Episode 1: Aarti Ranganathan, from Chennai to Dallas‪!‬ Leadership Vibes, a podcast on leadership, diversity and inclusion

Welcome to episode 1 of Leadership Vibes.

I am your host Angela Govila and before we get started I’d love to share a little bit of background about me and give you the “Why” behind this podcast.

I consider myself extremely lucky to have grown up and lived in different parts of the world. I was born, raised and have lived now in 4 countries in 15 cities and I am currently based in Seattle. My day job involves product and program management in Fintech. I’ve worked with Capital One, Ernst & Young and GE. My undergrad in Information Sciences is from Penn State and lately, I’ve been a fanatic about Artificial Intelligence.

I got the idea of starting this podcast while watching some the political satire on Trump. The current political climate in America is divisive and while this podcast is not on politics, the topic of leadership, diversity and inclusion has been on my lately.

It’s also near/dear to my heart cause I have moved around so much and always had to find a way to fit in.

Growing up my friends were an eclectic mix of religions and ethnicities: Indian, Arab, Pakistani, Ethiopian, Jordanian, Moroccan, Malaysian to name a few. Early on, I learned we are all human and made from the same fabric even if we look, talk and act differently. The years of adapting to different cultures has paid dividends throughout my life.

However, I often find in Corporate America, people tend to forget than fact…they tend to forget that we are all human and while we may have different upbringings, background, value systems, we are all alike at the core.

So that’s why we are here doing this show. The format is that on every show we’ll invite a guest speaker to join us and to answer 5 questions.

All guests will be asked the same questions. I’ve deliberately chosen speakers who are from different industries and backgrounds and people I know personally well and can vouch for their insights. Also one rather boring fact about me is that I love hearing different opinions and perspectives to broaden my own thinking, and this is where I am hoping our listeners would find the conversations meaningful too. We’ll shape this forum based on feedback from our listeners, so please do drop us a line. Contact details below, including a survey link, always open to feedback – good, bad, ugly. One last thing, if you like the concept and the show, I am looking for sponsors.

Links:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelagovila
Website: http://angelagovila.com
Feedback survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CZKMPBQ
Guest Interviewed: Aarti Ranganathan
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aartiranganathan/

Guest Bio: Aarti Ranganathan is a Senior Manager with Capital One’s Auto Finance team based in Dallas, leading sales design strategy. Her experience includes working in strategy and analytics in financial services. MBA from University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. In her spare time, she loves spending time with her English Lab named Duke, reading, and travelling the world.

Music by Ben Sound, Straight, under Creative Commons license