I am the power woman!

That’s exactly how I feel as I sit down to write this edit. I can’t believe that I am writing the editorial of this wonderful magazine brought to you by ICPAR in association with the IIPM Think Tank. Although now someone far better than I ever was – Abhimanyu Ghosh – runs it, ICPAR was almost like my baby. It brings back the best of my memories... of the making of ICPAR as a sought-after and respected PR company!

Of course, nothing would have materialised without my first boss Amit Saxena’s sincerity and crazy dedication to make the vision of a world-class PR company a reality, Deepak Shah’s ability to carry on alone when no one seemed to trust our abilities and finally Dipali’s tremendous positive energy and ability to bring an unseen vibrancy in ICPAR!

In the middle of all such lovely people, I had barely started cracking a few clients, when I realised that I was made the boss of the Delhi operations and asked to run the show, as Amit Saxena was asked to take care of more important activities! That’s how the founder of the Planman Group, Arindam Chaudhuri operates. Just decides the biggest of things one fine morning without any prior notice and then drives them to success!

I spent quite a few number of years running ICPAR and building it up, before shifting to my current special consulting position. And though I don’t run the show at ICPAR anymore, no one can ever take ICPAR out of me!

I remember that then, I used to so often suggest that we must have a special magazine as our contribution to the industry! And the one magazine I often said I should have wanted to give to the media industry was a world-class product focused on women at work.

I felt it would act as a great tool, firstly to showcase our intellectual research and analytical capabilities; secondly, to honour the sincerity that women bring to work – a sincerity that so often goes totally neglected in this male-dominated corporate world; and finally, above all else, to salute all those women who work tirelessly in this particular field of PR (an industry which requires soft-skills more than anything else), which is perhaps one industry which has more women than men and so many of them leading right from the top.

And then one day, as I said is Arindam Chaudhuri’s habit, I suddenly got a message that he was planning to publish this magazine and that he wanted me to be the consulting editor for it! It’s no use arguing with him. But still, with all my sincerity, I told him that I had no such past experience, so I could just suggest ideas but couldn’t write.

But he reminded me of the couple of articles I had written some years back on the PR industry for my own interest – which he had liked very much. Even I had forgotten about them, but he remembered. So finally, here I am writing the first editorial of this lovely dream magazine – Power Women – and happy that ICPAR and my relationship takes a special turn here on!

Although this time, I am too overwhelmed and consequently might have ended up finishing my entire editorial simply talking about how I came to be seen and be heard (ICPAR’s punch line is ‘Be Seen, Be Heard’), I do hope that I will be able to do justice to this column – especially from the next issue – by picking up cases of the real power women who have made the corporate sector and society at large a better place. I would also try to pick up and write about ways we women can take inspiration from such power women and reach for the stars.

As of now I really hope that you enjoy the woderful contents of this issue which covers some of the most respectable names from varied fields.

Till the next issue then, let me relish this opportunity and responsibility that I have been given, for right now, I am the power woman