Carving out a niche in leadership

She has traversed multiple domains in multiple locations, executing and excelling in different roles. Geetha Ramamoorthi, Managing Director, KBR India, has a fascinating career graph, and behind that is the story of single-minded focus and the drive to push boundaries.

In an interview with Avtar Insights, she recounts her journey across domains and the need for women leaders like her to drive the agenda around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Tell us about your journey. What are the milestones, and what lessons did they offer to you as a woman professional?

My career has taken twists and turns over the years in some ways which I hadn’t foreseen when I had set out to be a part of the corporate world. Whilst I qualified as a CA and CMA, and started in Finance, every two to three years I found myself unintentionally reinventing myself and breaking new ground. Starting my career with United India Insurance Bangalore as a freshly-qualified CA, in six months, I switched to a Finance role in Ashok Leyland in Chennai. Moving from Sales Finance to Corporate accounting, I also had a stint in Treasury in Leyland— these gave me a good grounding in different facets of Finance. The first big milestone occurred when I decided to shift from manufacturing to the Financial services industry, and this was a time when IPOs and bought-out deals were the buzzwords, I joined Empire Finance in Merchant banking. From then for the next four years, I got a taste of financial services and depository services in a few companies which sharpened not only my understanding of business finance but also honed my business development skills. The next big milestone was joining CH2M Hill Singapore as the Regional Financial Manager for Asia Pacific. This proved to be the turning point in my career in many ways in terms of broader global exposure, and exposure to different cultures and languages, something I hadn’t been exposed to earlier.

The third milestone was my move from Finance to business leadership. This happened in WS Atkins where I spent a good 14-plus years doing v