Joy Chandra: Senior Director, Qualcomm
Joy Chandra, Senior Director of Engineering at Qualcomm, believes in the power of diverse teams and has taken up the role of a Diversity Sponsor for Qualcomm Bangalore.
One day, while walking down the hallway, Joy noticed one of his former team members, an expecting mother in the 6th month of her pregnancy, looking worn out and low on energy. Having worked with her earlier, Joy wanted to understand if there was something he could do to support her. He gently asked her how she was doing. During the conversation, she shared her concerns about how things would work out once she returns from her maternity leave. Joy reassured her and shared his experience of seeing women seamlessly integrate with the work environment post maternity. Her eyes lit up. As they discussed what enables women to work comfortably when they are expecting, Joy asked her if she was using an ergonomic friendly desk at work. Since she wasn’t using one, he directed her to the ergo help-desk and emphasized on the importance of using a footrest. Once she had an ergo friendly workspace at the office, Joy asked her whether she was replicating the same at home. When she mentioned she didn’t have an ergo friendly setup at home, he offered to support her with having a workstation arranged for her. There was no existing process to make this happen and Joy had to request for exceptions. But he made it happen. This enabled her to resume work post maternity.
With encouragement and support, she began to feel that motherhood need not slow her down and that she can continue to tap into her potential and give wings to her dreams just like she would in her life prior to motherhood. When her baby was about 2 months old, she decided to send a paper for an upcoming technical conference. To her delight, her paper got selected. Joy fondly recollects that by this stage, the team was so sensitized, that without him having to nudge them, the organizing team arranged for a dedicated feeding room adjacent to the ballroom where the conference was to be conducted. Her mother had accompanied her to the conference, and with her mother’s support and the dedicated space available to take care of the baby, she had systems in place to take care of her baby. She could focus on the presentation. The same year she got promoted. As Joy reflects back, he shares that it feels good to have been able to support a high potential team member and that it is satisfying to see how lending support when a woman is going through a life event as significant as motherhood, goes a long way in helping her pursue her career wholeheartedly. With determination and the desire to support, sponsors like Joy are paving the way for a future where seeing more women in top roles will no longer be a distant dream.
Being someone who is actively working towards putting processes in place to enable pathways to success for women employees, Joy feels that the next decade will look very different because of the work that is going into building a conducive ecosystem for women to grow and thrive.
