Sustainability Strategies can be powerful tools IF and ONLY IF big consultancies and companies are transparent about the climate and larger social impact they have created, and are able to build working relationships with country governments and local governments to be more accountable with respect to public money.
Madhumitha S, our next pathbreaker, Policy Associate at Transparency International (Berlin), works at the intersection of climate, policy and governance, coordinating projects across Asia and the Pacific focused on the climate theme.
Madhumitha talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about being driven by a deep rooted mission of working with partners to make governance systems and adaptation systems work better in order to create a larger impact !
For students, with all the tech developments, you need to make sure to always find avenues to exercise your thinking, and learning – to pursue something and constantly grow in your fields.
Madhumitha, what were your growing up years like?
I grew up in Chennai. My parents were both working in different banks. Both of them were also cooking, cleaning, gardening and playing with us – it was a busy home. My mom holds a master’s in commerce and my dad, a bachelor’s in history. I have an older sister who is now a chartered accountant. This is where I was for 23 years of my life. Of course, accounting, banking, finance and customers were normal everyday dinner conversations at home due to my parents.
I studied in a private matriculation school in Chennai (very far from the beach) until 10th standard. I liked my school because it was not very academic focussed in the early ages – we had pretty good sports facilities (I was part of the first girls football team), sports periods and summer sports classes. We had a good library and a library class every week to discuss books. We had music, arts and engaging cultural events. I did study well, I was never the topper, but always somewhere between 5th and 10th rank in school.
I value that my school did not differentiate us as boys and girls and let us interact, play and study together. This helped me be confident, and explore different things. I was always very curious to try out new things – I was part of the nature club, astronomy club and history club in my school. Two days a week, I also had classical music classes – where we also had a group of friends to play after class cards with. I enjoyed strategy games, playing with my friends, and learning new things. I still enjoy such games.
As a younger sister, my choices were severely influenced by my older sister. I often had the same teachers, even when I changed to a CBSE school in 11th as she had also changed to the same school 4 years before me. A default choice in 11th standard was to take commerce and accounting (influenced for me by my parents, and my sister). I made this choice and didn’t think much about what I wanted to become later.
What did you study?
I did my BCom from Stella Maris (Chennai) followed by a Master’s degree in International Affairs (Focus: Security and Sustainability) from Hertie School in Germany. I also did an exchange program at Waseda University (Japan).
Can you explain how you ended up in such an offbeat, unconventional and unusual career at the intersection of climate, policy and governance?
I shifted schools to focus more on academics (for 12th standard). I studied well, and received high grades in 12th standard. My dad wanted my sister and I to go to top universities in Delhi, so I tried to make it happen.
After finishing the board exams in 12th, I still did not think much of what I wanted – I wanted to give a shot at a few different things. I applied for Bcom in Chennai and Delhi, I applied for a bachelor’s in Psychology, sociology and economics in Bangalore and I also wrote other exams like law and management.
Everybody always told me getting high marks in 12th exams will get good university admission – but in reality, it was more complicated. I learnt about quotas, cut-offs and limited seats in universities that were not working in my favour. My sister pursued CA directly after school, so nobody had experienced college admissions in my family. Eventually, with some difficulty and a lot of waiting, I joined a famous college for arts and science in Chennai, and gave up on my Delhi dreams. After one internship in HSBC during my second year, I realised I didn’t want to be in a bank, be in finance or do CA. I wanted to do something… else.
But for me college was not so much about studies – I joined the debate club in university and started debating and quizzing in tournaments – I also was an office holder of the debate club (unsurprisingly, for finance) and managed some quiz competitions. I really enjoyed learning different things in the club, constructing arguments, thinking clearly and debating effectively. It was a very valuable point for me – directly influencing my choice of career now.
On the side, I was also learning the Japanese language, challenging myself and using my free time effectively. From the second year, as a senior language learner, I started teaching Japanese at the same centre for junior levels over the weekends. I enjoyed this process, and it also gave me some pocket money to go out with my friends!
Tell us about your career path
For me, my career was not a straight journey.
Once I finished BCom, I sat for placements and got into ErnstYoung as an analyst. At this point, I knew that I didn’t want to be in audit/ finance I knew that I wanted to do a masters, but I didn’t know how exactly to choose. Hence, I declined the job offer bravely, and decided to temporarily work in the Japanese language field while I figure out my next plans. As my teacher and peers from the language institution were all doing so, I found a network for this. I would say that this was a turning point in my story as this was the first time I was not following a script – I was deviating and doing my own thing.
