Suchi Srinivasan:
I feel that women have been told, oh, you should go attend this training and get better and you should help yourself. But I think the power of doing, of actually sponsoring that action to open a door, to sponsor a woman, to create an opportunity, that is actually how I think we're going to make a difference in this topic of gender diversity in very complicated and tough spaces.
Corin Lines:
This is In Her Ellement, a podcast from BCG. I'm Corin Lines.
Suchi Srinivasan:
And I'm Suchi Srinivasan. Each episode we have meaningful and vulnerable conversations with women leaders in digital, business and technology.
Corin Lines:
I'm so happy to have you on board for season two, Suchi!
Suchi Srinivasan:
Thank you, Corin. It's great to be here.
Corin Lines:
Awesome. Well, this episode is all about you and sharing your amazing journey with our audience. I'm really looking forward to hearing all about it.
Suchi Srinivasan:
Absolutely, Corin. Let's get started.
Corin Lines:
Suchi, can you please introduce yourself to our audience?
Suchi Srinivasan:
My name is Suchi Srinivasan, and I am a managing director and partner at the Boston Consulting Group where I work with both technology clients on strategy, as well as AI and digital topics.
Corin Lines:
Thanks, Suchi. So can you share with us some of your early experiences, sort of your childhood and in your youth that led to your career in technology today?
Suchi Srinivasan:
I was one of those people that kind of grew up a little bit with technology. Huge influence on my life was my dad, who was an engineer by training, worked in technology his whole entire life. So some of my earliest elementary school memories are of those, if you remember punch cards back in the day with the green screen terminals, that's what my dad used to bring home, and I used to sometimes do elementary school addition on that. So that's a little bit of how I started. As I grew up, I grew up in India where you had lots of choices as long as it was sort of engineering on medicines, that kind of environment. So I kind of defaulted to engineering and went into electrical engineering.
To be honest, those early years were not where I felt a calling to the space, but I persevered, largely due to external inspirations. But I would say later on in my career, I really took a liking when I approached the space of technology from a more of a application point of view. What I mean by that is not solving a problem because it was cool, it was tough, but instead, what can this problem do if we can solve it? Whose life can it change? And that, especially over the last 20 years, I think once I kind of uncovered that has really become my driving force in technology.
Corin Lines:
Can you tell us about your love of science fiction and how this has led you to a career in AI and digital?
Suchi Srinivasan:
Oh my God. So I am the hugest geek ever. I took a science fiction course back in my first year of college. And I was the teacher's best student. I've read all the Isaac Asimov, the Ray Bradbury books there ever is. I watched and I can't do that, Hal.
Corin Lines:
I know. Yeah, totally!
Suchi Srinivasan:
I can't do that, Hal. That was the stuff that I used to eat, sleep, breathe, dream. And I have to say, I never in my wildest dreams ever imagined that within my own lifetime we'd be sitting here talking about, for example, that has been in the news talk about these transform models in AI, programs like Midjourney and DALL-E, which are now able to generate art from just a simple phrase. It's leading into all of these ethical questions about, gosh, can you give an artist an award because they happen to generate the phrase that led to the award-winning artwork? Whether it's Neuralink, autonomous driving, none of these was imaginable, and for me feels pulled out of Asimov. So I'm just living my dream life. I read all these books as a kid. And I get to go out and help clients with their projects to bring all of this to life. I mean, who can ask for more?
Corin Lines:
Thanks for sharing that, Suchi. And what was your path to becoming managing director and partner at BCG Platinion?
Suchi Srinivasan:
I wish I could say it was all beautifully architected, and I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up and I just pursued it. But the truth is, journeys make so much more sense in hindsight than they do as you're trying to craft them. So honestly, I wondered all over the place. I started out as a software engineer writing code back in Bell Labs. And I just felt really lonely. That's the honest-to-goodness truth is that I spent my day behind a computer feeling really lonely. So I said, "This can't be it." Then I kind of wandered around and tried to look at technology diligences and deals and business development. That felt like a little bit more fun to me. I felt like I was connecting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to try to bring together something, and I found that that was a quality that I was A, good at. I could see patterns where others couldn't. And B, I enjoyed it.
So then I kind of built on that and worked my way through eventually just a ton of consulting, learning a lot of different problem statements and putting these jigsaw puzzle pieces together. I ended up at Microsoft for quite a few years, which was amazing, amazing experience. It was in the process of reinventing itself from the Windows and Office software maker to being something so much more in this cloud era. And so I had wonderful, wonderful leaders that I learned from. And eventually I kind of got tired, to be honest, of the big organization and yearned for something a bit more entrepreneurial. It wasn't sort of planned in the best way. I started looking and I was very influenced by Friedman's book. I read a couple of his books, The World Isn't Flat and a few others.
And also at that time, after the birth of my first child, had just gotten myself really educated on sustainability and carbon reduction. And so I took, I would say quite a bit of a different path for a while choosing to go start the Cleanweb Hackathon, which was the funnest experience. And that's when I discovered that I love creation. Not only did I love seeing patterns and joining things to make the sum of the parts greater than the whole, but I also loved creating. And that then became something that I pulled into my future experiences. So from that, eventually I landed here at BCG, where what I love the most is the types of problems that we're solving for clients and the incredible sort of entrepreneurial license here at BCG. It's just incredible because it gives me that license to create the right solution for my clients. So that's my journey in hindsight.
Corin Lines:
And in all of that, what were some of the barriers or challenges that you have faced in your career path, especially those related to being a woman, or person of color, a mother, or someone who isn't commonly seen in a C-suite role?
