My leadership journey across three countries
As I’m nearing the end of my participation in PayPal’s Technology Leadership Program (TLP) I’ve become inspired to give back to this great company by creating a series of Blog posts sharing my experiences. These posts won’t just be about the professional and leadership skills I knew I would be learning, but also share the life lessons I learned as a mother, as a wife and most importantly as a human.
For those of you who may not be familiar with what TLP is, let me briefly describe its mission and format. It’s a 2 year rotation program which is similar to an MBA program. It’s open to all high performing mid level technologists around the world. Each rotation is 6 months.
TLP began in 2011 in the Technology organization and is currently sponsored by the office of the CTO. Two classes consisting of 10 people each are selected from a pool of qualified potential leaders.
Not only are participants selected around the world from different PayPal locations, they also get to experience rotations across global locations. Roughly half of the program is in a country that is different than the home country.
Host leaders are Director level and above, and they, too, are from sites around the world. They provide leadership mentoring and guidance on other aspects of Senior Management.
I am so proud and honored to be in the 2017–2018 TLP program!
I am going to take you with me on my journey that began two years ago.
To help you understand who I am, I have always been a driven, self-motivated person. I envisioned myself at the mid point of my career as at least a Director level of a technology company. The interesting thing is, I never shared my dream publicly because I considered that it would be boasting, , but now I am giving myself the permission to share! Not because of the fame and glory that comes with the title, but because I wanted to use the legitimacy that higher positions grant to be a strong role model for future generations. (I have a six year old daughter and this was a really important to me personally.)
I am from a small town in southern part of India, Salem, Tamil Nadu and work out of the Bangalore office. I’ve been with PayPal for over 5 years and have held positions in PayPal’s Risk organization
In March of 2016, I heard presentations on TLP, which is a company wide program and also about another program called Strategic High Achievers Rotation Program, which was short two months rotation program hosted by my own organization.
When my daughter was three years old I gave myself permission to seize every opportunity to advance my career and become the best leader I could. I was allowing myself only a three year window, because when she turned six and started her first grade, I was afraid I wouldn’t have the flexibility to take advantages of career opportunities that would came my way.
So when I heard about these two programs, I decided to apply for both! I told myself ‘I have to do this now and I can’t wait!’. I played it safe and I applied for both since I was hoping I would get at least one.
I was thrilled to get accepted in SHARP which would run from Aug -Sept 2016 in Tel Aviv. Why TLV? That was one location that I knew the least about and I wanted to take the adventure and learn about it.
I flew to PayPal headquarters in San Jose for the week long SHARP kickoff in August, and that is when I learned about getting selected for the TLP! I had two instant thoughts — one, I was thrilled! But second, I felt guilty to my current organization, because they supported me for the 2 month rotation program.
After kickoff event in San Jose, I took a 15 hour non-stop flight to TLV. I will never forget when the flight landed, every single passenger clapped loudly for the pilot for making a smooth landing! For me, I thought the applause was just for nice and smooth landing, but actually, it was for how passengers traveling to Israel show appreciation for little things we take for granted.
Going into the PayPal TLV site, I was immediately stuck with the warmth of my colleagues! They offer a hug when they say a hello in a friendly manner, which really made me feel welcome. There are about 300–400 people in the office.
The first day was spent with warm introductions to most of the team members in the TLV office. I found most of the people were fascinated by India, which made me feel so special, since I was the only person there from India!
The main project that I was working on was a research project to develop a tool using machine learning algorithms to detect fraud transactions.
My initial weeks were spent understanding the problem I was trying to solve in my project, lingo of the domain and the technology stack. In Israel, the typical work day was from 9–6 and the typical work week goes from Sun-Thu. It was interesting to get time off on Friday and Saturday!
In the middle of the 8 week rotation, I wanted to give back to the TLV site and to the program somehow, so I gave a brown bag presentation on the project I worked in India. I wanted the people in the new organization to be able to understand the similarities and differences and connect the dots like me. It was well received and appreciated!
This was actually the first time I had been away from my husband and daughter for any length of time, and I often missed them both so much it was really hard. Not only was I far away in a different country, but I missed them so much for the first time for a very long period. My identity as a great employee on the leadership track had always also been joined by being able to see my family every day. Now alone in TLV, I just had my work and I could not get my daughter’s hug when I came home.
My birthday was coming up during the rotation, and for weeks I was eagerly expecting my husband and my daughter to visit me in Israel to help celebrate. But I was broken hearted that, at the last minute, they could not come because my 3 year old daughter could not get a passport due to visa logistics!
Since I was homesick after being away from my daughter for almost 5 weeks, I began noticing that my productivity at work was starting to suffer. But I soon realized I only had a few weeks left in the new country and decided to focus on getting my work during the weekdays and started plans to visit all the places on the weekends that I had been saving for when my family could be with me. Seeing the many great sites of Tel Aviv really helped ease my homesickness!
Fast forward to my last week, the research and prototype for the project was done. We had the ability to prove the hypothesis and reduced the overall the potential fraud loss.
Professional learnings:
- Increased my knowledge and proficiency in detailed project management.
- By 5th week of my rotation, I knew there was a chance we could miss the 5th and final milestone of the project. In hindsight, I realized that I could have stepped forward much earlier to mitigate the risk by communicating more with the management team.
- Learned what it takes to be a good data scientist — gathering data, cleaning data, training of the model and deriving the results.
- Each week is important, there is no ‘later’.
Personal learnings:
- Forced ‘me’ time — reminded me of what is important to ME (besides my family)
- How to take care myself and honor myself by doing what is required for my inner peace
- Seize opportunities to foster friendship even in the professional environment (the wall between the professional and personal becoming very short!)
During the last week of the SHARP program, the TLP program also held a kickoff event in TLV for the rotation that would start in Jan 2017. I was even more excited to start, since I had the learnings from TLV that I could take to my next rotation!
You can read about my leadership rotation in-depth in this next blog!
