. And for me, that mean creating platform, like my podcast, my book.

Both are examples of generosity, their skills. They allow me to share insights, mentor mentoring broadly, and empower others far beyond my immediate reach. So instead of saying yes to every individual request, I build channels where my giving continues even when I step away. So looking back at these three stories, the ugly duckling, the prick pig, and the the little the three little pig and the giving tree, I see more than childhood tales. I see my leadership journey, beginning with clarity of identity, strengthened by resilient foundation, and sustained through generosity that endures. That's the philosophy I carry forward, and it's the invitation I leave with you today to find your story, which shapes you want others to see you. Because in the end, your story is your strategy, and your legacy is the leadership you leave behind.

With that, thank you everyone for joining me today, and I would like