“Icebreaker”p1 speech
Madam Toastmasters, thank you for giving me the opportunity to present myself, it is an honour.
To tell you a little bit about myself, I am Meenakshi, born and brought up in New Delhi, India. I passed out of The Mothers International School with a Science background, and attended Lady’s Sriram College where I did B.A.Maths Honours. After this completed my Masters in Finance and Control from Delhi University.
My father is an electrical engineer and mother was a M.A. in English Literature and a vocalist in Music. As they were in a transferable job, the onus of bringing me up along with my siblings initially fell on my grandparents in Delhi. I have a sister who by education is a C.A. C.F.A and MBA, and by profession she is a hedge fund manager and lives in London and a brother who is a management consultant and chemical engineer and a management graduate in Pune. He is happily married with kids.
During my 12th standard we lost our mother, and father relocated to Delhi, hence the onus of managing house activities with college fell on the three of us with me being the eldest. As we grew up with one parent, all the three of us held on to the one thing that was most important to my mum, our education and made sure we wrote all the exams and strived for value education. Also the family developed abilities to ensure house work got done along with studies at school or college. All of us developed grit ….or strength.
A huge influence in my college was the sports teacher Mrs Manil, she took me under her wing, made sure I worked on annual budgets for sports for the college, that I practiced 2 hours with the TT Coach Anand, ran for elections as Office Bearer for National Sports Organisation, got money approved from Madam Luthra the principal,and released for the College sporting activities. Along with this, I ensured that the coaches got paid, that we got the sports field cleared for the annual day activities, invited sports people for rewarding the students who excelled at the College. Thanks to my invaluable hours volunteering for Sports, I had the honour of receiving the Best Sports Player award across all Sporting Activities as I passed out of College, huge thanks to Mrs. Mannil and Madam Luthra.
After my Masters in Delhi, I was recruited to the Essar group of companies in Fund Raising as a Management Trainee………………..in 1989. In 1991, at Mumbai, I met my future husband Vijayabalan who is a management graduate and employed with Reserve Bank of India. In 1992, we had a daughter whose is the apple of our eye, her name is Aparajita and who is currently a BTech and employed with a software firm in Chennai.
I was nicknamed by colleagues and friends as “Jhansi ki Rani”, as someone who ruthlessly got projects done under pressure. During my work at Essar, I worked on deals with teams that put in place more than a billion USD for the group companies, most of the fund raising was from international sources for different projects , and after 5 promotions during a 10 year period, the overseas bug bit me.
In 1999, I headed to the US to do a MBA at Florida, which is the top ten institutes in finance, DIS and security analysis concentrations. I worked with the University and several firms at Florida, NY/ NJ. My friends termed me as someone who was pushy, aggressive and demanding as I was constantly pushing them to do things they hesitated in the first place.
I returned to Mumbai from the US in 2003, as my family was at Mumbai. After my return, I spent time in making sure my daughter did her schooling and did her extra -curricular activities developed her in areas such as traditional Indian dance and music. Along with this, I did consulting with Corporate Groups in Mumbai.
My family brought me to Muscat initially in 2014 as a visitor, since last May I have joined my husband.
Going forward, I hope to further develop my public speaking skills and give back to the society. I hope I have added further value to you during the last 5 minutes, it’s a great honor and pleasure that I have in joining this SAB Toastmasters club and look forward to working with you members to ensure this club reaches greater heights and seek your cooperation in doing the same.