Reflecting on your career, what key moments shaped your perspective on building equitable workplace practices, and how have they influenced the way you approach client solutions and organizational strategy?
I consider myself quite lucky to have been raised in an environment where I was never made to believe that my capabilities or expectations in terms of a career should ever be any different from that of a man. While I have also had the privilege of working with people who were of a similar mindset, I would be remiss if I said that it was always smooth sailing. As I look back now, it was this smattering of challenging instances- be it at the workplace or other professional settings such as conferences, that made me realize that people’s social conditioning and unconscious bias often become a huge obstacle in the career trajectory of many deserving young lawyers and the impact of such instances on the psyche of young minds cannot be overstated.
So, when we built our firm, implementing equitable workplace practices was at the core of our value system. At an organizational level, we try to go beyond the mandate of the law- for instance, our male resources are provided with paid paternity leave and remote work benefits, which greatly exceed the prevalent market practice. It is our way of ensuring that the societal expectation of mothers sacrificing their careers for child rearing is not the norm at our workplace, and men take an equal part in the process. We take a humane approach to such issues and often go above and beyond to make accommodations that allow our female workforce to transition back to work at a reasonable pace.
For our team members, it is equal pay for equal work, and we do not have subtle practices that trickle down indirectly to lead to pay disparity among our resources.