I applied on the open markets and finally joined Fujitsu, an IT company in Chennai as a bilingual agent. I had huge expectations for this job, as it was new and sounded cool. It was definitely new, and I was working early morning hours in Japan time. However, after some months, I was deeply unhappy because the job was not using my thinking ability as I hoped. It was a data handling back-end job. In this job, with my team, I was supporting warranty extensions (by forms, and emails) for hardware clients in Japan. More than one year later, I moved to a more translation based role – this was good for me as it allowed me to think more. But I didn’t like to work in an IT office at this stage. I wanted to do something else with my career – work with people, ideas and change – like I did in the debate club.
How did you decide on your Masters ?
As I was working, I continued teaching Japanese on the weekends. I was also preparing for my masters. I had a big excel sheet to track my interest for masters – both within India and abroad. I spoke to some seniors, cousins and family friends who pursued masters in India and outside for me to understand how to approach the application process.
In my excel sheet, I listed the field and the degree, the place, cost, scholarship options, application requirements and deadlines to enable comparison. I didn’t have much help from my family for the research, but I wanted to do it myself and not go to a consultancy. That is why I worked for two years and took some time to figure it out.
This excel was helpful to figure out what I wanted – everything pointed towards a sociological degree like international affairs or public policy. This is what I enjoyed in the debate club. I did 3 applications, one interview and had one offer by February 2020 – from the top university in my excel. It was in Berlin (Hertie School), I needed an education loan to support myself after the 25% scholarship I received. My parents has many questions to me, as it was not a familiar field. However, I managed to convince them. It was helpful that I had a college senior who went to the same uni in Germany, and she could give me some tips. I also saw that I could go to Japan on an exchange program and finally connect my career points. I spoke about my chances for this with the senior, and also added this interest in my application letter.
It has helped me to not be so specific about my career at the start. I knew that I wanted to be with ideas, policy and systems but I didn’t yet know in what way. Again, to get some field experience and take some time and go back after the pandemic, I took a gap year during my masters. During this time, I did an internship with an organisation Enpact which was connecting different startups in Asia for expanding into Germany – including with female founders from India. I made several applications before getting this job (and this applies to all my jobs after). I felt more aligned to the kind of people I wanted to be around here than my previous job – diverse, full of ideas and wanting to make a change.
After 6 months here, I still had to do 3 months of work to complete my gap year, but my internship ended. After some difficulty, and through networking, I started working on a project, writing a report for an impact finance organisation in India. Here, I analysed the impact of work by the different businesses supported by the foundation I worked for (Yunus Social Business), especially in the context of covid and drafted an annual impact report. As my first consulting gig, it helped me create a structure and independent thinking around my work.
Finally, when I went back to university, I was successful in applying for an exchange program in Japan – so I went to Waseda University, Tokyo for 6 months. This was important for me, as I did not want to lose my language skills, and wanted to somehow connect my present career in policy to my language profile. My loan only covered tuition fees, and not shopping, eating and exploring in Japan. Before I accepted my exchange program , I completed my report writing project, and began job applications again. It is common for students to work part-time to earn money to live while studying. After my gap year internships, I took up a summer job for two months serving noodles in a Chinese restaurant. I used this money to save up for my exchange semester. I also was successful with a scholarship application from my university to cover the flight tickets for my trip. The exchange program was a second turning point in my story – not just from the study abroad experience, but also from the job I was doing at this time in parallel.
How did you get your 1st break?
In about 3 weeks of starting my semester, I heard good news from one of the jobs I had applied to – at a NGO Salzburg Global (Austria) in Europe organising fellowship programs for participants from Japan and India. It was a challenge always not just to emerge successful in job applications, but also to identify the right opportunities to apply to. I was proactive in reaching out to people who did things I thought were interesting – and this is how someone in my network recommended this job.
I started the part time job remotely from Tokyo along with my semester, and continued it in the next semester when I returned to Berlin. I worked from home, cafes and university. My role until this point included trips to Salzburg for the fellowships, (after returning to Europe) but mostly working remotely organising the programs, identifying participants, managing applications and communicating with the participants, and supporting meetings with the donor organisation in Tokyo. The fellowships I worked on were focused on two themes – connecting tech enthusiasts between Japan and India and those working in peace programs across south east Asia. To me, it was really an important opportunity that helped me explore in two directions of policy and innovation, situated between the geographies I was most interested in. Following graduation, I moved into a full-time role and continued working for one more year. In this period, I contributed to annual programs at the organisation, as well as prepared follow up programs and organised them in Nepal and Japan.
