It was such an honour to be on my dream stage in just 5 years of graduation from the MHRM program (May 2013) at Rutgers SMLR. I did the Opening Keynote on Talent Value Management at the coveted SHRM 14th Annual Business Conference at Rutgers, New Jersey on March 22, 2018.
The conference was almost cancelled due to snow storm and I had travelled all the way from India primarily for my presentation. There were emails drafted to be sent out to all the attendees and I was so heart-broken. It was quite a Bollywood moment for me when in the evening they confirmed that the conference is ON, I was like thank you so much God, thank you to all the organizers, literally the angels
Honestly, as a Master’s Student at Rutgers, I always thought that it may take me at least 25-30 years of experience to be on this stage. As you may imagine, it was quite a mix of emotions when the leaders and Professors I look up to were among the audience during my keynote.
I was thrilled to receive compliments from Laura Famularo, and I was literally counting the number of times she called my name during her presentation (6 times), I just couldn’t believe it. During my tenure at Johnson & Johnson, Laura was on the Global HR Leadership Team, I never had the opportunity to meet her then, but I always loved her style & presentations during townhalls and used to watch her on my laptop screen. So, it was super awesome when I received a hug and compliments from her post my keynote.
Shannon Hobbs, the Head of Human Resources for Commercial Banking and Global Service Centres at JP Morgan Chase is an excellent public speaker and she not only called out my name 3 times during her presentation but also when I met her, she said she became a fan of my presentation skills, imagine my state, I was on Cloud 9
Numerous peers and my juniors at Rutgers said I inspired them. I realized how I always underestimate my potential. My message from this experience is yes dreams do come true and much earlier than we imagine so keep dreaming, follow your heart, believe in yourself, be authentic
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P.S.: This was my first post ever that crossed 67000+ hits/views, about 500 likes and 50+ comments, I was overwhelmed by the response and the worldwide appreciation
