Lean In — IIT Kharagpur Chapter

‘Lean In’ is a revolution that originated with Sheryl Sandberg’s book by the same name. In her famous bestseller, the celebrated COO of Facebook lists issues women face in the workplace and how we can tackle them effectively. This has led to the formulation of several Lean In Chapters all around the world.

A Lean In Chapter is a group of women working together in a college, office or colony and holds regular sessions called Lean In Circles for productive discussions. We at the IIT Kharagpur Chapter have grown over a year old since our inception by IIT Kharagpur alumnus, Ayushi Mrigen, who organised our first Lean In Circle meet-up — a Google Women Techmakers workshop.

What Do We Do?

We are a community of the girls, by the girls, for the girls at IIT Kharagpur. Although girls have displayed engineering proficiency and conquered challenges in STEM across the globe, we are yet to see a balanced gender ratio in engineering colleges.

With a small peer group, it can get intimidating to pursue tasks that require teamwork. We aim at bringing together the girls of IIT Kharagpur to a common platform where they can find people with common interests, learn from each other, form teams and collaborate to work on projects. We provide a conducive environment for learning, growth and inspiration to serve as role models for others.

Skill Series

We have organised two sessions so far in our Skill Series, covering Competitive Coding and Communicating With Confidence. These workshops were headed by seniors of IIT Kharagpur who are experienced in the respective field or have worked in the specific area.

In the Competitive Coding session, two Google interns introduced the concept of competitive coding, why it is beneficial and various resources that can be used to practice it. With an overwhelming response, the session also included a call with one of the best competitive coders of India who has a work experience of eleven years at Google.

The Communicating With Confidence session taught how body language, tone and attention to verbal and non-verbal communication affect the fruitfulness of a conversation. The session also highlighted breaking down an idea to its fundamentals and ensuring relevance of information being delivered.

Career Series

We also organised a Management Consulting webinar with a former analyst of McKinsey & Company. Various topics were covered such as the definition of consulting, profile requirements for recruitment in a consultancy firm as well as the challenges that come with it. The session was informative and gave the girls an idea of the pros and cons of consultancy, helping them understand whether they wanted to venture into the field and how suitable it might be for them as a career option.

Mentorship Series

IIT Kharagpur boasts of a fantastic alumni network. We collaborated with our male and female alumni doing exceedingly well in their respective fields and asked them to mentor female students at IIT Kharagpur. Receiving an overwhelming response once again, we successfully allotted one alumnus each as a personal mentor to the girl students who applied for the program.

TFQ and SAP Labs

We recently collaborated with The Female Quotient to set up an FQ Lounge at IIT Kharagpur! The FQ Lounge is a destination for women to connect and collaborate. It has become the largest community of corporate women and we are glad to soon start an FQ lounge now at our very own campus!

We are conducting an event on 31st August 2019 with the aim to showcase women leaders in diverse fields and highlight the power of women invested in each others’ success for collective growth. We have invited an eminent patent attorney and biologist for a guest talk, Dr. Sudeshna Sarkar, Head,Computer Science & Engineering Department at IIT Kharagpur and Dr. Arpi Mardirossian from University of Southern California will be joining for a webinar. Collaborating with SAP Labs, we are organising a Design Thinking Workshop on the UN Sustainable Development Goals by Mr. Rahul Sachdev, Head SAP Next-Gen India Subcontinent.

We have conducted sessions on various topics such as Work Life Balance, Negotiating Skills for Women and so on. The girls who are part of Lean In IIT Kharagpur Chapter have benefited immensely in their skills training through our workshops and mentorship program. They have gained a rock solid education about tackling gender bias in society and we hope to see them all grow into successful individuals contributing significantly towards society!