Suja is Head of Fidelity Digital Assets (FDA) teams in India. In this interview, she talks about her remarkable career journey marked by diverse experiences all the way to leadership.

Describe your career journey so far.

As a passionate science geek in high school, I saw my aspirations evolve to pursue computer science in college. This was how it would be as I grew older as well – life and experiences would mould my dreams and career decisions.

When I landed in Bangalore in 1998 looking for a job, defying warnings from family about going away from home alone, little did I realize that it would be a long, tough journey of 25 years before I would be at the leadership table of an organization. My first job as an IT skills trainer taught me resilience, patience, and craftmanship, even though I was a rookie looking to just about survive in Bangalore. When I got my dream job as a software engineer a year later, I was fortunate to be a part of a banking product development team in a large UK-based IT services company named Logica. Once again, as a rookie thirsty to learn, I soaked in the fundamentals of product development and the importance of understanding customers’ requirements to provide them the best possible support.

My 12 years in Logica taught me how to perform various IT roles as a developer, technical designer, business analyst, and technology project manager, and provided exposure to a variety of problems—both techno-functional and people related—and possible ways to address them.

The next phase of my career was in financial services organizations like Deutsche Bank and finally Fidelity in 2015, where I made a shift in mindset to consider my work as a calling rather than just a job or even a career. This was when the concept of leadership began to mean something to me, and the impact I would seek to create for the business and team I was in became my core intent and purpose.

What led to your joining Fidelity and what was your reason for choosing this organization?

The story of how I joined Fidelity is a bit of a cliché. I had heard about how networking with people is one of the best ways to find your next role, and while I am not great at networking, that is exactly how I landed my role here. At the first diversity and inclusion conference I attended in 2015, I met one of Fidelity’s woman leaders who really made an impression on me, and we formed an instant connection which eventually led me here. It was a connection that was mutually inspiring, and so, when my then employer announced it was moving most of its technology teams to Pune, I reached out to her, and she referred me to a technology delivery lead role servicing Fidelity’s Asset Management business. After several rounds of interviews, I was in!

The key thing was that as much as Fidelity was assessing me, I was assessing Fidelity. I was looking for a place where intellect and problem-solving were valued, where people, diverse thoughts and ideas were nurtured, and I must say that every one of the interview rounds gave me the same vibe and reassured me of a culture that I wanted very much to be a part of. The clincher was when I had conversations with the Heads of Technology and of Fidelity Investments India at the time. It was the humility and respect they embodied and the brand of leadership they stood for that inspired me and had me praying I would get to work with them.

Tell us about your current job role at Fidelity and your journey with Fidelity so far.

I currently lead the Fidelity Digital Assets (FDA) teams in India. The FDA group offers blockchain and digital asset-related solutions for institutional clients globally and retail customers in the US. This is still an upcoming space in the financial services industry, with a lot of excitement as well as regulatory scrutiny. The financial services industry is still identifying all the potential use cases of blockchain and distributed ledger technology. The Fidelity Center for Applied Technology (FCAT), Fidelity’s research and development arm, began researching the blockchain and digital assets space in 2014 and then established the Fidelity Digital Assets institutional digital assets custody and trading business in 2018. It has since expanded to serve retail customers in the US through a solution called Fidelity Crypto^SM. We were one of the first large financial services companies to offer digital asset custody and trading services. The rapidly evolving digital assets space requires us to be nimble, adopting an agile product delivery structure that blends product and engineering excellence to design and build critical systems for the business.

I am currently building our FDA, India team, bringing together top talent, which Fidelity Investments India is known for. We hire blockchain and other technology experts from the market and train our existing teams on the latest technologies in the space. My goal is to enable my team members to combine the energy of a startup mindset with deep technology-focused and customer-centric thinking, fuelled by a culture of respect, transparency, and trust.

My vision is a future where we are frequently working with digital asset industry experts to innovate, experiment with blockchain, and incubate ideas that further our business strategy and the overall ecosystem, adopting a forward-looking approach to anticipate and build solutions.

Prior to my current role, I worked in various technology teams in Fidelity Investments India focused on providing solutions across various business lines. Along the way, I even had a stint with HR and enjoyed bringing my love for people-centric solutions to this new space for me.

What would you say are the attributes that define successful leadership at Fidelity?

Fidelity has an amazing way of helping you discover your strengths and enabling you to hone them further, if you are prepared to make the best of opportunities. My passion for trying out new things and penchant for constantly raising my hand to attempt to solve challenging problems have enabled several new opportunities for me all the time. Fidelity is such a conducive workplace for growth since it offers you several platforms and avenues to quench your curiosity and thirst for learning. To be able to learn, one must be vulnerable, and Fidelity encourages its leaders to show their vulnerable side and not claim to know it all. This humbles me as a leader and allows me to connect with people well.

But I think what has really helped me is Fidelity’s encouragement of leadership that challenges yet empowers individual team members to perform to the best of their potential, along with the ability to think and work across the organization. These leadership principles are core to my style and have helped me in my journey to build successful teams and relationships that live on for years.

One thing I have learned through my various leadership roles at Fidelity is that in whatever one does, one must always do it with the right intent for our people and the business.

What has been your most memorable moment at Fidelity so far?

My most memorable and satisfying moment at Fidelity was when I saw my team come together so well to complete a complex delivery project. The whole process involved a lot of learning, adaptation, and teamwork.  We were eventually able to deliver on this massive, complex project without a single incident post release. I was immensely proud of the team and the sustainable culture we had built in the process.

The best advice you have received as a professional

Always lean in, have an opinion, and make your voice heard.

What are the attributes you look for in a person you would want to hire for your team?

Apart from the skills required for the role, I always look for people who bring in different traits to the team. These could include energy, creativity, being a quiet thinker, telling it like it is, the ability to challenge the status quo, a positive outlook, keenness to learn, openness to change, and the ability to constantly challenge oneself and try out new things.

I believe in teamwork and partnerships, and so the most important traits I look for are good interpersonal skills and the ability to work well with, support, and elevate one another in the team. Every person we hire becomes a part of our culture and could impact it in one way or another, for better or worse. Hence, I also consider core values such as humility, integrity, empathy, and respect.

Describe a hurdle that you were proud of crossing.

The year 2021 was very difficult for me, owing to the pandemic and a new global role that was very complex and required me to lead squads in the US and India while caring for my sick father. The long hours were extremely exhausting, compounded by the fact that we had to connect remotely with our teams. The stress of meeting deadlines and targets was quite high. To make matters worse, it was hard to witness my father suffer, which added to my sense of helplessness and stress.

Before COVID, one would go up to a friend and perhaps vent a lot to relieve the stress. However, the pandemic confined us to our homes and was challenging for everyone across the board. I derived a lot of strength from the support of the organization, leaders, and colleagues. I also recall seeking deliberately to carve my path forward by unearthing hidden strength and setting my eyes very clearly on at least one positive outcome every day. I then started bringing that same energy to my teams, many of whom were going through equally or even more difficult times. Looking back, I feel grateful and humbled to have been able to come out of that phase stronger and with a ton of learnings.

What is your favorite quote, saying, or song?

My role model is Maya Angelou and so this quote of hers is my all-time favourite, which I live by: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Views expressed are as of the date indicated and may change. Unless otherwise noted, the opinions provided are those of the author, and not necessarily those of Fidelity Investments.

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