The Complete Women - Do it All



Work, home and play. The urban Indian woman has become adept at multi-tasking, and as she redefines career goals, she is also nipping and tucking her relationships. Will she be the alpha mom, the beta career girl or a complete blend of both?The recent issue of India Today is a Women Special.If you can,do grab a copy of it and have a look.

Leading Ladies
There is an interesting article that features thirty achievers that show how women can be more than the sum of their cliches.From an investment banker to a singer with a soul, from a director who makes everyone dance to her tunes to an infotech warrior.These are the role models.Here are a few women from the Biz Section that caught my attention:

VINITA BALI
50, BUSINESS EXECUTIVE
Cookie Cutter

Role call: She shattered the impermeable glass ceiling of the FMCG sector even before the big boys started talking about gender diversity at the workplace. Her career has taken her from being the worldwide head of marketing and strategy at Coca-Cola in Atlanta, USA, to working with the United Nations. An MBA from the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management, she began with Voltas in 1977, a Tata Group company focusing on consumer products.

Balancing act: Takes a day off to see a new place even when she's travelling on work. Is steadfastly single and happily houseproud. Her parents are her greatest support.

Worst cliché she's heard:
"You won't be able to take the travel because you are a woman."



PADMA RAVICHANDER
45, IT PROFESSIONAL
Digital Diva

Role call: Perhaps the most powerful woman in Indian infotech today, she heads the Rs 9,000-crore American multinational company Perot Systems' operations in India and the Asia Pacific, with her 6,000-strong staff providing almost half its business. Her 20-year-career spans Oracle and Hewlett-Packard.

Balancing act: Being a mother of two, and yet travelling abroad almost every month for the past ten years, has been tough.

Significant other:
Ravichander, former wall street wiz, whom she married in 1981



MALLIKA SRINIVASAN
46, BUSINESSWOMAN
Plough Back

Role call: The Wharton graduate runs Tractors and Farm Equipment, India's second- largest tractor manufacturing firm, independent of her husband, TVS chairman Venu Srinivasan. Since she joined as a general manager in 1985, the company's turnover has grown from Rs 86 crore to Rs 2,600 crore.

On the work-home balance:
"Every woman has to find her own formula."



ROOPA PURUSHOTHAMAN
27, ECONOMIST
Brick by Brick

Role call: The Yale and London School of Economics graduate was vice-president, Goldman Sachs, where she co-authored two acclaimed papers on the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies before deciding that India was her calling. Having recently moved from New York to Mumbai, she will work with Future Capital, the financial arm of Pantaloon Retail.

Balancing act: Flexible workspaces have enabled her to spend time with her partner, who works in the New York City Education Department, and do a lot of reading.

A typical day: Ten hours of analysing data-she specialises in demographics and migration. An hour at the gym.