IBA Karachi was honored to have Ms. Shahla Aly, Vice President, gTech Ads Products and Tools Operations at Google, conduct her first of a series of female-focused mentorship sessions under the banner of “Discover the paths to success”. The multi-part series aims to mentor select female alumni based in the USA and Canadian markets to help them grow in their professional careers recognizing the challenges that women face being people of color (PoC), Muslim or new immigrants to a new land where their experiences and education may be challenged.
The session was crafted by Ms. Shahla Aly, who possesses over three decades of experience working for companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Google, around her experiences navigating the complex paths to leadership from her humble beginnings after she arrived fresh in Canada some 30-odd years ago. She joined the session from California with panelists representing different cities of USA and Canada.
Shahla began the session with a brief introduction of her story and career choices and then opened the floor to the participants’ questions. To ensure the session was engaging for the attendees, participants had submitted their questions beforehand and Shahla worked through some interesting cases with them to work out how they could rise up to meet their challenges. Topics ranged from the most difficult aspect of rising to the C-Suite as a woman of color to more personal challenges in balancing work-home expectations. Shahla was able to connect with the audience by sharing personal anecdotes and opening up about her life to them ensuring a credible 2-way communication to take place. Some key takeaways included the importance of having mentors and sponsors in your professional career as Shahla identified Mentors as those individuals who provide you with advice while Sponsors take an active role in opening doors for you using their own credibility and oftentimes celebrate your success even more greatly than you. Other topics of conversation included the role of a support structure, outsourcing tasks, and also the strength of having a strong skillset to ensure you grow in what you are good at.
IBA Alumni Affairs aims to continue such mentorship, coaching and counselling sessions conducted by a wide panel of experienced professionals to ensure that our alumni can benefit from cumulative experiences of our graduates who are the trail blazers of their respective industries.
