Team size: 26

Can you tell us a little about your significant accomplishments over the last few years, as a team or by yourself?

There are five key pillars of significant accomplishments:

Delivering excellence in complex Roles is the first. My team and I combine excellent and precise legal advice with the strategic needs of my clients to deliver successful outcomes for them based on high-credibility stakeholder relationships. I have done so across complex roles at Citi legal, spanning countries, regions and products, bringing commitment, vision and energy to each role.

Strategic thinking regarding risk and control, yet playing to win, is crucial. In order to win, we must anticipate, prepare for and be nimbly footed about changes in our operating environment while simplifying processes, building more effective controls and holding each other accountable for delivering a culture of responsible risk-taking. My team leads several of these initiatives, helping Citi India innovate and responsibly accelerate growth. I have substantial experience doing so for nearly two decades across EMEA and APAC markets, leading several change management exercises and cleaning up multiple legacy practices, leading to simpler, more effective controls.

The third pillar involves understanding boards, regulators and geopolitics — leading through change in a transforming world. My team and I advise boards of listed and unlisted, yet regulated, entities on difficult matters. I personally brief regulators and shareholders. I have led some of Citi India’s most critical regulatory interventions. As interventions from regulators and governments across our markets intensify, my team and I have specialised in helping our clients make the right decisions through conflicting considerations while advising risk, reputational and governance committees.

I believe our people are our greatest asset, and I have more than ten years of experience in coaching, culture change and building high-performance teams. Building cohesive, high-performing, visible teams is essential. The India legal team is a leading in-house team motivated to consistently deliver excellence in sync with Citi India’s strategic priorities. We create job roles to match the firm’s future goals, matching skillsets to roles, adding talent in critical and evolving areas, and creating an enduring, high-performance culture through an effective reward and recognition system.

Leadership with purpose is what drives positive change. I believe personal leadership must be holistic and purposeful, extending beyond the domain of expertise. To borrow Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser’s words, I also think we should be ‘a bank with a head and a heart’. To demonstrate: I mentor and sponsor high-potential women across Citi APAC, helping them navigate and achieve their best potential. I support Citi India’s first-ever Pride Affinity Network, which has broken invisible barriers in its unequivocal and visible stand of allyship, leading to Citi India winning the ‘Gold Employer’ award in the India Workplace Equality Index (IWEI) for both 2020 and 2021. I contribute to national policymaking through my work at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and promote best-in-class executive business education in Asia as an executive board member of the Indian School of Business. I also sponsor Citi’s long-standing patronage of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, India’s iconic art history museum.