Over the past 18 years of my professional experience, I have been privileged enough to work with public/private organisations across multiple sectors like Financial, Retail and now Healthcare.
But the real journey started much earlier than I realised. I grew up in India and since my childhood I had keen interest in STEM subject and as I moved along through my school this became even more prominent. I studied Maths, Physics, Biology & Chemistry for A-Level equivalent, which was very unusual for girls at that time.
My real opportunity to understand more about Technology came in the summer of 1997, when I started pursuing Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. This was the stepping-stone for building my knowledge about Technology. The three years exposed to me a world of programming, algorithms and databases which was fascinating for me, which intrigued me to continue further to do Master in Computer Application which I completed with a “Distinction”.
I began my corporate career with a leading Indian consultancy as a Software Engineer in 2003, responsible for designing and developing applications. Working with a big US based financial service client (GE Capital) on time critical Ecommerce projects for more than 2 years provided me a solid foundation on the ways of working and various practices/standards (like Six Sigma, Lean) required to deliver good quality solutions.
The next big professional change came when I moved to UK in 2006 and started working with investment bank Goldman Sachs. The four and half years were a masterclass in work culture, team building, embracing diversity and delivering world class solutions in record times using ground-breaking tools and technologies. Few highlights were working on Kraft takeover of Cadbury, economic crisis of 2008 and its aftermath followed by the regulatory changes it brought in the industry.
Next plunge I took was in Retail sector working for Wm Morrisons Supermarket Plc, fourth largest food retailer. Morrisons had initiated a multi-year, multi-million-pound business change and transformation programme for replacing its existing IT (mainframe) systems with world leader Oracle Retail systems to support the current and future growth of the business. As the technical lead I was responsible to lead one of the largest Oracle retail implementations within Europe. This was a complex transformation impacting each and every aspect of the business including supply chain, distribution, finance, retail & commercial systems/processes. I was also instrumental in delivering the first pilot of Convenience stores, critical for the business strategy.
The journey till here was quite interesting, fast paced and full of challenges, but I wanted to experience a more tangible use of technology and in my quest to understand how technology can improve health and benefit citizens I moved to NHS Digital over 3 years ago. Here I was given the fantastic opportunity to lead on the Cloud based technical architecture of two national level programmes, which were/are key in digitising health care and materialising the vision of an empowered NHS patient. Both the programmes have been the backbone of the UK government’s response to the challenges Covid-19 has thrown in the social and health care.
In my career I have kept positive attitude towards challenges and have turned them into opportunities. By now I have worked at different levels and in all most all disciplines of information technology and this has given me the skills which enable me to adapt to the ever-changing needs of businesses, stakeholders, colleagues and most of all changing trends in technology.
