‘The Golden Hour’ Ep. 3: Amazon Pay’s Anuradha Aggarwal

So in the 25 years that I've been around the professional sun, I've been in five different industries. The one I've spent the most amount of time in is the consumer products industry, and then of course I've been in telecom, I've done some work with media, and now I'm with financial services. The one thing that I've learned through this journey is that you never say never. So I always said I would never do a financial services job, and here I am. I never thought I would do a technology job, and I discovered that I was... agility is what helped me navigate this slightly unconventional journey that I've had. So it's not been linear, it's not been upwards in one industry or one organization. I spent 13 years at Unilever, and that was like my grounding to start with. That was your first job? That was first job out of campus, and I kind of felt like that's where I was going to be. And then when I left, I didn't realize that I'm going to go work across different industries. But every industry that I've moved in, I've learned something new, I've added something to my repertoire. And I think even as I come into this very new world for me—no tech, no financial services experience, no e-commerce experience—I was a management trainee still, come true because you go back to first principles. So if I was to say what is common across all of this, I would say it's first principle thinking: ask why maybe five times before you get to an answer, learn before you speak—which can be tough when you join as a leader—and third is learn to harness the power of people, because for me that becomes very important when you're working in an industry that you've never been part of before.

Yeah, I mean, of course my family is a constant. The need to achieve was put into us as kids very early in our life, and we were always high-achieving, high-striving kids. My father and brother are from the IIT, my mom is a PhD in physics, so not doing well was never an option. But having said that, I think that only holds you till a certain time. After that, you kind of discover what drives you. So if I was to say what's in common, it's definitely drive to do well, not being able to do... I do hold a lot of responsibility, let's say that, and my stakes are very high. I really believe that the way you do small things is also how you do big things. So I think I'm generally a high-stakes person, and I put high stakes in most of the actions and activities I do. So I'm an all-in person, and whenever I go, I kind of do the same.

I don't think this is... you get only one kind of outcome, and I think a lot of old organizations have also realized that that only takes you to a certain place, and suddenly you're not representing the people you serve, you don't represent your consumer. So representation is very important because that's what we do. We finally end up... they used to say that if you don't have any women on the table, how are you selling products which are relevant for women? In e-commerce, we have this conversation around can we represent the tier two and tier three customer? In payments, we have this conversation of are we only talking to the affluent customers or are we talking about people for whom budget management is valuable? You need representation of opinions when it comes to maybe women... it's difficult for organizations because if the ecosystem isn't ensuring that enough representation is happening at every level, then sometimes you have to take some affirmative action. And there's a lot of debate around whether it's a good thing to do affirmative action, whether you should actively recruit women at different levels. And I believe that with change comes pain, and there is some pain that both the organization as well as the women who will be these leaders will have to carry. So the pain that organizations have to go through is a change in culture, everything from not being ladish and learning how to calibrate what you speak... as people who have been brought in as a result of affirmative action, I've been in that situation. I remember a conversation with the global CEO once saying, 'Why I don't want to be put in the limelight, and I don't want to be this person who people say you were recruited because you're a woman.' And he keeps saying, 'You were recruited despite the fact that you were a woman, because you were a woman.' It's interesting that in most situations, you are definitely the best person for the job, and you're a woman. So no organization makes bad trade-offs because finally it'll show up. Absolutely. And I think that's a realization we have to build in representation, and it goes a long way in terms of role models. Because one of the reasons that Aron and I are doing this is our India representation.

It's interesting, we've had this conversation at various points in time in life. I have two children, and I have worked through my maternity and all of the trials and tribulations that come up with living away from family. I don't have a family support system where I live. And very often in the environment, I've had this question come up to me saying, 'What am I trading off?' So I think young women go through that constant conversation of trade-off in their mind: am I trading off bringing up my... you passed that hump because it is a hump in life. People speak about how in this world, in the journey, the career journey peaks at the same time that your family journey peaks—it's exactly middle ages and it's middle management, and it happens at the same time. I think organizations have to help women through that hump. But I've had young girls come and say to me that when I look up at you and I hear your story about the fact that you've managed to work for 25 years, have kids who are 20 years old, without any family support system, no one living with you, and making transitions—hard transitions from company to company—it makes me feel like I can do it too. So I think it's very important to have representation, to have this... from the Gita, which Krishna told to Arjun, saying you can say this to yourself in good times and you can say this to yourself in bad times: 'This too shall pass.' This is not permanent, it doesn't stay like this.

So that's interesting that you say that. I am a serious believer in building networks, and for me the network is not professional or personal—it's people. So I don't think I can call... and that helps me make connections. I believe that that's not something that women do enough, and they think of networking as a bad word, something that they shouldn't do in their life. And I feel like it's diffidence that keeps them away from it. I think you just have to get to know people. Number one, when you get to know people, your personal network of course expands. But there's always this concentric circles thing in life: there's you and there's your family, and my family was a little far away—our parents were still working—so it's not like I had a support system around that. But I mean, they were there when I needed them. But I developed an ecosystem of friends, and I have a really solid ecosystem of friends. Interestingly, all the women in the building or that network and things like that, but these are people that I lean on for both professional and personal support, emotional support. So when you go through a tough time at work, these are the people you call saying, 'I'm having this challenge,' and they'll tell you, 'I've been through it, don't worry,' or 'It's all right, it'll pass.' Or give you an actual thing that you know, 'This is not going to pass, you should quit.' One thing, Aura, you and I have talked about this often: this idea that this podcast we want—it's not just women talking to women, but it should be of relevance to men as well. And we think that changing mindset is not just about women doing a better job of mentoring other women, but men have a role to play as well in this, because it's important to the...

