I gained and enhanced my experience throughout my career.  I always looked at every opportunity with open eyes to see what new skills and experiences I can learn from each one.  My career took me through a diverse journey that began in public accounting at KPMG. As a young CPA I learned the basics skills of auditing while allowing me to work with senior leaders of audit clients early on in my career.  When I moved into the corporate environment  I gained a different perspective working in accounting and finance roles in the consumer healthcare industry.  Once I joined Mars these specialized skills I gained transferred very well into my new roles.  I spent time in Mars Chocolate (now Mars Wrigley) in a general accounting leader role where I was able to influence the organization and implement regular balance sheet reviews and improve the relationship with our external auditors resulting in greater governance and control.  I also had an opportunity to work in a tax leader role and most recently in MGSF in Payroll and T&E.  In my MGSF years I had the opportunity to lead some major system implementations to transform our payroll processing and time management.

I walked away from each role with different learnings and with the mindset of how this can be transferred into my next experience.   Working in general accounting at a business unit I learned to listen to the needs of my stakeholders I supported while driving enhanced controls and governance.  Becoming the liaison between the corporate office, the auditors and the business unit while implementing balance sheet reviews benefited all impacted.

When I first moved from accounting and finance to Payroll in MGSF I needed to shift my perspective from supporting one specific unit to working with all Mars associates in the US.  My customer base completely pivoted that required a major mindset change.  I was presented with opportunities to change and improve systems that impacted every single associate.  I had to adapt and learn the human capital management aspect, the system skills and the significant complexities of the payroll operation that I could not even imagine before.

Moving into a new unfamiliar area of payroll, while still part of finance, was a challenging experience.  In this role we are dealing directly with thousands of associates and other functional stakeholders while managing a web of highly automated complex platforms ensuring that associates get paid timely and accurately.  There are absolutely no room for errors in this environment. 

From my years in MGSF Payroll I learned to appreciate the complexities and intricacies of our systems and the amount of information and work that goes into an associate’s pay and benefits.  Having the power to make decisions that impact the organization whether it is selecting a new system solution and implementation or a significant policy change that improves the associate experience while delivering efficiencies to the business.

I have gained majority of my experience in Mars. Backed on initial backbone of factory accounts I have gain experience in Project Management and Shared Service Center Roles in later part of my career. One of my key success which I want to share is the continuous learning that has helped me which includes timely learning through Mars University and S&F College. Beyond functional skills, I am always passionate to upskill on digital skills, core skills and at the same time unlearn some of old practices as well to keep space for new Skills.

My Key Learnings are around Customer Centricity, Change Management & Communication, Project Management and Stakeholder Management out of all these roles. These experience have helped me particularly on some of key areas such as research your subject well and know the breadth and depth of the task, reaching out to people for support, building and leveraging the network, knowing my stakeholders well and developing the understanding of what needs to be aligned first so that there is someone to do advocacy for me when something comes for a larger alignment. Managing and measuring the key matrix and adopting the newer technologies in Shared Service Center has helped to bring efficiency in operations and wow experience for end users.

Prioritization! Good to have and Must have understanding when lot of things on your plate, communication, buying of stakeholders, influencing without authority, dealing with ambiguity were some of the key challenges I had faced initially when I had been assigned more complex roles.

Now, I feel more confident to lead any project/initiative and confident to manage the change and land the change well. Over the recent years, I have been very particular about development plan and religiously followed and worked on my development plan as per 70:20:10 framework. I have followed the quote of a trainer on supplemental feedback that considers “Feedback is a gift from your Mother in Law”.