The 2022 Women Leaders in Consulting: Nisha Shankar

Nisha Shankar is the Practice Head and Banking Consulting Leader for Cognizant Canada. She is a growth catalyst and has helped build consulting practice from scratch in various firms including the Big 4s. She has over 14+ years of strategy and technology advisory experience. She thrives at the intersection of business and technology, and she has a strong focus on operational excellence and innovation. Whether it is leveraging RPA to improve scalability, efficiency for Operations teams or developing Personal Financial Management prototypes to level the playing field for banks compared to FinTechs, she is passionate about leveraging technology to solve for business problems.

She is an Electronics and telecommunications engineer by trade and has an MBA from McGill University.

What do you consider your greatest personal or professional achievement?

Consulting is a profession that provides you the ability to connect with people from all different spheres of life and all professions. Developing people, mentoring people and sponsoring them to achieve bigger and better things has been a passion of mine. Seeing their growth and continued success, both professional and personal has been very fulfilling. Seeing them invest the same time and effort in other people coming behind them makes me happy and proud.

What advice would you give to a female consultant just beginning her career?

I often advise the women in my circle 'Don't get into the likeability game. There is no winning in it'. This advice is counterintuitive as Consulting is a people business and your ability to connect with clients, build strong teams is core to your success and is highly correlated to your likeability as a person.

However, a good consultant knows when to foster, coach and counsel vs. when to go against the grain, push back and be the "hammer". Our gender norms and societal expectations of women typically make it difficult for female consultants to be effective in the later situation, especially, early on in their careers. In such situations remembering that "we are not in the likeability game" and that you are doing your job by doing effective challenge is key to being a successful consultant. Mastering the art of 'disagreeing agreeably' requires practice and is one of the key measures of leadership maturity. Normalizing being disagreeable is a healthy start for all women who are at the beginning of their consulting journey.

What do you enjoy most about your consulting career?

Consulting profession by nature requires understanding a client problem, drawing upon your various experiences and best practices to drive the ideal solution. It requires empathy so that we are providing the right counsel to drive the right decisions while recognizing the challenges of working in a "real world" environment. The client development and management part of consulting excites me. Consulting profession also relies on your ability to collaborate with various stakeholders to bring the right solution to the client at the right time. Our ability to play as a team, support each other and present a united, cohesive offering to our clients humbles me. Almost every project is unique, every client is unique and the environment and challenges that they present are unique. The varied nature of the projects, and the various learning opportunities that they provide enlighten me.

What's the best advice—personal or professional—you've ever received?

'Don't be afraid to make mistakes and don't be afraid to do what's right' – professionally and personally, I have benefited tremendously from this advice.

Building leadership muscle requires practice, and practice comes from learning from your various experiences, some good and some not so good. Taking challenges head on is the best way to learn. In a world where choices are unlimited, paralyzing decision making, focusing on 'doing the right thing' is a very simple value system that helps make complicated decisions an easier task.

What does being honored as a Woman Leader in Consulting mean to you?

This recognition honors all the women leaders who were here before me and have cleared the path for me to thrive and succeed in this industry and set an example for me. It acknowledges the personal contribution of my many mentors and sponsors that have built me and coached me to be deserving of this nomination. I hope this nomination will inspire the community around me and especially young women to be bold, challenge the norms and to truly believe that there are no limits to what they can achieve.