Madhavi Madhavi (Health Sciences, 1986) has been working in the corporate technology industry for 30 years and has an impressive CV peppered with leadership roles at companies like Bell Canada, IBM and National Bank of Canada.
Looking over her career, Mantha said she took every opportunity that came her way, considering each role to be a natural progression from the one before.
“I’ve had a very diverse career,” she said. “I’m not afraid of change. I consider myself to be a lifelong learner.”
Mantha said that even though she studied Health Science at Cegep thinking then that she might go into medicine, she felt the choice left the door open for a multitude of future opportunities.
“It certainly paved the way for me to try different things,” she said.
When it came time to attend university, she ended up choosing computer science at Concordia University.
“I had zero interest in computer science at the time,” she said. “But it struck me as an area I probably wanted to learn more about.”
This was in the late 1980s, before breakthroughs in technology like artificial intelligence. But her choice ended up being a good one, as Mantha quickly rose through the corporate and consulting worlds.
“Progression should be happening at every level of your career,” she said. “The progression of being able to take on more leadership positions came organically.”
Mantha started out her career at Bell Canada and gradually took on a wide range of roles within various Bell divisions over the first 15 years of her career, ranging from systems analysis and programming, to marketing, to product management.
While working full-time, Mantha also began doing her MBA at McGill part-time. She said it took her five-and-a-half years to finish as she was working and had two pregnancies during the same period.
“It was quite an accomplishment. I don’t know how I did it but somehow it got done,” she said.
In 2005, Mantha transitioned from working on the corporate side and shifted toward consulting, working at both boutique firms as well as Accenture and IBM in increasingly senior roles over the next 11 years.
She then returned to the client side with a stint at the National Bank of Canada as a Senior Leader in their Transformation Office and as Chief Architect for the bank, before returning to an advisory role at Element AI focused on applications of artificial intelligence in financial services.
Her career trajectory led very naturally to her current role at Deloitte, where she advises clients on their technology strategy and helps define and implement business and technology transformation programs.
Mantha’s advice for current students and recent grads: “Keep an open mind. Do as much as you can to learn, to get a sense of what you like. You’re going to have to work hard. I learned the hard way what it takes to do well. I’m here now but I will admit to you that I flunked Calculus 2 the first time I took it, but made sure to ace it the second time. Keep your eye on the long game. Don’t miss the opportunity by not giving it your all.”
