Season 2 | Episode 6

Dream Catching

Roopa Purushothaman

In this episode with Tata Group's Chief Economist and Head of Policy Advocacy, Roopa Purushothaman, we realise that to dream, doesn't make your ambitions unrealistic, rather, it's your imagination and drive to visualise one's mission that makes one's achievements that much more realistic.
From a plum Wall Street job to building an academy for talented young girls, Roopa explains that we must not limit ourselves to what are the conventional achievements of one's career, but to dream of what you want and strive to seek it out wherever one is.

Episode Transcript
  • INTRO (Poornima Pandey)

    Roopa's early life reads very much like the American dream, an all star education, strong accolades and (00:00:10) (00:00:10)
    scholarships, much acclaim, a gilded career of bricks research that sparked global imagination, a plum Wall Street job, and what does she do next? She dreams a dream of setting up an academy for talented girls who could become among India's brightest women, of living and working in a country that is now home India. And against all the economics she learned and the advice she might have received. She chucks it all up and moves continents to set up this school called Avasara. She also goes on to bring her research flair to our Tata Group, an organization that is intrinsically linked to the fabric of the nation. She also co-authors a book called Digital Nation that looks at some of the most crucial opportunities and problems facing India. But with a positive spin. If we peel off the layers beneath that we find an optimist, which may seem odd for someone whose entire training and work has been in research data and trends, basically anti dream kind of stuff. I'm your host, Poornima Pandey. And on this episode of leadercraft, we seek to understand how Roopa Purushothaman the chief economist and head of policy advocacy for the Tata Group straddles these inherent contradictions of her life and work and stays a dream catcher.

  • Poornima Pandey

    (00:01:46)
    Welcome, Roopa, thanks for making it.

  • Roopa Purushothaman

    (00:01:49)
    Thank you for having me.

  • Poornima Pandey

    (00:01:51)
    Nothing from your early life and career could have prepared you for the dream you suddenly embarked upon. In fact, you said your entire family was taken by surprised by your sudden declaration of upping and then setting up a school in India. How did that happen?

  • Roopa Purushothaman

    (00:02:07)
    So, in one way, they were surprised, I think more than anything by the timing of it. But in hindsight, I think everyone has always known from when I was a teenager of this dream, I've had to start a school in India. So if you asked anyone in my family now they would say, oh, of course, I knew that Roopa would do this. But at the time, and let me just rewind. So this was in 2005. I had just moved back. I was working in London for five years and moved back to New York and I was basically settling down. I had bought my first starter apartment and got engaged. I was recently promoted at work. And so it really looked like I was settling in but you know, after a year, I sort of announced to everyone in my family both in the US as well as in India, that I had this kind of wacky idea to throw everything up in the air and leave my job and do with a group that wanted to start up a company from scratch in India. And so I think everyone was definitely caught by the timing of it because it really looked like I was going in one direction, but I chose to go in another.

  • Poornima Pandey

    (00:03:22)
    In hindsight since you did eventually make this you know, dream a reality. What do you think it takes to make any dream a reality?

