Kaithal girl Pooja Sund in Microsoft aims to empower women

Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 17

Having risen to the post of Director, Engineering and Finance at Microsoft’s Core Finance Engineering group in the US, from a small town called Kaithal, this Haryanvi girl is empowering people, especially women, around the globe. Pooja Sund, an alumnus of Tilak Raj Chadha Institute of Management and Technology (TIMT), Yamunanagar, working with Microsoft (US) is currently responsible for providing organisational leadership across the broad technical and non-technical areas, including databases, data pipelines, telemetry, governance, security, and warehouses at Microsoft.

Family, societal norms become barriers

Sometimes family and societal norms become the barrier for us. Gender biases, lack of networking opportunities, mentorship and sponsorship hit us hard when we want to grow in our career and that is why I am strongly proposing to have a circle of strong mentors and sponsors and learn the art of negotiation. Pooja Sund

Coming from a humble background, she feels that there is a majority of women population who do not get a chance to study. Also, those who have this privilege are told to be a doctor or an engineer and not to be the person of their dreams or to be the CEO of their own career.

“Sometimes family and societal norms become the barrier for us. Gender biases, lack of networking opportunities, mentorship, and sponsorship hit us hard when we want to grow in our career and that is why I am strongly proposing to have a circle of strong mentors and sponsors and learn the art of negotiation, precise questioning, strategic thinking and above all learn the art of when to say “No”,” said Pooja Sund.

“Our key priority is to create meaningful connection opportunities for our community to build and leverage networks, inspire learning, and amplify impact by empowering women. In addition, I am leading a mentoring series for 20 plus persons at the mid to senior level in the company and coaching them on various aspects of professional success,” she added further.

Within Microsoft, she is co-leading the learning and development pillar of women at Microsoft employee resource group comprising 24,000 women globally. “Through this pillar, we are conducting monthly series and inviting leaders to come and share with our global women workforce their success stories, their stories of rejections, belonging, career growth, and how to navigate through challenges to get here where they are,”said Pooja Sund.

In addition, she is moderating events around career branding, storytelling, how to ask for promotions, how to establish themselves in the technology field, the art of negotiation with one big goal to enhance their career growth and to set them up for success in their professional and personal life. As a LinkedIn influencer (with Rs25,000 followers) and as a woman in technology, she keeps on organising the “Tech careers: Mentoring & AMA (Ask me anything)” type of events and collaborating with industry leaders and influencing women from all parts of the world. Especially for India, she has delivered many talks in the past 2 years.

For her initiatives, she has won many awards like the Human relations and leadership award for coaching an elite group of finance professionals. For empowering women at Microsoft through community and learning pillar, she has been selected as a leader multiple times in the past 5 years to represent Microsoft at a global conference “Grace Hopper Conference” attended by 30,000 women professionals from across the globe.

Selected leader multiple times

Pooja Sund has been selected as a leader multiple times in the past 5 years to represent Microsoft at a global conference “Grace Hopper Conference” attended by 30,000 women professionals from across the globe.

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