OdishaLIVE Bureau
The Conclave evolved around three major levers – Building YOU 2.0, Breaking Barriers & Brand YOU
Infosys Bhubaneswar Centre recently organized WinIT – a Women in Technology conclave – at their STP campus, for women professionals in the IT industry, teaching and allied areas. The Conclave aimed to Create a forum to Connect the Women working in IT and Academia; Create awareness around IT trends, Work environment, Policies of the Industry; and Discuss and Debate on challenges faced by Women in the industry.
The Conclave started with the Infosys Bhubaneswar Centre Head & AVP Prabhat Kumar Das inaugurating the event with an audio visual which beautifully brought forth the play of technology in the current era. There was a short context setting by Ms. Soumya Mohapatra, the Diversity & Inclusivity anchor for the Centre.
This was followed by sessions on Emerging & Niche Technologies by Amlan Sahoo, Delivery Manager. This session covered emerging trends like Agile and DevOps, Blockchain, IOT and more importantly the reflection of how the market demands newer roles and skills and we have huge gaps in skilled talents in these newer areas.
A session on Data Privacy by Ramakant Mohapatra, Group Manager & Subject Matter Expert, Privacy & Data Protection, enlightened the participants with the nuances of data privacy, sensitivity and security. There was an activity-oriented session on Breaking Barriers and Stereotypes by Swarnavo Dutta from the Learning & Development team.
There was a short session on employee benefit policies that women employees need to be aware of, by Santhosh Nair AVP & Head Employee Relations; this was conducted over video conference. The morning sessions had IT sector flavor with a lot of role plays, anecdotes and videos by the speakers. The sessions were small capsules covering key aspects.
The afternoon session was planned to highlight the importance of Branding for oneself by Govindrajan Srinivas, Director Vertical Limit Education and Ms. Roopa Mishra – IAS, Director-cum-Additional Secretary, Drinking Water and Sanitation. While Mr. Govindrajan gave a brilliant talk on the construct of Brands, Ms. Mishra swept off the audience with a power packed deliberation which was full of anecdotes from her personal and professional journey.
This was followed by a fun-filled Coffee Quiz with two lady achievers, Rashmi Vishwakarma AVP & Senior Group Manager Unit Planning, Strategy & Operations and Krishna Chakravarthy, Associate Professor, KIIT.
The session closed with a personal account of her entrepreneurial journey from Ms. Arupa Ray Joshi – Entrepreneur, Owner of Coffee Bytes & Proprietor of Home Décor Store. The anecdotes quoted by the guest speakers from their successful journeys in IT and non IT sectors resonated in the hearts and minds of the aspiring young women leaders who participated.
It was a platform for Women in IT across the city and there were close to 70 participants from organizations like TCS, MindTree, Tech Mahindra, AaBsys, CSM Technologies, ESSPL, StratLytics, Infosys, CapGemini, In2IT Technologies, and WIPRO along with academies like KIIT, IIIT, ITER, GITA, CV Raman College of Engg., Silicon Institute of Technology that participated.