  • Roopa Purushothaman

    (00:03:30)
    Oh, that's such a big question. Poornima, I don't even know where to start. If I were to think back about lessons that I've learned that I didn't know when I was starting in 2006 with this big idea to start a school from scratch. I would say that one of the biggest things it took was time. You know, everyone sees that we built a campus you know, we have 400 students. We have outcomes now, right, but that's kind of like the tip of the iceberg. Before that, before we started with our first class in 2015, there were 10 years, where this was just a dream and a set of slides of a business plan on PowerPoint, that literally anyone who came in contact with me had to bear through. I started talking to other entrepreneurs, not necessarily in the nonprofit space, but you know, startups in general. And people who have established businesses, and I feel like, I mean, maybe this was through my lens, but it almost felt like everyone who had gotten to a point where they had a successful business, it took around 10 years. So I'm not saying that's the case for everyone, but it's 10 years seem to be like this magical period that everyone says, you know, we don't talk about this a lot, but it really did take long amount of time where you have nothing and then all of a sudden you have something. So I would say that's one thing. I think the second big lesson that I learned was that more than anything, you need trust. And again, trust is an overused word. But I came in, you know, I had the idea for a school. And then I got to work, you know, building a business plan, doing the research, finding the gaps in the market, understanding how we would do something different, and presented it all, you know, in the way that I thought, sort of buttoned up all the questions anyone would have. And it took such a long time, because even if you have a perfect analysis of the gap in the market, even if you have a perfect business plan, you can find a way to meet people and to pitch your idea. But for me as a researcher, you know, I thought the idea would compel people, but if I look at my set of, you know, my founders circle for the school now when I think about the parents and the kids who have faith in us to start the school, it wasn't so much the idea that I was pitching to really focus on gender. And to think about building role models. It really was that time after time after time, of going and talking through this idea, you know, many of the people that signed up to this, gender might not have been the first thing on their agendas. But I think the conviction that they saw that something could come to light, and maybe for them, it was the way that we teach differently. Maybe for others it was, you know, being part of a larger ecosystem. It wasn't the idea that I was pushing necessarily, but once they started to trust not just me but the team behind it. Then all of a sudden things took off. I think the last big thing that I learned this whole thing of this dream, which a dream sounds like it's all rosy but it was almost like a, you know, I was compelled to do this from a very young age. But I think when I was really starting to execute it on the ground, I feel like I needed to learn that hope is a skill. You know, it's not something that you get from outside, it's not something that you see inspiration from from other people. And it's not even something like that we usually talk about it as an emotion that comes from within, I think it is a really hard skill that you have to work to build. When you hear no, when you get laughed at, when the door gets closed in your face. And you know, for the good things, too, when someone who doesn't believe in your idea, all of a sudden becomes a huge supporter. And I have, you know, some of our fiercest supporters today were people who at the beginning were some of our biggest opponents. And so I think that really trying to hone that skill, then you wake up the next day, and you're still going to find another way or you're still going to pursue this. This big idea, and not settled, is something that we teach to our students enough today, that hope is something you've got to work out. There are a lot of small skills, from perseverance, to building the support team around you, who will help, you know, when you feel like you have lost hope, or what does it mean, to act when you feel like you're on the brink? I think all of these things are part of this big idea that, you know, I think we don't do service to hope because we just kind of talk about it with a fuzzy idea. But I believe it's a hard skill.

  • Poornima Pandey

    (00:08:29)
    I don't think I've ever heard anybody speak about the fact that hope is a hard skill. This is such as refreshing and actually a very interesting thought by itself. It's a wonderful example. And do you think that over a period of time, you know, this is a skill that you've seen, the girls acquire in school? Is it something that can actually be maybe made a little bit more systematic and taught even?

  • Roopa Purushothaman

    (00:08:54)
    It's definitely something that can be taught. I mean, I think hope is one of our you know, you can call it optimism, dreaming big. It's one of our values and the values were sort of, we took very seriously and spent a long time coming up with them. But the values that we have from integrity, fortitude, excellence, optimism, all of these things our students talk about from the first day until the last day that they are with us and beyond. And so I think it's part of all of these skills and even, you know, what we loosely call 21st century skills like collaboration, creativity, I think we do a disservice because we think that they're soft skills. But you know, in our school, and after I take collaboration, there's like, you know, 42 sub skills that go under that, that you can build a scaffold from the time that you are, you know, a child through adolescence and beyond. And, you know, I think we have to think about them. One, we have to recognize them for what they are and then two, understand that they are very difficult things to teach, but they are very teachable. And for me, the biggest thing that I see is that, you know, for many of our students when they come to Avasara, or they don't have a lot of self belief and self agency, and so a big part of Avasara is about teaching leadership, we have a curriculum that we call LEI, which stands for leadership entrepreneurship in Indian Studies. And, you know, for us, the whole point of the leadership curriculum is not necessarily to become a CEO, or, you know, a leading politician, it's about leadership over your own life, right and agency over the choices that you may have to have to make. And I can tell you many stories, but one is that when, you know, when we ask students when just before they're about to start about what they want to do with their lives, you know, many will not know how to answer that question. Or if they do answer the question, they'll say, I am interested in music and dance because that's what's an acceptable answer. And what I see and they happen so quickly Poornima, it happens within three months, and then you see it building six months, 12 months and beyond. But you start having students when they're able to pursue inquiry, right? And they're able to think about what they're interested in and be taken seriously for that. They start coming to you saying, you know, I've had students come to me saying, I'm interested in how the brain works. I'm interested in botany. Is this something that I could really study further? And so I mean, that's a clear and it's such a quick example of how, you know, when hope starts to be developed, when you think about optimism, and we start thinking about dreaming big, and you give yourself permission to do that. Then you start making plans.