Suchi Srinivasan:
Yeah. And there are other examples too, as you mentioned, as one gets more tenured in the role and gets more senior. For example, I've had situations where it was important to go visit some clients, engage in some travel, which as one always knows, business travel does take one away from one's family. I've had assumptions being made about we didn't think to offer you this role because maybe you can't travel or you wouldn't prefer to travel because we know you have young kids at home. And so that's an example of somebody, whether you can call it unconscious bias or just the kind of thinking that still is, despite very good intentions, because the people at the other end actually think they're doing you a favor and respecting your work/life balance, but you know what? I would rather have had the opportunity and the freedom to make my own judgment about that.
Corin Lines:
Wow. Such an important story. Thanks for sharing that. Can you now share with us, Suchi something that you're excited about today or something that you're really looking forward to that's coming up in the future?
Suchi Srinivasan:
As you know, Corin, BCG as a consulting firm is of course a people centric business. And so one of the things I'm always excited about is this influx of new talent, of young talent with fresh ideas, super enthusiasm, and just this absolute hunger to go out there and do something to have an impact and change the world in their own way. And I have to tell you, this enthusiasm that they bring is so infectious and just adds so much energy. So every team room I go to now, whether it's this project about using AI and technology for new molecule drug discovery, which is sort of one of the most cutting edge applications of AI, to be able to really meaningfully help the human race, I'm just so excited to apprentice this young talent and coach them, and in return I would say just benefit from their questions, which are so brilliant, I have to tell you. This generation, questioning everything, not taking anything for granted and just teaching us new ways to go after these problems with their sort of fresh attitude. I'm very excited to mentor this next generation.
Corin Lines:
Suchi, can you tell us about your work, this is so amazing, with Women in Cloud, and who they are and what you do with them?
Suchi Srinivasan:
Yeah, they're a wonderful organization that's very a grassroots-based. And their goal is to empower women, entrepreneurs, leaders, technologists to get into cloud. Because cloud today has become such a big umbrella movement but still has so many connotations. So what I do for them is I am an advisor in their community, but what I seek to do is to actively sponsor entrepreneurs and technologists in their community. So for example, if there is a woman entrepreneur who would benefit from business development, the ability to open doors, make helpful connections and give them a leg up in their business idea, to give them, of course helpful feedback on their plans, to be a sounding board in a very safe and trusted way for their concepts and ideas or their next steps, all of that is sort of the type of activity that I do.
And I really enjoy this and believe in it, because for far too often I feel that women have been told, oh, you should go attend this training and get better and you should help yourself. But I think the power of doing, of actually sponsoring that action to open a door, to sponsor a woman, to create an opportunity, that is actually how I think we're going to make a difference in this sort of topic of gender diversity in very complicated and tough spaces.
Corin Lines:
It's where the rubber hits the road, right? It's like this is the reality of it. How can we really bring it to the next step? That's great. It's so helpful. So enlighten us, why have you decided to become the co-host of In Her Ellement?
Suchi Srinivasan:
I think that there is an absolutely fantastic set of women leaders who are having such diverse impact on our societies today, ranging from the arts, to fundamental sciences, physical sciences, to engineering, to the biggest corporate leaders who are driving change in their respective societies, to public sector, to doctors. And I think that the role of these women and their unique stories and challenges can teach us so much, as well as offer inspiration, as well as a practical playbook to all of our audience. So I am excited to co-host this with you, Corin, and bring these stories to light. I think there is a lot yet to be said on this topic and discovered.
Corin Lines:
Without a doubt. All right. Well, can you tell us about a time when you felt that you were in your element?
Suchi Srinivasan:
So for me, it comes down to this notion of amplifying impact through the next generation. And so there was this recent moment in actually the BCG office where I was giving a talk about a piece of quite fundamental, actually AI driven go to market transformation that we just completed for one of our clients that was quite a novel approach in building a data driven enterprise. I was talking about this work. I was very passionate about it. And after I finished that talk, four young women approached me who had joined BCG quite newly and said that they loved hearing me talk. They had no idea that we were doing this kind of work, and how impacted they were with that story and how much they would love to roll up their sleeves and do similar work, and how could they get started? That for me is a moment if I've succeeded in transmitting that enthusiasm for what I do to others and gotten them excited about it that felt very personally meaningful for me.
Corin Lines:
Oh my God, that's a beautiful story. Oh, I'm so glad you shared that. Well, is there anything that we should have asked you that we didn't today?
Suchi Srinivasan:
We haven't talked too much yet about bias, but also accessibility in AI more general. These are newer and emerging topics. But I'll leave it with one thing. The field of AI is transforming so much and is becoming so accessible because it's requiring less and less actual sort of tech background and is requiring more societal thinkers to come in and make this useful in a real world and practical way, and remove it of its biases that are inherent because of the very deeply technical roots. I think that the accessibility of AI is a story in the making and it's going to do wonders to the workforce that is going to be encouraged and interested to join because it is very accessible, very inclusive.
Corin Lines:
Well, thank you so much for joining us, Suchi. We are super enthusiastic and excited for season two and I cannot wait to cohost with you. Thank you so much for joining us today and introducing yourself to our audience.
Suchi Srinivasan:
Oh, it was such a pleasure. And I really enjoyed this conversation and sharing all of these points of view. And I am beyond excited.
Corin Lines:
Well, that's all for today. This has been In Her Ellement, a podcast from BCG.
Suchi Srinivasan:
Join us every episode to hear meaningful conversations with women leaders in digital, business and technology.