OYP Episode 10: Pooja Atal Singh
Pooja, Senior Director of People Strategy at Publicis Sapient, talks about making your hunger for growth and learning known in humble and graceful ways.
Interview
Peter Szczerba - Welcome to the Own Your Potential Podcast, where you'll hear stories from leaders across the globe about how they've taken control of their career growth and lessons on how you can too. I'm Peter Szczerba. And this is Episode 10. With Pooja Atal Singh the hunger to learn and grow. Could you tell us a little bit about your career journey?
Pooja Atal Singh - I've been with publicist sapient for over 12 years, and based in the London office, and I lead the UK people strategy and partner with our business and our vision. I started my career with PWC and their HR consulting practice and had the opportunity to work across different industries and clients on varied talent propositions. And I think that really helped me embed the approach. and the value of continuous learning, as each client or problem was like a really new one. And we had to learn and unlearn pretty rapidly. So took that learnings with me. And I've really valued that learning throughout my career. So after PwC, I joined sapient. And I've been here ever since. And I've had the chance to play various roles across teams and regions within people success. I've worked on projects and talent design created new talent practices, lead teams executing operations, and also had the opportunity to lead early some of our post acquisition of some of the integrations we had in India, for three of our agencies have been really fortunate to get exposure and the chance to lead learning and development in India along with driving some global initiatives in engineering. And last year, I moved to the UK and I'm really enjoying learning something new in every experience.
Peter Szczerba - How can we challenge the social perception or stigma around self promotion and self advocacy?
Pooja Atal Singh - To be honest, I had my own reservations on self promotion, and had associated with some really negative traits that I didn't really identify with or feel that I could do. But in my conversation with one of my mentors, early on, I realized that it's about how you frame this in your own mind, and how you can help frame it for others. When you think about self advocacy as reflecting on what you understand about yourself, and speaking up and telling people how you think and feel and what you aspire for. I think it removes that stigma. Because what you are doing is really sharing more about yourself and being open and honest. And of course, you need to be authentic in what you say, and balanced in your thinking and approach. But it's good to recognize that if you have the hunger to learn and grow, how you demonstrate it, the choices you make on challenging yourself, the value you can create should be shared, of course with grace.
Peter Szczerba - How would you describe your unique approach or mindset to career growth? And I guess the follow up question is how is this approach representative of who you are outside of work?
Pooja Atal Singh - For me, career growth has really been about having opportunity to work on new challenges and gaining diverse experiences. Early on, in my consulting days as well, you know, I really enjoyed working for different industry sectors, across you know, diverse talent solutions. So I've really carried that learning with me throughout. And I found that each such opportunity, I've gained perspective and skills that have helped me really thrive and enjoy what I do. In one role, I was an individual contributor, going deeper and building my design and consulting capabilities. Whilst in another role, I was leading the integrations in India, where I jumped into an entirely new space that I didn't really know much about, but collaborated with multiple stakeholders to strategically and really, operationally integrate our brands. So each time, it all really started with actually having that dialogue with my people, manager and leaders around me. And I've been really fortunate to be able to express what I wanted to do, and use that as a way to gather feedback, introspect, be open to you know, what came through, and then also plan for what next. So what that's helped me through is really being open to new situations. And getting out of my comfort zone. This meant meeting new people, partnering with different stakeholders, and immersing myself into different situations and learning from others along the way. It also meant sometimes being willing to let go, because we often get tied to our accomplishments. And that creates a safety net, where we're doing things successfully and you sort of feeling that, you know, you know it all and essentially, you can continue to be successful in that mode. But then we stopped taking risks or trying new things. So what I've tried to really do is, when I'm successful at something, and even things that I've accomplished, can I turn back and see, okay, what can I learn next early and get out of that comfort zone? And even outside of work, my approach really has been to embrace different experiences, to try to expose my children and family to you know, new cultures through our travels and and i think one pivotal point for us was really moving geographies and immersing them into new experiences in schools and cultures. So that's how I really try and represent, you know, that mindset outside of work as well.
Peter Szczerba - How do you want people to remember you?
Pooja Atal Singh - It's a really great question and a tough one. I sometimes reflect on it when I think about my purpose. And what it's made me realize is that what drives me is being able to solve problems and creating impact while enabling others around me. I would love people to remember me as a leader who played a role in nurturing their careers and gave them opportunities like the ones I've had, I believe everyone has a voice that should be heard. And I try and connect with people to understand their perspectives, and see how I can really make a difference by providing opportunities for them to grow and learn. So I'd love to be remembered like that.