Welcome. I hope you're enjoying, Women in Tech Global Conference twenty twenty five. I hope you all are feeling motivated.There has been some lovely talks this morning, since morning, and I've been enjoying myself in between work. I'm trying my best. Welcome to the ones who are joining right now. I hope you can see me and the screen. If you can't, please write me in the chat. Give me a thumbs up, thumbs down. You can use the emoticons to engage with me, and you can always put some chat messages if you have questions that I that you would like me to answer. We have twenty minutes, so I'll try to keep this fun and, lighthearted. I know for all of you who are in The US, good morning.

People in the middle zone like me, I'm in The UK. Good afternoon. And people who are far in the in in in the East. Good evening. And thank you so much for joining in. My name is Hindoli. It's a very unique name. It's very easy for for people to find me because my name is such thanks to my parents. I'll give you a little bit brief about myself. My career started about fifteen years ago as a software engineer, like many of us, most likely. And I'm basically from India, but I have never lived at home since I was 17 years old. And I traveled across the globe, lived in various parts of the world, lived in various parts of India, worked in diverse companies like Accenture, Deloitte, Wipro, multiple smaller organizations to learn more, like, many transfer companies, and then I've landed up in JPMorgan.

I have had a very unique journey, which is why I wanted to, you know, connect with the likes of you and see if I can motivate even one person, you know, through my journey. A bit about my personal life. I am a very, very passionate and creative person. When I'm not working, I dance, I perform internationally. Literally, I'm traveling tomorrow, to Greece to perform, so no pressure. So I probably will not be able to attend the full conference, but, it's a trade we make. I'm also very creative. I like my ideas. I I'm a people who think out of the box. I love networking people. I love technology. And throughout my career, I've been very blessed to be able to work on various technologies very early on in my career as I was introduced to AI. I knew about traditional AI, like, about twelve years ago.

When I started my career, literally, I worked on traditional AI, IoT, mobile applications like Android, iOS when there was no, you know, the typical, cross platform applications. We were doing basic coding on Android and iOS. I started like that. And since then, it has been a very interesting journey for me. I do not code anymore, but, I look at the business. I I try to help my teams, build wonderful softwares for my company. That is what I do right now. I work in the FinOps domain. It's something that interests me. I have worked a lot on agile and such process dominated roles because I'm I, as a developer, used to always question the way we deliver and the way, a pros a change in process can really make a difference. So, I started my journey as a developer and then slowly moved on, and now I kind of manage, large scale products that operate under the finance domain in the market.

So that's a little bit about me. And my story is about as you can see, I'm not very quiet. I'm a little loud. But my story is about how I reinvented inclusive leadership. And I'm gonna tell you my story through, something very, that has been very close to my heart. When I was young kid, I used to find debugging very, very, very stressful. And, now we have a lot more tools, but fifteen years ago, the tools were very limited and used to do line by line debugging. And somebody, from my one of my US counterparts at that time, I was working in Australia. And one of my US US counterparts, he introduced me to this rubber duck.

So for those of you who don't know what a rubber debugging duck is, it's basically a small rubber duck that you place on your desk, and it becomes your friend, your ally, your best friend. And you basically start debugging while you're debugging each line of your code. You explain the code to the rubber duck. And that's how you kind of find out where your code might be wrong when you say it out loud. It's it was a game changer for me because I was a bit of an introvert at that time. I didn't know whom to ask. I was almost shy to ask my leads. So that's when I was introduced to debugging Robberdock. In case you've heard of it, great. If you've not, go go look for it. So I wanted to tell the story because we're in Women in Tech conference.

I thought, let's use a Robberdock to tell my story. So moving on, to what made me think about this topic? Why am I talking about being loud and then to become legendary? I'm not saying I'm legendary, but almost. The reason was, there was a pivotal moment that happens in everybody's life. Right? For me, it was sorry. Sorry about that. Oh, okay. For me, it was a meeting in which, I was surrounded by a lot of, my male counterparts, my male, colleagues. And, I had a very strong idea about, something that I felt very strongly about. And I knew that my idea was something to be heard of. But somehow, every time I tried to speak, I was kind of shut down or I was not getting into the listening years.

