Faces of IIMB
We are introducing a new section in the newsletter commencing this month. The intention of this section is to introduce the people, who work behind the scenes, meaning the very backbone of the institute – the staff members. The institute relies on its staff members for a smooth and effective working system.
As students or alums, you would have interacted with these members from time to time. This section highlights the contribution made by them.
Name: Sushma R
Designation: Executive Assistant
Department: IIMB Alumni Office
Your Journey at the IIMB Alumni Office:
My journey started at IIMBangalore’s alumni office on September 1, 2008 as an Executive Assistant to Rakesh Godhwani, Head Alumni Office. I was very excited and a little nervous as it was, in a way my first job (though I had worked for 3 months before joining IIMB), but the warm and friendly colleagues made me feel very comfortable. I consider myself fortunate to have worked with Mr. Rakesh Godhwani who was a good mentor and a guide to me. I joined IIMB after completing a Diploma in Computer science. Rakesh Sir also helped me complete my higher studies. It’s was a great and wonderful experience to have worked for the various initiatives under the leadership of Rakesh Sir.
In the last 11 years, I’ve met very good colleagues Padma, Ranjini, Rohini and Ankita and they are also best friends. I have met many alums who are very talented, inspiring enthusiastic and successful leaders. Also, I would like to thank Vasanthi mam, Chairperson of Alumni relations for supporting and guiding me. Working with Partha Sir, the current head of alumni relations has been a good and enriching experience.
Roles and Responsibilities:
I joined the alumni office as a first member of the team (Ranjini and Rohini Joined later), I was doing all the tasks from website launching, organizing reunions and updating Alumni database. I was involved in almost all the activities.
My first assignment was to revamp the alumni website and to create the PGP Alumni database. I started the work of going through convocation registers and manually entered every name from those registers into the excel.
As I was completely new to IIMB’s work culture, I had to learn the ways of IIMB operations – using interoffice memos and many more things that were new to me. I had to literally walk around with files and memos and do everything on my own. Luckily, I enjoyed this way of working and adapted to it.
Any memorable incident that comes to mind while serving at the office?
Working at IIMB is one of the best things that happened to me. I consider myself fortunate to work in such a great institute. There are many memorable incidents at IIMB, the first one that comes to my mind is Working with Infosys team to revamp the alumni website. And then completing the EGMP course at IIMB.
Thanks to Partha Sir for providing an opportunity to cover our journey in the Alumni Newsletter.
Name: Rohini Ramegowda
Designation: Project Executive
Department: IIMB Alumni Office
Your Journey at the IIMB Alumni Office:
I joined on March 15, 2010, to IIMB since then I have been working in the Alumni Relations department. Then we were a team of 4 – Mr. Rakesh Godhwani being the Head, Sushma has office admin, Ranjini content writer and I joined has event coordinator where my role was to manage the events organized by Alumni office and now I work as a project executive. The alumni office was revamping then where there was a dedicated office that was set up and our team grew from 4 to 6 by Gayathri and Aparna Sanjay joining has content writer and manager. We were focused on building the database which was very critical it was a huge challenge to get all the alumni to sign up for the new dedicated website. I still remember working on those endless excel sheets that were manually updated.
This was my second job earlier I had worked for a small company as a management trainee. My role at IIMB Alumni office was mostly operational and I used to manage both events organized and accounts of IIMB alumni association. I was fortunate to work with this team whom I can no longer call as colleagues but remain good friends and well-wishers. They have always guided and backed me in all sorts of situations.
In 2016, I was blessed with good news where I was expecting to be a mother but medical complications prevented me from traveling. The office understood my situation and allowed me to work remotely, else my tenure at the IIMB office would have ended in 2016. The team supported me immensely through this time. I would especially like to thank Sushma who was there for me anytime and she was also a new mother. I resumed office in June 2017, and the first task was to assist in amending the IIMBAA trust deed.
It’s been wonderful working with Partha sir, the current Head Alumni Relations, he is always been trying to motivate and guide us. He is been giving us opportunity to improve our skills by giving us ownership to various initiatives brought by alumni office. I am fortunate to work with the veterans like Prof Kumar, Prof Vasanthi, Prof Rakesh Godhwani, Mr. Parthasarathy and Mr. VK Menon. Each one of them has a different leadership style which has helped me in learning new things and improve my skills. Its been a very good learning journey at the alumni office which I enjoy and cherish each and every moment.
Roles and Responsibilities:
I initially joined the office as an event coordinator managing reunions and other events. Now I am a Project Executive and a POC from the alumni office for all events organized by alumni office. I am also POC for alumni donations only from an operations point of view. I coordinate with IIMBAA chapters manage the main bank account, coordinate with the IIMBAA auditor in filing the GST and IT returns. The roles and responsibilities in the alumni office are always shared as we are a small team we all pitch in and help each other in all the initiatives carried out.
Any memorable incident that comes to mind while serving at the office?
Every moment is memorable at alumni office can’t pinpoint one.
