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Being woman, the multi-dimensional one

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE, INDIA: 'A woman is a mother, sister, daughter, aunt, niece... but of all she is a woman — a woman of substance with multi-dimensional faculties'.

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Cisco's Fourth Annual Connected Women Leadership Forum (CWLF) resonated the same spirit where it saw close to 400 women professionals from different companies and diverse backgrounds joining together to celebrate that varied aspect.

Themed 'Celebrating Multidimensional Women', with a special emphasis on leadership, career and community, the event was hosted by Cisco Connected Women (CCW) (Cisco's internal Employee Resource Group) at the Cisco Globalisation Centre East here on Thursday.

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The first keynote speaker of the day, Wim Elfrink, executive vice president and chief globalization officer of Cisco, shared his take aways of the past four-and-a-half years at Cisco's Globalaisation Centre.  Wim, one amongst top leaders of this networking giant and who will be relocating to the US next month, went in length talking about what it takes to be a leader, with examples from his days of being the 'Disruptive' officer in the Bangalore office that also gave him the best learning experience of his career.

Vinita Bali, managing director, Britannia Industries Limited, the second to take the stage, gave an insight in to her stint of over seventeen years as a working woman.

For someone who had worked across the world, exactly 'in six countries in five continents' (missing out only Australia), and who is also a passionate Kathak dancer, and a theater personality, Bali personifies the very theme of the event, of being a 'multidimensional woman'.

During her keynote, she talked about her ups and downs all through her career, like when the great economic turbulence, which devalued currency, hit while she was with Cadbury in Nigeria, or the cultural difference she had to cope up during her stint in Chile.

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She beckoned every woman to no longer stay in the periphery, but to be part of the game and change the rules of the same by taking up opportunity as and when they come along, instead of waiting for someone to give a helping hand.

"You should believe in yourself. You got to have the conviction that you are here because you deserve to be. You got to have the conviction to do what it takes, despite all the odds against you," Bali notes.

She also called for the 'Renaissance men', who currently are in a position of power to influence, to play a bigger role through adjustments in life and also added that if they do not take up this responsibility today, it will be harder for women, irrespective of how ready they are to play their part in a corporate world.

Bali observed that it takes years of practice for a leader to excel in what they do today. Thus to all those women who have the passion to lead, she asked to nurture qualities of discipline, application, tenacity, adaptability, curiosity and eagerness to learn, and an application and adoption mentality.

On a lighter note: Behind every successful man is a woman and behind every successful woman, there are mother, mother-in-law and 'maid'....! And on the forefront of them all there is a man, as we have seen, when the first keynote at this event on women was by a man!

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