Inspiring, yes?

Padmasree Warrior, Cisco's CTO was visiting Bangalore last week and I attended a WAN (Women's Action Network) event which hosted her for an hour or so. Every time I attend one of these sessions where a female executive gives advice to a room full of women, I ask myself, do I really aspire to be her? Most of the time, the answer is no. I asked Prasad and he said that I definitely don't aspire to be CEO or a high ranking executive at a large company and that if I did, I probably would have shows signs of it years ago :-) I was curious to meet Padmasree, she is very attractive, slim (apparently works out every day), hair set just right, was wearing an elegant sari and jewelry . She obviously knows how to present herself. She speaks eloquently, is calm and confident and was able to respond to all the questions with ease, I found that aspect of her to be very impressive. Because it was a WAN event, she shared some details about her personal life: she has a 16 year old son that attends a top notch boarding school in Illinois, she grew up in Vijaywada and her mother tongue is Telugu, she did Chemical Engineering at IIT Delhi and met her husband there which explains the last name and she discussed how she was able to juggle or integrate being a mother, a wife and a successful career woman. She started at Motorola as a line engineer at a manufacturing plant, was promoted to line manager within a year and shortly after that, she ran the engineering team and eventually promoted to CTO of Motorola, a remarkable career. I usually pencil these events into my calendar and something or another comes up, I'm glad I took the time out to meet her, if nothing other than to satisfy my curiosity.