So what I did was I raised my voice a bit because I felt unheard. I was like, but but I know my idea is so good. Can you please listen to me? And once I was done almost done with the meeting, I felt like there was a bit of discomfort. And then one of my, senior senior senior leaders pulled me aside, into a meeting room and said, why are you so loud? Why why what what was the reason for you to be so loud in the meeting? And I was completely flabbergasted. I didn't think that my voice was loud. I just needed to be heard because I was not being heard. People kept overtalking on top of me. And at that time, I was just senior software lead, but I had so many ideas, that I wanted to be heard. Maybe they were stupid. I don't know.

But I wanted people to share my ideas. And when I was I was stumped by that question, about being loud, and I said, but I don't think I was loud. I I was just trying to let people hear my idea. And I was told that, well, if your idea is good, people will listen to you. You don't have to be loud about it. And I left that room feeling flustered, confused, filled with self doubt, and I was questioning everything about my communication style, about what I did wrong, about if I was too passionate, if I was too aggressive. I was filled with questions. And that's where this idea came into my mind that someday, I'm going to make a difference.

And that's the story that I'm gonna tell you. That was the pivotal point in my life. In my early career, I was, introvert sitting behind the desk. I was very, very ambitious from a very, you know, young age. I was super ambitious. I wanted to, do so much. Sorry. I don't know why this keeps happening. I wanted to do so much, and I was filled with energy. I'm a single child. I was raised by my parents, who were very liberal. They raised me without any doubts about if I was a girl or a boy or anything any other gender. There was no my gender never played a role, while I was growing up. So I when I started my career, it didn't come into my mind that as an engineer, I was a software engineer at that point, that my my gender is going to be something that will be a problem.

Never saw it coming. So, initially, I faced a lot of strange feedback from from a tech from a space which was very heavily male dominated. When I started my job, in 2010, I think, I was shocked to see that I was surrounded by only, my male counterparts. And, a lot of my way of speaking, the way I dealt with with certain certain meetings, certain scenarios, I was called, you know, you're so aggressive. You know? My assertiveness where I was sure about something was called aggressive or passionate. And I would just, you know, try to cope by just saying, oh, here am I. A storm is coming. And I used to put myself down just to so that others couldn't. And as silly as it may sound, at that time, when I was 21 years old, I thought that was the right way to to deal with this. Right?

Very misunderstood by my managers. Often, it led to my performance appraisals becoming a problem because, I was almost considered as not a team player sometimes, which was not the case. I was just very vocal about my opinions, about my ideas, about what I think was correct or what what I didn't think was correct. So my opinions were were almost always shut down. And almost very early on in my career, I saw that the main counterparts in my team got the promotions that I didn't get, although I worked harder. They had the same degree, same knowledge. I was working more than that person.

I was more knowledgeable at that time at that age, but he was the one who was getting the promotions, and I was not. And it was a hard time. It was a very hard time for me. I questioned myself. I was filled with self doubt and guessing myself. Like, it had a severe emotional impact on me. I remember times when I would go home, and I would tell my mom that I don't even know if I'm doing anything right. I am so close with my customers. My customers love me. They they love my authenticity. They encourage me to give them more ideas. But when it comes to my manager or my leadership, they don't see my my value. I don't get the promotions when I I think I deserve them. And I struggled with being authentic. I tried my best to kind of fit in, be a little more silent, not speak speak too much.

Even if I had an idea, I would just, you know, take a breath back and be like, oh, no. No. No. No. No. Maybe maybe not needed. Maybe maybe, you know, let them and there were so many times that I had, used humor, you know, literally to cope, because as you can see from my slides, I love a funny side, a humorous side of life. So I use absurd stuff. Like, I literally used to sometimes send emails and comic centers just to sound less assertive. You know? I'm not even kidding. I did that. And that's how much self doubt I was filled with, you know, being young, but extremely, extremely, aspiring to be, you know, something different. Then there was a turning point in my life. The stuff looks so brilliant, because that's exactly how I brushed off all the negative feathers of me. I discovered about unconscious bias. And how did I discover that was I found myself a mentor.

