I’m Madhumitha Venkataraman, a Diversity and Inclusion Champion, and this is how I Lead from Within
Madhumitha Venkataraman is a Diversity & Inclusion Evangelist with extensive experience in working with multiple diversity groups including gender, disability, LGBTIQA and generational diversity. An HR professional with around 10 years of experience, she has worked in multiple areas of human resources including business partnering, leadership development, talent management, employee engagement in addition to diversity and inclusion. Her dream and vision is to see a more inclusive and compassionate world.. This is her story and how she leads from within…
My Journey
Being born with a disability, the best part of my journey has been the support and encouragement I have received from my parents. All through my personal and professional journey, they have believed in my strengths and instilled in me the confidence that I could achieve anything that I wanted to. I was also blessed to have friends who were open and never excluded me.
My initial years were hard because of the way I was treated at school, but I also found and had a very strong support system, which made the journey easier at school, at home and in my social network. My latter years in schooling were hard, and I faced some level of bullying and discrimination. Those years were tough, with me feeling inferior in several ways. It was the first time that I felt that I was different from everyone else. That I did not fit in. I found myself becoming a lot more introverted as a person and I felt like I was lesser then everyone else. It was the indomitable spirit of my parents which kept me going during this time. They never allowed me to feel that I was lesser, and I am truly grateful for that.
The reason I am delving so deep into my early years is because I feel that in case of children who have a disability or are different in any way, the support of their parents sets the foundation and is the differentiator for how the child eventually grows up to be. In my work, I engage quite often with children who have a disability or a gender dysphoria, and support systems play a key role in all of these cases.
Post these initial years, the struggles lessened and I found my strength in academics. I studied in some of the best colleges in the country and had the opportunity to work in some wonderful organizations as an HR professional. In fact, this year, I complete a decade of my professional journey. The movement from HR to diversity and inclusion happened during my stint with GE, when we did a hiring drive focusing on hiring people with disability. That experience taught me a lot. For the first time, I became aware of the privileges I had in my life, in terms of having good support systems, such as my parents. I remember this one time I met a candidate who could barely walk. There were three people helping him to come and sit down for the interview. While I was interviewing him, it was difficult for me to see him struggle to answer every question. He kept looking at me and saying, “Give me one opportunity.” But I could not hire him as he did not fit the role. Instances like those left a deep mark on me, and prompted me to start working in the space of diversity and inclusion more actively. From then on, I have focused my energies on looking at building diversity and inclusion in my personal and professional capacity. Whether it be studying and getting certified in American sign language, studying gender, sexuality and disability from an organization called CREA and Enfold, or working with multiple organizations like Unfold, GiftAbled, Inharmony, and Interweave on initiatives to build inclusion in spaces of generational, disability, and gender diversity. I also became one of the organizers for PRIDE and put my efforts on making the PRIDE march accessible for persons with disability, for the first time in India in 2017. I am also a part of a collective called Diversity Dialogues, where we publish material on diversity and inclusion, especifically in areas which have not been focused on.
My Superpowers
One is that I work very hard. The second is that I have never done anything in my career that I was not interested in. The moment I discovered I was not interested in Finance, I switched to HR. The moment a lot of people started coming to me with HR business partnering roles, I said no, because in my career the only thing which drives me is diversity and inclusion. I would not want to do anything else because I know I would not be able to do justice to other roles.
The third is I am fundamentally courageous. Whenever there have been any challenges and bottlenecks, I have always called them out. If I am treated incorrectly by anybody because I am a person with disability or even for being a woman, I have always called it out. At the same time, if I need some support as a person with disability, I am not afraid to ask for help.
The last, underlying superpower in all of this is the confidence I have in myself. You have got to believe that you are worth it, and in my experience, this is one of the things that a lot of people from minority groups are missing. Working with other people is also very important as nobody can do it alone. Whether it is diversity and inclusion or any other work that I have done, I have never done it alone.
My Role Models
There is no one role model or one inspiration that I have. I believe you can learn something from everyone you meet. I have learnt a lot from each individual I have worked with, or have had as a part of my life.
On Diversity and Inclusion
One big evolution that I have seen over the last decade has been the magnitude of conversations around this topic. Workplaces would rarely go beyond female gender diversity, but now, I see progress in areas of disability, generational diversity and LGBTIQA+ . The tougher part now is to move from conversations to action and to make this a key fabric in the culture of organizations. The focus has to be to not reverse discriminate and to focus on building allies.
It is not only enough to look at diversity, but to also is look at inclusion as a very important aspect. There’s a lot more focus on diversity, but inclusion is the base and the foundation for it. Building an inclusive culture for all forms of inclusion, whether it is LGBTIQA+, disability, age groups, regions or caste, is important. Once you teach people to be inclusive, everything else will eventually happen, because you would have laid the right foundation. That needs a lot more focus, a lot more conversation, and a lot more push to look at this holistically, with intersectional identities becoming the fulcrum.
I also think that diversity and inclusion needs to be more ingrained in the education system of the country. Schools and colleges need to talk more about it. Bullying is so common in schools, which happens mostly on account of an identity being discriminated against. Children need to be educated, and once those nuances are understood, you are going to carry those values with you no matter where you go.
My Core Values
The first are honesty and integrity. I am very straight forward. I believe in being genuine, being myself. The other is being kind and compassionate towards people. You have to be respectful and kind, irrespective of who people are, because each one of us has a story. The third is to be dedicated and do your work well. It is to give your best to everything that you do.
On Dealing with Fear
It is human to have some amount of fear and I do not think that any of us is completely fearless. I have learned to live with my fears. The key is to logically analyze your fear, get some support, and understand from other people who may have experienced similar fears. Being a person with disability sometimes can be a great advantage because there are so many things you cannot do, and in the process of trying to do them you get to slowly overcome your fears of not being able to do them. Many a time you feel you cannot cross the road, or you cannot take certain steps, but you still say, “I’ll do it, it’s fine.” That kind of attitude helps you build a mindset to deal with your fears starting from a very early age.
Advice to my Younger Self
Follow what you want to do, do not settle for less. If your heart is passionate about something, if there is a space where you want to make a difference, to do something else would be unfair to yourself and unfair to the orgnaization you are going to be working with. It will prevent you from giving your best. The second is to work really hard, and to constantly keep learning.
