She found a supportive boss in Alan Rappaport during her stint with Oppenheimer, another investment house. Rappaport gave her the opportunity to manage the India fund. However, it is only now that she calls this an opportunity and begins to smile when she thinks about it.
At first when she was asked to spend more time on Indian funds, she went into the job - to exaggerate slightly - kicking and screaming. She was managing international and Asian assets and did not want to do just India. She thought she was being asked to do this because of her nationality. That may not have been untrue, but still turned out to be the defining move of her career.
"I was enjoying doing international. India was a very small market. I never really wanted to work on India initially. I did not want to be pigeonholed as an Indian doing India. They kept telling me that India would be important."
That was 1994. Soon after, India began to grow in importance as an economy in the global scheme of things and Punita Kumar-Sinha's career grew even faster. "That gave me one of the biggest advantages. It has become my strength. I was made a portfolio manager at a young age."
In her experience, it is generally men with successful career women as wives who tend to appreciate driven and accomplished women. Rappaport's wife was a Harvard MBA. As a corollary, Kumar-Sinha's husband took the extra step to support and help women when he was at McKinsey.
In general, she says, women do need the extra support, either from women mentors or cosmopolitan, mature men who take the extra step to support women.
However, she has learnt to rationalise things. "I do not think people deliberately, or consciously distinguish against women. It is just a matter of mindset. The standard perception is that women are emotional and cry a lot. If women are aggressive, they are branded emotional. Many men find it difficult to relate to women."
Other than fund raising, she thinks succession planning puts women at a disadvantage. People like choosing someone with a similar personality type, gender and race as their successor. As it is, most of the top jobs are with men, who tend to think of other men as better replacements than women.
She is careful not to project herself as holier-than-thou. "It has got to do with my mindset, too. It works both ways. There are barriers in my mind, too. As it is, though I have had several years of education in the United States, I am still culturally very Indian.
This works to my advantage while investing in Asia. Perhaps, if I were a ‘Hi, buddy!' kind of person, it would have been easier in the other areas of business as well."
Her method to counter the biases was to educate herself and add to her skills. She counts joining IIT as her biggest achievement, but did not stop there. "I overachieved in education and, technically, became very qualified. I have a PhD and a Masters in Finance from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. The kind of skills I have, not too many people have. My education has been my biggest ally in this world, as I have often found myself battling perception."
Image: Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, is where Punita did her Masters and PhD in Finance
Also view: The success story of Jack Welch
Advertisement