When I was going through a lot of self doubt, I was very lucky that somebody identified certain skill set in me where I was extremely good at communicating with my clients. I had very high EQ, which is emotional quotient, but not a lot of people have, which helped me put myself in the shoes of the customer and which made them felt very hurt and in turn made them we helped them deliver what exactly they wanted. Because I had that EQ, I was actually succeeding more helping my clients than those who had more skills maybe, you know, who are more senior than me, but they didn't have what it needed to understand what my customer or my clients needed. So one of my very senior, you know, leadership at that point identified picked me. He was a male counterpart. Let me tell you that. And he once told me that you need a good mentor. I've seen you, you know, shine back whenever you have to say something. You're different when you you are on your own and you're speaking to your team, but you're different when you are among your your male counterparts.

So he noticed that, and I made him my mentor. He taught me about unconscious bias, and he himself was somebody who was an ally to bring up women in in his space to to empower them. And he explained to me that what my perception was, you know, of how other looked at me and what the reality was. Right? He taught me we used to spend hours. I was at Australia at that time living in Australia and working there. And, he actually told me something very fun when I told him the story about me being called loud and that filling my mind and my conscious with doubts that he said, you don't need to fix your volume. You just need to rewire the mic.

And that's something on that's on your screen as well that stayed with me, that I realized that it was not me who was alone. It I needed to identify where there was unconscious biases. Like, I'm sure a lot of you can resonate with this. You you might have faced with unconscious bias. And now when you think about it retrospectively, you realize that, oh my god. I maybe they didn't even realize they were being biased towards me. I sometimes think when I was called loud, the person even realized that they were being biased towards me. That was a moment when I decided that, I will take my mentor's help, and I will rise to what I'm meant to do, which is I had very strong opinions that came from facts and knowledge, and they were not empty. I changed certain strategies about how I can integrate myself being authentic, but also changing and amplifying my communication dynamics so that I can fit into the unconscious biases and not trigger those unconscious biases.

So I had to learn certain strategies. Like, I'll give you some examples of what kind of strategies I tried using. One is, reading the room. A lot of time, we go into a meeting or a conversation where we don't read out the room We just go in with our mindset, what we need to talk, with our agenda, or our preparation that we have done, and we kind of forget about the fact that, well, yes, my idea is great, maybe. Yes. I am prepared, maybe. But how am I gonna be perceived? So, again, your EQ will come into a big, big role if you know how you will be perceived. Not know, but gauge. Gauge how you will be perceived. So reading the room, when you go into a room full of people for a meeting, for a discussion, for for customer engagement, it is very important. So once you start that process, you will see that you are a better listener. So you you will listen more before you give your ideas.

When you give your ideas in those scenarios, you'll know exactly how to communicate, where the communication will land well when you listen to the people in the room, when you gauge their the audience how they will perceive it. You will be able to communicate your idea or your preparation, whatever you're prepared in the way that you think will be best heard or perceived. So I make those nuances in changing the style of communicating, learning a bit more about how to be a good listener in a room, how to be, you know, having an authentic voice, but also have learn how to tone down, tone up, or, you know, kind of mix your tones when you're having communications.

I know we don't see that as important, but trust me, those communication skills are essential sometimes to be able to rise to leadership roles because how you're perceived by others is based on how you communicate with them. If I communicate to you in a tone which is friendly and which is warm, you will automatically feel that this person is trying to say something that we can relate to. That is the power of communication and tone. So I didn't turn tone my, I didn't turn my tone down turn my tone down. I turned it up, with some surround sound, which is, you know, I made some changes in the bass, you know, did some ups and downs, and started being the leader. And that's how I landed up, very quickly on in my career. That was my pivotal moment. I went from, you know, assistant manager to manager to senior manager to a VP today.

And the pivotal moment was when I stopped worrying too much, well, about whether my idea was good or not. I would just say it my way, and I would just relate it. There will be someone in the room, trust me, who will pick it up, but your room must be gauged. But even after you become, you know, a leader in a certain role, you can still face a lot of leadership biases. I call them subtle leadership biases. Even in leadership roles, you will feel biases where your leadership is not always as powerful as you thought it would be. You reach your role. Yes. You start the role sounds great, but you still see that all of your male counterparts, they really advocate your ideas. They would advocate something that you've delegated.

They would not, give you as much importance as they would give a male counterpart. And this is something that is so common. I'm sure many of you must already have related to that, have have, been through it, and, it is something that a lot of us can relate to that even after reaching a certain point in your career, having enough knowledge, having enough credentials, you still will undermine in certain scenarios.

