Being Ourselves, Making a Difference.

Before moving to the UK, I used to do Taekwondo and was a Champion in India. In Taekwondo we have the 5 tenets which are courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control and indomitable spirit and I like to follow these rules in life and work (not just in my sport).

Perseverance

Within Accenture there are so many different leadership programmes and I recently was part of one of these which was called ‘Greenhouse’. This particular programme runs every year and it enables different people from Technology and Operations to come together as a team and work on a project with mentoring from MDs and leadership. It’s aim is to learn leadership skills and design thinking and then look at how you would apply that in your day-to-day working life. It’s a 5-month extensive programme where we start from the inception of the idea and develop that through prototyping, then we pitch the idea we have developed to a leadership team. I think out of all the incredible learning opportunities I’ve experienced here, it was this one that has helped me to be a better leader and understand how important it is to have that outward view by considering every aspect of your team, rather than just looking at yourself.

If I could give one piece of advice, it would be to keep challenging yourself. If you are in your comfort zone and not looking to move out of that, you won’t be able to progress further in work or life. So, always be uncomfortable and always be out of your comfort zone.

Integrity

The one thing that I always keep in mind for my role is that I must be aware of the changes that are happening within technology. I always keep myself busy with reading about these changes so I can then challenge myself to do the things that I’ve never done before.

When I started here, I was initially on frontend development, but showed an interest in moving to the architecture/core engineering side of things where I would be responsible for the whole project. And, the company along with leadership really helped me in making that move and transitioning to that area of work.

I’m now an Advanced App Engineering Associate Manager, working with technical architects and solution architects to design the architecture for Cloud platforms. As well as that, I also help the junior developers and the senior developers to write the custom code and carry out the programming. On my current project I’m working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) but have also worked with Microsoft Azure and the Google Cloud platform.

Self-control

I think the career support you get here is one of the best things. Combined with the mentoring from senior colleagues, my Career Counsellor has really helped me to understand the options and assisted in shaping my career by putting me in touch with experts within Accenture, providing details on networking events and showing me different ways of interacting with people to ensure I was asking the right questions. I like that there’s this real emphasis on learning and ensuring that you have the training that you need - whether it’s classroom or online training, there are so many materials available to you and in fact I would say the learning tools Accenture provides to help all employees are outstanding. It’s this combination of things that’s been so helpful for me in taking control of my career progression.

Courtesy

The other great thing about working here is the people that I work with. I really love working with them and that’s the case for every project that I have worked on. The environment makes you feel comfortable and very much ‘at home’ like part of a big family. I think that comes across with your project teams but also carried through extra-curricular activities.

I’m involved in the Badminton Club here and it’s great to connect with like-minded colleagues who I don’t work with day-to-day. I’m also one of our LGBT allies and enjoy providing any support needed that comes with that role. I’ve learnt a lot as an ally too, in particular making sure that nobody should feel uncomfortable because of who they or what they believe in. It’s about understanding that people are not different but unique in their own way.

Indomitable Spirit

Away from the office, I volunteer for a kid’s Code Club during the weekends at our local library and teach them basic programming. I get so much benefit from learning in my own work that I think it’s good to share some of that with others and, the Code Club is a fun way to do this and it gives me a lot of satisfaction knowing I can contribute to help the next generation.

I’m glad to say that after a bit of break I have recently started retraining myself for Taekwondo. It’s great to be back using the 5 tenets in my sport again too!

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