Pooja Sund, a Haryanvi girl from Kaithal (in Haryana, India) is empowering women around the globe. Working as the Director, Engineering and Finance at Microsoft’s Core Finance Engineering group in the US, Pooja Sund, is responsible for providing organisational leadership across the broad technical and non-technical areas, including databases, data pipelines, telemetry, governance, security, and warehouses at Microsoft.
An alumnus of Tilak Raj Chadha Institute of Management and Technology (TIMT), Yamunanagar (also in Haryana), now working with Microsoft (US), she has become the inspiration for millions of Indian girls planning to take up leadership roles post studies.
Pooja feels majority of a women population do not get a chance to study. Those who do, are told to be a doctor or an engineer and not the person of their dreams or the CEO of their own career.
“Sometimes family and societal norms become the barrier for us. Gender biases, lack of networking opportunities, mentorship, and sponsorship hit us hard when we want to grow in our career and that is why I am strongly proposing to have a circle of strong mentors and sponsors and learn the art of negotiation, precise questioning, strategic thinking and above all learn the art of when to say “No”,” said Pooja Sund.
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“Our key priority is to create meaningful connection opportunities for our community to build and leverage networks, inspire learning, and amplify impact by empowering women. In addition, I am leading a mentoring series for 20 plus persons at the mid to senior level in the company and coaching them on various aspects of professional success,” Pooja added.
Within Microsoft, she is co-leading the learning and development pillar of women at Microsoft employee resource group comprising 24,000 women globally.
“Through this pillar, we are conducting monthly series and inviting leaders to come and share with our global women workforce their success stories, their stories of rejections, belonging, career growth, and how to navigate through challenges to get here where they are,” said Pooja.
Pooja is a LinkedIn influencer with 25,000 followers. She organises “Tech careers: Mentoring & AMA (Ask me anything)” related events, collaborating with industry leaders and influencing women from all parts of the world including India. She has done a lot of work for India in the past 2 years.
Pooja has represented Microsoft at a global conference “Grace Hopper Conference” attended by 30,000 women professionals from across the globe.
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