SARIC Rising Tide

rashi tyagi 30 Flooding onsite in 2005 led to two months of around-the-clock work to bring the plant back online. There were tough lessons learned along the way, and the realisation that adversity brings both creative solutions and builds and cements teams. Based in Shimla today, Rashi handles project conceptualisation and planning, tendering, award and then execution with SJVN’s engineering department. Approached about the SAR100 program and being selected to attend, she admits she was initially ambivalent, despite knowing just how much knowledge the program offered. “As a middle manager and the mother of teenage children, this was always going to be hard. But I’ve made it work while keeping the focus on what’s important to me: a balanced mind and body.” she adds. “I’ve made friends from different countries and that is something I realise we have been missing here. We really have not had a network that has set us up to collaborate with one another to the extent that we do, and that’s exciting.” Rashi is thoughtful about mentorship in STEM for women and gaining maximum value from that approach. While she’s seen a rise in the number of female engineers to about 10%, she observes it is harder to get women to take field rather than desk jobs. “That’s such a pity,” says Rashi, as she warms up to the subject. I’d like to change the conversation around STEM and do it at the very beginning, with parents, and then teachers. When you notice an intelligent girl, she should be given the same educational opportunities that the brother might have, for example. Challenge her mind, and challenge conventional thinking. Normalise it. Let’s not distinguish opportunities by gender. When we do, we’ve lost the opportunity to bring more women into STEM. Almost everybody thinks we need to have these career conversations when young women are about to graduate college. I believe the process starts much earlier.” Indeed, it could be as early as the young girl who once followed her adored father everywhere, mimicking his every move and learning from the best. “I lost my father during SAR100 and I know and trust that despite my guilt, I have made him proud. I have made him very proud.” 31 Rashi takes the stage at the SAR100 program engineering , as poetry SAR100 has helped me both expand my knowledge of systems and realise how I could use my experience to create an even more inclusive workplace for women.