I was convinced I was a left-brained person until I started gaining notice of my visual, creative, and intuitive side too
At the age of 8, I discovered my love for writing, and it has been a passion that I have pursued throughout my life. From writing poems and opinion pieces for university magazines to authoring market intelligence and consulting/data reports for Gartner and Mordor Intelligence, my writing skills have always gained notice and has been a valuable asset in my career.
In my late teens, I realized that I also had a knack for Mathematics and Statistics, when I was consistently scoring straight A's in all the disciplines most of my peers would dread. Little did I know back then, that this would help me when I would later go on in my job presenting complex data findings to stakeholders, building models from scratch, or cracking otherwise nerve-racking guesstimate interviews.
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis hitting the stock markets, I also got fascinated by the business world in general (and the economic factors that shaped them), and by the functionality of the share market in particular. Imagine a young teenager wondering about all this lol. However, this curiosity led me to pursue a bachelor's in Economics and a master's in Business Economics and Finance as well. When I was studying at the University of Delhi, I gained a deeper understanding of personal finance and later started investing in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, options/futures, and ETFs that would yield me long-term returns. Moreover, I earned a certification that would allow me to be an expert in the field and help my friends build strong diversified portfolios.
With the data bend of mind, I was convinced I was a left-brained person until I started noticing my visual, creative, and intuitive side, when at work, my client presentations were repeatedly appreciated for exceeding expectations on analysis of course, but also on visual appeal and clarity. Of course, I would work on making them as intuitively as possible - even sometimes after my work hours - not to please anyone - but because I identified it as an opportunity to channel my inner creativity. I realized that I was perhaps good at designing when I started winning hundreds of dollars in prizes and gigs for taking out just 30 minutes for designing logos, ads, or website banners for companies. I was always working with data so this is when I started furthering data visualization skills through projects on essential BI dashboarding tools such as Tableau, Excel, and Power BI.
One thing led to another, and with data visualization, the next thing that I learnt to work well with was some technology and coding to learn how to fetch and analyze the data. Of course, a plunge into the world of technology tools and methods ignited another interest - technology, business processes, product, and project management.
After circling back to my constant love for business, one thing that I realized is:
- Change is the only constant
- In only 5 years into my career and so far, I've been lucky to get the opportunity to work within the Finance function, the Marketing function, the HR function, and even the IT & Data Function of companies, which itself is a rare occurrence. Wearing several hats so far has given me a unique perspective.
- In the early stages of career (0-5 years at least), cross-functional understanding of business can help realize a person's strength areas.
- I don't think I will stop learning cross-functionally until I learn all aspects of businesses in-depth, so much so that I feel comfortable even starting a business of my own if I'd want.
Learn, connect, and evolve.
And as Steve Jobs said, "Stay hungry, stay foolish".
#business #passion #finance #writing #mathematics #statistics #dataanalysis #consulting #datavisualization #personalfinance #leftbrain #rightbrain #investing #technology #coding #design
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