[ad_1]
She didn’t always get what she wanted, but her perseverance and desire to learn have paid off. Lina Nair wanted to become a genetic scientist. She had graduated in botany. But it was the hospitality industry where she got her first job. She then switched to the banking sector, and 17 years later, took another leap of faith to land a tech role at the age of 47.
Lina is today senior vice president, and leads the office of the head of technology at Wells Fargo India & Philippines. She says the secret sauce is ‘learning to be a learner’.
Born into a matrilineal Nair community, she grew up in Karnataka and studied in Kendriya Vidyalayas. Marriage followed graduation and Lina moved to a remote town in Kerala with her then husband. “Though I had planned to study further, opportunities were few. In the interim, I took on a job in the hospitality industry where my husband worked,” says Lina.
But life hit a rough patch. “I became a single mom with some big decisions in front of me. Hospitality is fun, but doesn’t pay a lot and the hours can be brutal,” she says. In 2002, a colleague’s fiance referred her to an operations role at HSBC. She started as an assistant manager and spent the next nine-and-ahalf years in various roles in fraud detection & prevention, scaling to the rank of assistant vice president. Meanwhile, she remarried and now has two of her biggest cheerleaders in her husband and daughter.
In 2012, Lina joined financial services company Wells Fargo. She was the fourth hire in a new team that was to handle mortgage services operations. In five years, she led and grew the team to over 1,000. During this time, Lina also did a post-graduation in HR from XLRI.
In the course of her work, Lina saw how customers were changing the way they interacted with the bank, how manual processes were changing to smarter, automated ways. She recognised this was the future. “My team and I began to work on many proofs-of-concepts that married technology and operations. Many of them became successful. And when a technology role that could use my skills opened up, I made the move,” she says.
Lina’s role requires her to have a good understanding of the business of technology, most of which she learnt on the job. “My initial partnership with technology allowed us to fully automate an invoicing process using robotic process automation. That was a huge learning,” she says.
Lina is today senior vice president, and leads the office of the head of technology at Wells Fargo India & Philippines. She says the secret sauce is ‘learning to be a learner’.
Born into a matrilineal Nair community, she grew up in Karnataka and studied in Kendriya Vidyalayas. Marriage followed graduation and Lina moved to a remote town in Kerala with her then husband. “Though I had planned to study further, opportunities were few. In the interim, I took on a job in the hospitality industry where my husband worked,” says Lina.
But life hit a rough patch. “I became a single mom with some big decisions in front of me. Hospitality is fun, but doesn’t pay a lot and the hours can be brutal,” she says. In 2002, a colleague’s fiance referred her to an operations role at HSBC. She started as an assistant manager and spent the next nine-and-ahalf years in various roles in fraud detection & prevention, scaling to the rank of assistant vice president. Meanwhile, she remarried and now has two of her biggest cheerleaders in her husband and daughter.
In 2012, Lina joined financial services company Wells Fargo. She was the fourth hire in a new team that was to handle mortgage services operations. In five years, she led and grew the team to over 1,000. During this time, Lina also did a post-graduation in HR from XLRI.
In the course of her work, Lina saw how customers were changing the way they interacted with the bank, how manual processes were changing to smarter, automated ways. She recognised this was the future. “My team and I began to work on many proofs-of-concepts that married technology and operations. Many of them became successful. And when a technology role that could use my skills opened up, I made the move,” she says.
Lina’s role requires her to have a good understanding of the business of technology, most of which she learnt on the job. “My initial partnership with technology allowed us to fully automate an invoicing process using robotic process automation. That was a huge learning,” she says.
[ad_2]
Source link