  • Poornima Pandey

    (00:11:48)
    You actually work very interestingly with people across you know, various different generations. You spoke about the younger girls at school, but you also work with a lot of generations at the Tata workplace. And just if you were to, you know, step back for a second and say, you know, are there some common strains of leadership in general, or just, you know, of progress that you think will last us through this current crisis and beyond.

  • Roopa Purushothaman

    (00:12:15)
    I mean you're right, I do see quite a span, i think in where I sit. It's not just generations, it's also I think, you know, interacting with, and specifically for the case of this period right now and the pandemic, you know, being able to see how the scientific community is moving towards collaboration, and so on. So, you know, I think it's generations as well as different disciplines that are showing leadership. When I see true leadership, it is one about the ideas themselves. So it can be from our students all the way up to like you said the Tata leadership. It's when people take unconventional ideas and put them together and when they're able to do that and communicate that, then I think we start to see others coming to support them in their ideas. It can be anything from, you know, our students who have found a new way to create face shields all the way to looking at, you know, these conversations we're having at a global level to come up with solutions for protecting and opening up economic activities in the face of COVID. But the real leadership comes from the people that can say, look, you know, you two need to collaborate and bring this together, because the answer we need to solve is the lowest cost, you know, might not be the most elegant solution, but we need to solve for cost right now or we need to solve for time right now. So this idea of bringing together the unconventional ideas is important. And I think the other strand of leadership is really looking beyond the traditional silos that we have, you know, true collaboration, especially what I'm seeing in this crisis isn't what you would expect to see on paper. It's not the institutions that you think would be driving collaboration. I mean, you even see collaboration between what you would think would be, you know, hard competitors. And it really just comes down to individuals who are talking the same language. And it might be that they're talking the same language on engineering or math, you know, on product development. But I think, again, for me, that's an optimistic thing, because I think you can work beyond you know, what's written on paper and really find the creative collaborations that will solve these difficult challenges that we're facing in very different ways.

  • Poornima Pandey

    (00:14:36)
    So, you know, when we were deciding what could be one of the slices that we could pick on this, you know, this episode, you know, I walked up to you and said that, you know, if this was not called dream catching, and that was not the title of this episode, it would have been straight speaking, because that's something that I've come to expect from you, but I was just wondering, you know, that in the balance does straight speaking, you know, ever come in the way of chasing dreams? Because, you know, are there sometimes some funny moments or stories where you deployed straight speaking? And that's actually seemed like a bit of a road break to a dream that you've chased? Or has it been an advantage?