What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you address them?
Once I quit my job, and secured my admission for masters, with the first fee, there were the COVID pandemic related restrictions. I was scared, and unsure if I should postpone my plans by one year – but I decided to go ahead anyway. Moving abroad, starting my masters and doing all the required steps in Germany during COVID pandemic was hectic in the first semester, but I managed it. While it was helpful to have some contacts through family and school to give me some guidance on settling down, the context for me was still vastly different due to COVID restrictions.
I had several challenges I had to figure out in the meantime, such as the Covid pandemic, new languages (I learnt German too), bureaucracy, finding apartments and moving several times, new friends that don’t speak my mother tongue, Visa related matters and endless pursuit of jobs. But I think each challenge has prepared me better for the next one. Finding joy in between such as with new hobbies, creative skills and travelling helps justify the challenges and adding a new perspective each time.
I am an extroverted personality – and yes this makes it easier to strike conversations with strangers, ask for help, and express interest – but it is also not so easy to be vulnerable at all times. I received many things purely by being connected to the right people, and striking conversations outside work and life.
What do you currently do?
After my master’s, I wanted to continue to stay in Germany as I had better options for my career than in Austria, so I began a new role in my current organisation (Transparency International) in Berlin. Here, I have been working on anti-corruption work generally and more recently within the climate theme – along with partners organisations internationally. In a typical day, as a policy associate of climate governance, I research and identify the cases of corruption within funds intended for addressing climate change, working with our partners so that citizens can raise their voice against any injustice to them, and assessing, tracking and submitting recommendations so that countries and institutions have transparent information in place about what they do with the citizen tax, borrowed and gifted money. Here, I love working with partners to help change laws of a country, or contribute to a new policy to regulate some of the practices such as mining, deforestation and energy infrastructure – be it Brazil, Pakistan, Zambia or Fiji.
What are the skills required for your role? How did you acquire them?
The skills required for my job are mostly soft skills – with an added advantage of excel, research (R and MaxQDA are some tools I learnt during masters and after), and writing skills. It is important to be clear in thought and words, and have structured ability to convince other stakeholders – a skill I have been nurturing from my debate days.
How does your work benefit society?
My compass has always pointed towards impact oriented jobs. At the end of my week, I like to feel that what I did this week benefitted the society, the world and future generations. My current work looks into several elements to create a society where governments and people exchange with each other more freely. Some elements of my work these days includes tracking and assessing if the money meant for climate change mitigation is used correctly, if people in remote places are aware of their rights, if big consultancies and companies are transparent about the climate impact they have created, and building working relationships with country governments and local governments to be more transparent with public money.
Memorable work ?
My most special work till today was when I proposed a way to analyse the data from all the previous fellowships in the job at Austria through MAXQDA, so that we can increase synergies across cohorts in my previous role. This was a win, I was given a license to work with the research platform, and develop concrete outcomes if we had better synergy, which was then used to get new funding towards the extended programs in Nepal and Japan.
Additionally, all my international work travel experiences have been very memorable as great experiences.
Your advice to students?
I would always advise students to make a note of what they enjoy when they really like something, what makes them curious and try to dig deeper in that field. With all the tech developments, students need to make sure to always find avenues to exercise their thinking, and learning – to pursue something and constantly grow whether in sports, culture, art or academics.
I was ready to put in all the effort required to get to this new place. Being persistent, brave and hardworking will get one to break all the barriers. For this, I would strongly advise students that don’t have a set plan in mind, to try different things responsibly, see what engages their curiosity and who they want to be associated with, and pursue that path.
Future-plans ?
In essence, I am still growing, and continuously looking for opportunities to continue exploring how I can learn, grow as well as make an impact in society. I don’t think there is an end goal in my career, but just a continued passion to be a student of different things. Other than work, I try to participate in volunteering activities in other aspects I really enjoy – such as (currently) researching for a book. I have also performed some freelance tasks – such as with Japanese to English translation- at some points.
Someday, I want to teach at least part-time again, as I really enjoyed teaching in the past. I want to continue working in the social impact sector, and I am looking to slightly pivot again into startups, and innovation as it was exciting for me in the past. I also want to have one big win per year outside of work – whether it is a level of Japanese exam, learning swimming, crocheting my own sweater, running 10 kilometres or going on long distance cycling.