Actually, I would say that that's the one thing that you must do as an organization: get the men to think of this program as for them. Because usually it's 'we mentor the women, we put them in a room, we tell them this is what you should do.' I don't think we're doing enough training or enough conversation with the men, because for them, society is changing. This is not what they saw when they were growing up. Most of them didn't see it. We got lucky—we had a really ambitious, driven, and successful professionally successful parent, but mother—but that's not true for most people's experience. So what do you do? You have to train, you have to sensitize. And I genuinely believe that as more women are coming into the... generations to accelerate that change, I think you have to do sensitization. Very interesting. We have a program called 'Each,' it's an allyship program, and that is changing the way we start to think about it and the role that our peers, our leaders, and organization thinking around the role of men champions, etc. It's a slow change, there is a lot to do, but I think the conversation journey has begun.

No, actually, I mean, like I said, I have a personal network, but I have some really good mentors from my life in the last 20, 25 years whom I've collected, and almost all are men because it was hard to look up—there were no other women to access who were very senior. I would say number one, you have to be interested in or have a stake in that person's life and career. You have to be truly interested in what that person is doing. It's not easy... we need to form chemistry, that's my belief. And then yes, we can see whether I can be a mentor. But if you want advice, okay, I can give you half an hour. If that's what you need, that advice is not necessarily mentoring, because mentoring I think is second thing I would say: it's long-term. Usually it's not something you can just—it's not a therapy session, it's not just one time. It's a continuous investment and understanding of what you go through, and it's not always professional advice. Although I think there's this thing about coaching versus mentoring which I always get confused between, because sometimes you do one and sometimes you do the other. But you don't always give very directed answers... but have the ability to listen and understand. But an important part is that personal intimacy. My belief is you need to have it, because otherwise you're dealing with the problem at a very superficial level. You don't understand the emotional underpinnings of class. 'You should improve your technical skills'—I think that's just advice, and it doesn't come from a place that this person is actually feeling undervalued in an environment where they've invested a lot of time. So telling them to upskill doesn't help over time. Mentoring relationships make you feel good about adding value. See, I think that... you've seen grow in front of you, and I think that is huge joy, it is pride, and that feels like an achievement. It gives me so much joy.

The environment is probably getting us ready to be ready for anything. So one thing I would say is that for some of us who've been around the sun a few times, we need to be ready for really fast change. And it's not easy. We tend to lean back on things that we've done before, we talk about things that have worked for us before. What has got us here is definitely not going to work, and I think that realization is really important. What careers and how they will mold themselves will change, the value that we will bring to the room will change. So I think it puts a lot... you add because you can think creatively, because you can innovate on ideas, which is still something that is not in the purview of the technological world. And using these tools and training yourself to use these tools to become efficient is really important. So in the world where we keep saying 'oh, women don't use tech so much,' etc., I think in the context of the conversation they're having today, it's really important to make young girls familiar and comfortable with the use of technology for skilling themselves, so that they will not again be in the same situation of how they say that most management school entrance exams are rigged because they're testing a kind of ability which... taking a backseat saying 'oh, I don't understand this, so someone else will do it and I will figure it out when it becomes mainstream.' I think we have to lean in, and we have to make young girls lean in to technologies, saying, 'In fact, not many people understand it too, right? It's getting developed, so learn it together.'

I think it's not an either-or. I really believe that it's an and. There are times in your life where the internal drive builds, softens, or it'll be doubtful, or it will feel a little dim. And it happens at times when... the external system is good for it. It could be anyone. For me, my husband plays that role many times. When I'm feeling like I can't do this anymore, it's just too much work, or that guy is so political I can't deal with it, he will often be this equanimous sort of calm river saying, 'You know how to deal with it, it's not such a big problem, this too shall pass, this too shall pass.' This is like saying my words back to me, but yes, you need sometimes the fact that you can't see your own wisdom. So sometimes your internal drive does dry out, and at that time... this example is like, I didn't have too many women to look up to inside the corporate world, but my mother is an amazing role model for us because she did her PhD when I was 13... parenting and early when my kids were very young, there were times that I was like, 'I can't do this, this is just really hard. I'm working 10 hours, 12 hours a day, and then I come back and the kids are clamoring, and I don't have good help, and it's just really hard.' And my mother would genuinely ask me this question: 'Do you think that you can live without one part of this life? You made the choice to have children, you wanted to have them, but do you think you can live without working?' And she wouldn't answer it for me, but she would say that you should explore that. And the answer that came back was, 'Of course not. It's not even half of me if I'm just bringing up my kids.' So sometimes... my mind to say, 'Okay, what can you control today? Let's go step one,' and that really helps too. So coming back to the question you asked, I don't think it's an either-or. Sometimes the ecosystem you don't have, your drive takes you through. If I didn't have help, and you're like, 'No, I need to do this, I need to go through it.' There was a time in one of my jobs I was having a really tough time with my boss, and I was like, 'This is my Everest, I have to climb it.' And despite my ecosystem telling me, 'Are you sure? This is not great for mental health, and you're obviously having a tough time,' but I was like, 'No.' So sometimes it's your internal drive which overcomes it. So I think it's like a yin and yang, and it's great if it's... us are born with that internal fire, as opposed to you have to do something to kindle it. I think we all are born with that, and our environment and everything else allows it to either fan and always remain alive, or sometimes it dies, in which case you need that external stimulus to get you going again.

Thank you.