A Proud Vegetable Vendor’s daughter, HR Professional and Compassionate human being - The Her Tribe

Madhu Priya, an Associate Manager and HR professional from Chennai comes from a family with humble background but high aspirations in life. Though her parents were school dropouts and have been working as vegetable vendors to meet their ends, they helped Madhu get the best education.  With their vision and support today, she is successfully working at a corporate making her the first girl in the family to have got into a white collared job. She believes education helps a person face all adversities in life and so is endorses the importance of education, especially for girls.

Here is an excerpt from the candid conversation with her on The-HER-Tribe:

ADVERSITY and GRATITUDE

Madhu believes, the Adversities that she faced while growing up really helped her form an identity and moral character in life. Coming from a different world, there was very little social inclusion.. there are still those class divides that unfortunately exist in the society.  Basically, for vegetable vendors to go into elite society and a school, the acceptance wasn’t there and that was a very hard phase of her life where she never even got opportunity to come in the forefront. With her and parents persistence, she continued with college and higher studies (post-graduation) and things started changing for good.

Talking about GRATITUDE for her parents, she feels, they have done so much for her and what she is today is all because of them and their vision. Gratitude is one thing we should never forget to have for those who help us build and rise. Looking back she feels, “If I did not have such difficulties maybe my life would have been different and I’m just thankful for all the experience of headlines actually just saying makes you stronger”. Family support and love is beyond all luxuries of life, job or career.. So there should never be a compromise on those.

OUTLOOK TOWARDS SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Madhu has always been passionate about social work during college days and has been engaged with old age homes to orphanages. She strongly believes when you educate a girl child, you educate an entire generation. She has been doing fund raising since early age with more focus on women and education. With more support and empowerment, she plans to build a community in a more organized way with her NGO.

CHALLENGES IN LIFE and CAREER FOR WOMEN

Being a girl child makes it even more challenging specially because of the society at large, who cannot see comfortably a girl studying long or making career. Though they have nothing to contribute, but that pressure of getting married is always there. Here is what, family support is very important for a girl because she needs a cushion to fall upon someone to take to the next level and she was lucky to have her parents by her side. Given the right opportunities many girls would come up and rise upto the occasion and gender diversity plays an important role in an organization culture as well..

Though not much but workspace is improving for Women. She says, “these days I think there is no field untouched may it be a Space mission or career options like photography or adventure sports. So now people are challenging the status quo and that shows there is a mindset shift”. We need to encourage such women to come forward as support and opportunity is all they need as a woman to showcase the real potential”.

MESSAGE TO YOUNG WOMEN PROFESSIONALS

Always keep giving in your best and plan for growth, but try not to take a break for family reasons, unless really necessary. To manage the maternity period or after that, may be take smaller role or projects or do free lancing, but be in the race and your workstream. That keeps your confidence going. You can’t afford to lose that sacrificing for kids of spouses’ job. Your own financial freedom is what gives you an identity and confidence to face the world.