Dr Safia, your experience spans academia, scientific research linking genomic sequences with drug discovery, B-school as well as industry roles at GSK, MedImmune and now UCB India. At a professional level, how did you strategically prepare yourself for the shift from academia/ science to the management/ business side of the industry? Any mantras/tips for success?
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Dr Safia Rizvi
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Switching from science to business was greatly facilitated by the MBA programme at Wharton. My friends, classmates and mentors were very helpful in making this transition. It also helped that I am a very resilient and determined sort of person. Sheer grit has always been my weapon of choice and at times, that was also the only one accessible. My mantra has always been that there is no substitute to good old-fashioned hard work.
You have received many awards, the latest being the ‘National Working Mother of the Year’ in 2011 and the ‘Women of Distinction Award 2005’. At a personal level, how do you maintain a work-life balance?
I am not sure if I am a great example of good work life balance now. However, earlier when my daughter was young, her presence provided great deal of structure and balance to my day and my life. I always made fresh home cooked dinner, worked with her on her projects, home work etc. It was not so much by design as it was by sense of responsibility and necessity.
Now that she has grown, I tend to lose that balance and at times it becomes all work, no life. I like my work so it does not seem like work. But generally speaking, it is an ongoing struggle for all women so one of the things that I have stopped worrying is ‘small things,’ I do not spend time and energy focusing on matching of sofa covers and curtains or other things like that.
| STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART |
| What I want is a world where women can make informed choices, about their life, body and health, family’s health, career, etc. A world that has equality of human kind. A world where women do not have to apologise for their luck in gender lottery. |
Having lived and worked in the US, Europe and India, how was your experience as a working woman across these continents?
There are pros and cons of every situation. While the US and Europe offer personal privacy and anonymity and thus a sense of freedom, India offers a very good support system to manage home and other aspects. One of the key difference I noticed when I came here was lack of women at senior positions in pharma industry. It led to several funny situations. Most of my team had never had a female manager before. That said, every one accepted my leadership and for the most part I do not even remember that I am a woman. Over all, I have had a great experience here in India.
You have been involved in empowerment of economically challenged women through access to education and are the founder of an initiative, eLIT. Can you tell us what inspired you to start this? And give us a gist of its objectives, scope, impact?
eLIT or rather developing a pragmatic and practical method to empower women was inspired by a specific incident. I attended a talk by Asma Jahangir at Asia Society in New York. She described the details of a legal case where a 13-year- old blind girl was abused by her employer and then sent to jail for the act that was forced on her. It hit me like a ton of bricks and I came to realise how fortunate I am and how privileged my life is. I have the power of making choices. Choices that are not accessible to many millions of women. I wanted to somehow help create empowerment for women to enable them to make informed choices for life, career, health etc.
My path crossed with like-minded people and we started eLIT, a 501 C3 non profit organisation committed to providing empowerment to women and children from socially and economically challenged background. We started with electronic literacy as key tool and we have expanded to scholarships and other forms of educational support for women and children.