And one of, the ways I deal with it at this point is I find people who are my advocates. I find I that this is what where networking comes to play. Going for a quick coffee with your senior leadership, inviting them for a quick chat even if, you know, you see their calendar is full. Being bold, when you're a leader, is important because you need advocates on the top to leverage executive influence. If you don't leverage executive influence, it's very hard for you to lead. When you leverage executive in influence, you you will be able to not only foster your role, but you will also be able to create an inclusive culture person.

Because when you're a leader, you have the power as well to create inclusive culture, to sponsor, you know, your women leaders, to to challenge, you know, the systemic barrier that I'm there for for years, you can do that. Like, for example, I am a big part of the women in tech movement within my organization. I connect with a lot of young girls, young women, with whom I I sit down and understand where their challenge facing challenges. There are sometimes challenges within the family. You know? Their expectations and and a lot of other things depending on different cultures that you come from, you can have different challenges that comes, you know, as being a woman. And I have spent a lot of time because of my, you know, because of the credentials that I have, because of my experience and my ways of finding my road through it.

I feel that I can help. I can use my voice to be able to influence women who are facing challenges. And sometimes they get stuck in certain roles, and they don't get that promotion, and they don't get that accreditations that they do. So I try my best to connect with them to to try help them, mentor them, as much as I can. So this is something that as as you move into leadership roles, you will be, having the privilege of doing, essentially. So being loud became my superpower. My voice became my superpower. I as as of today, most of my time, I'm speaking all the time, so my voice is my biggest superpower. I'm speaking in places like this in conferences. I'm speaking in meeting rooms. I'm speaking with customers.

I'm speaking with clients, and my voice has become an influence of magnet because I am the biggest cheerleader of all the women who are in my team or beyond my team. I'm always cheering them on. I'm bringing them together. I'm being the magnet within my organization. I'm I'm trying to be the magnet who pulls in more, positive impact and and be that powerful voice. Even if that now my voice is not a big problem. Even if I'm a bit loud, you're okay. They'll listen. So, loud became my superpower. I was once told, you know, a few years ago when I was being very, you know, passionate about a topic, in one of the meetings. I was extremely passionate, and I was loud. And, I I kind of jokingly told them, you know what? I think I'm getting too excited. And they were like, no.

No. No. You you're excitement. Your passion is so relatable. It's amazing. Keep going. I was like, oh, that's a big change. So so long became my superpower, and I also would suggest that you, use your voice for the right reasons. One of the things I would say, you can use AI for support, which sometimes I tell a lot of my people I I, influence and coach and mentor. Your chat GPT, or, AI tools like that can really help you change tonality if sometimes you feel you need to put a checker email's tonality or a text you're sending a senior leadership or executive for tonality. Tag GPT or AI tools like that are very good at, understanding tonality. You can also use, your AI to foster information into the system and understand your career progression and how you can go into leadership roles.

It believe me or not, the more you feed them with your information, they will be able to give you, like, a career path and career goals. I also help a lot of my mentees to find their career goals to where I went there a bit lost. So you can use that back. But use this technology as your ally and not to ride or die. This is just as a friend and not something off the book. And lastly, change begins with us. I would encourage you to, be that voice in your organization. Bring, you know, women collectively together. If you have an authentic, expression, you will be cascading that voice onto other people. It is it is viral. You know? Literally, you cascade your positive voice. Use that for empowering people in your organization, alongside skill enhancement. A lot of us don't give enough importance to enhance our skills.

Please do your certifications, enhance your skills, so that your voice becomes more credible. With that, I think I'm going to end my talk. Right now, I am very, very open, and I'm connecting with a lot of, women in tech organizations, and I'm volunteering and trying to help as many women as I can. I am based out in Scotland, and I wear my blazer whenever I can, like, I'm wearing it today. And I promise you, you can butt real quick and still wear your blazer. It doesn't matter how loud or how silent you are. I hope you took away some motivation from this, talk, and I hope you, find your own authentic list. If you want to talk to me or connect with me, here are my credentials. I'm very easy to find. My full name is Molly Roy.

You can connect with me on LinkedIn. I have a website as well in case you wanna know where I'm talking next. And I have an email, as well, which you can use to connect with me. Looking forward to hearing back from some of you and hopefully, fostering a culture of cloud being awesome. So thank you very much. Hoping to