  • Roopa Purushothaman

    (00:15:17)
    Yeah I can only say I think that my what you call straight speaking I think that's the only thing that has allowed me to pursue my dreams. And like I said before, I don't think that I'm someone that like a firebrand that's screaming from the rooftops, but I do think that I just diligently work towards what's my goal, not what's someone else's goal. And I'll do it based on facts and that I think that equation has worked, or that formula has worked well for me throughout my life so far. But you know, I can give plenty of examples are not necessarily funny, but I think there's many examples along the way of how the fact that I've been very open about what I wanted to pursue has opened the door for me to be able to pursue it. The first is when I was in university, and I was graduating from university and we were all looking for what we were going to do afterwards. And, you know, I was very set on wanting to come to India, get a Fulbright do research on women savings, and it was 2000 such a different time to what we're experiencing today. But 2000 was this heady time and everybody was recruiting on college campuses. And, you know, at the same time I was interviewing at Goldman Sachs, it was the only place that I was interviewing, and I really, you know, I thought of it as a backup but I was really focused on wanting to do research, and I was on my like, 47 interview that Goldman is famous for in college. I was flown out to London for another last round of interviews for a weekend, and I finally met with the head of the economics department at the time. And, you know, he asked me a lot of questions. I was very clear in that interview that I said, you know, I'm only going to work at Goldman for a couple of years, I'm really interested in developmental economics. So I'm just going to use this as a stepping stone and then move on to what I really want to do. I don't know what I was thinking but after I got the job, the person who hired me told me that the head of the department said, You know, I don't know if she knows a thing about economics, but she's very confident about what she wants to do in her life. So hire her. So that's how that worked out. And even you know, even in terms of the work on the bricks, I signaled to everybody when I was there, that when I was really interested in was any work that had to do with you know, development economics, emerging markets, and so on. And so, after September 11, the leadership had a change of heart in terms of the kind of research that needed to be done and they wanted to look much more closely at the developing world and I was the first person that got the call to be able to work on this research that, you know, banks traditionally didn't really give any time to, which was long term and focused on developing markets and demographics. And I jumped on it. And even when I moved to India with a group that was starting the business, I was very clear with them that I'm happy to do this research. I'm happy to, you know, fundraise and talk about the India story. But I want to spend half of my time on this project on something related to development in India. And so I think just being clear about those things without, you know, again, I never pushed it down everyone's throats. But I was very firm about what I wanted to do, opened up a ton of doors for me.

  • Poornima Pandey

    (00:18:38)
    And I have just one, you know, one final question, before we let you go, which is have you got a sense that as you gotten a little older, the size of your dreams have increased or decreased?

  • Roopa Purushothaman

    (00:18:50)
    See, it's hard for me because I'm not a person that's really driven by scale. And that's a tough thing to say because anything in India, right when you're looking at it, you always think about scale. But for me, I've always wanted to build Avasara, right now my dream is to make it better. And so for me, the excellence part of the equation matters much more than making it bigger. But, you know, you find when you get older, you have new dreams. And so a part of it has to do with the fact that I straddle all these different worlds, right? And I founded and run a school, I work at the Tatas and you know, you get exposed to so many amazing initiatives that are happening and that you want to be a partner. I'm a mom. So, you know, there's a ton of ideas and dreams that you have for your family. So I can't say that is both and it's sort of a living, breathing thing, right? That there's so much that you want to do and sometimes you just want to be small. And sometimes you want to take care of what you have and make it better. And then there are times when, you know you get excited about stuff and you want to pursue it and all I can say is that to me, none of this is... it's not a linear sort of thing like my life has been, I guess, because I'm cleaning a lot more around the house and I see so many spider webs. But my parable is a spider web and I just feel like I spin these different threads. And somehow they connect and they've made a life for me. And I think there might be other dreams that come out. But it's almost like I pursue all opportunities until I think that, you know, I make a decision that I think, you know, this thing will happen or something will take place. So I always have a lot of dreams, sort of going and being tested out. What's eventually going to happen I'm not sure but I feel like no matter what, protecting Avasara, my research work, my family, those three are always going to be the core of my identity.

  • Poornima Pandey

    (00:20:45)
    What a wonderful answer actually, in fact, I'm going to carry out the spider better because I know many people who have...

  • Roopa Purushothaman

    (00:20:53)
    I've seen so many cobwebs over the last few months...

  • Poornima Pandey

    (00:20:58)
    Absolutely

  • OUTRO (Poornima Pandey):

    (00:17:50)
    In these times, when it's tough to stay positive, Roopa's belief about hope is something to hold on to. If hope is a skill, we can all learn it or attempt to learn it as we make our way through the world. Her work, as a researcher, as a policy advocate and as a founder of a school, is all proof of this fact. For more such conversations, join me Poornima Pandey on the next episode of LeaderCraft.

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