In this interview, Rakhi emphasises the value of having an executive sponsor and how advocacy can really make a difference in your career journey. She emphasises the importance of staying true to your values and principles while navigating your career.
Rakhi Jain: My Journey
I work within the innovation team at Motability Operations Ltd as a Future Innovation Manager. It’s quite a young team, and we look at the future of Motability Operations and how we can continue supporting our customers. We service the disabled community in the UK, helping to make easier
transportation and accessibility for our users. In my team, we explore whether incoming modes of transport are accessible for our customers. I am Indian, born and brought up in India. I also studied in India and moved to the UK about 25 years ago. I’m still in touch with my roots because I’ve got family back home in India and go back-and-forth between India and the UK quite a lot. I did a Master of Business Administration degree (MBA) and worked in a research organisation which touched on multiple industries, two of them being the automotive and hotel industry. I had a wide portfolio by the time I moved to the UK, but it was difficult for me to find a job at that time. I don’t think people at the time knew much about India and people from India.
Eventually, I landed a research role where my duties involved researching and valuing vehicles within the asset risk team. I took up that role, but it was below my qualifications. I give a lot of credit to my manager at the time who was a big advocate for me and trusted me to do my job. This company
experienced a merger, and I ended up doing a lot of work in transformational change within my team. In my team I was known as ‘The Firefighter’ because I was the go-to person to sort out problems that came up.
My family became a really big factor in my life in this role. I decided to quit my role when I was pregnant with my first child as my husband worked overseas a lot and I did not have a support system in the UK at the time, and I foresaw working being difficult because of this. However, my manager informed me that he was moving roles and shared that he would like me to move to this new company. He gave me completely flexibility in my role in terms of hours, working pattern, and the opportunity to work from home which I greatly appreciated. If he hadn’t shared this with me, I believe I would have gone that normal way of quitting my job and not using my qualifications. This was 21 years ago, and I do think one of the reasons I am still in Motability is because of him – he was my executive sponsor, motivating me and advocating for me. Within Motability Operations, I founded and led REACH, originally called ethnicity network group, for four years up until about 2020. It has been great to see the ethnic diversity of Motability continue to grow since this time. As a network group we were focused on breaking barriers and raising awareness of cultural differences.
A big achievement of mine, and probably everyone in the network, is during my tenure in the network group we were able to establish a scholarship for Black, Asian, and ethnic minority university students. It’s a non-committal scholarship where we pay three years of tuition, so they don’t have to join us after graduating. Another achievement is encouraging Motability to release a statement supporting Black heritage people in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. I encourage other women navigating their careers to be bold, and give yourself the chance to take the lead. Stand by your principles, stand by your values, and I also encourage you to be driven. That’s how you will tick off your goals. Don’t be discouraged, because though it won’t always be easy, you won’t really know unless you try.
This interview was conducted by Michelle Aboagye and Priya Kondola.
