Mentoring business

Job Profile: Talreja is a Senior Director in Cisco's Voice Technology
Group (VTG). She runs the Customer Business Transformation organization as a
member of VTG's leadership team. She leverages her 20 years of industry
background in business strategy consulting and operations of large scale IT
organizations — to help Cisco's top customers with business transformation using
the unified communications technology. At Cisco, she also helps drive VTG's
growth strategy. Talreja's link to India is particularly strong as she is the
executive sponsor in VTG leadership team for APAC's growth in Cisco's unified
communications.

Background: Talreja joined Cisco in 1993 and was an integral part of
Cisco's transformation to a strong e-business company. Her e-business experience
includes strategy and implementations of Cisco.com, e-learning, e-marketing and
Cisco's Internet middle-ware (search engines, content management, portals and
web services).

Before Cisco, Talreja worked for five-years in the IT manufacturing
organization at HP. At HP she worked on Global Manufacturing Systems in the US,
South East Asia and Europe. After graduating and achieving her degrees in
Economics and Information Systems, Talreja started her career at an accounting
firm, running accounting and HR IT applications.

Challenges: “Women in the workforce have made tremendous progress over
the last 20 years but we still don't have many of them in the executive ranks in
all parts of the business world,” said Talreja. “One of the key challenges that
women face at the executive levels is an inherently different style of
communication and decision making process compared to men. They have to adapt
their style to the corporate world's expectations - as the corporate decision
making process and communication has been built around how men think and
communicate,” she equipped.

As a woman executive , Talreja had similar challenges. She is continuously
learning in this environment where her boss, peers and employees are all men.

Manjula Talreja, Senior Director, Cisco

Strengths: Talreja's success is related to two of her key strengths:

• Her ability to drive innovation and change management: Talreja always
  challenges status quo and pushes the envelope in the business world to drive
  innovation and change management in the organization. This lead to the success
  for both company she works for and the customers she influences.
• Ability to synthesize and communicate complex ideas in simpler terms:
  Often in the high technology environment where very complex products and ideas
  are generated. Talreja has the ability to grasp and synthesize these into
  simpler business terms so that most people understand them. Talreja leverages
  this skill in her current role where she influences Cisco's customers on
  adopting Cisco's unified communications technology worldwide.

Family: Talreja lives with her husband Prem Talreja in Saratoga
California. Married for 28-years. Prem also works in the High Tech Industry in
Silicon Valley. She has two daughters- Priya and Neha. Priya lives in Los
Angeles and is pursing her Masters in Education. Neha lives in San Diego and is
pursuing a career in medicine.

Hobbies: Talreja enjoys hiking over the weekends in the wooded hills
of California with her spouse and her close friends. This is a great way for her
to destress from the fast pace business world and gets her closer to nature,
which she enjoys.

Talreja also loves to learn about different cultures. She finds traveling
around the world for both business and vacation very stimulating. Over the years
she has traveled to most continents of the world. She is looking forward to
exploring Africa this year, as her next vacation is a Safari in Botswana and
Namibia.

Future Plans: Talreja wants to give back to society what she has
learnt through her years of experience in global business. She likes to mentor
younger women on balancing their careers and work life. Today, she mentors many
women at Cisco and over time she plans to increase her time dedicated to this
effort for women worldwide.

Subbalakshmi BM


subbalakshmibm@cybermedia.co.in