On the occasion of International Women’s Day, we bring you some of the most notable and distinguished women eduleaders from the education industry to share their incredible journey, insights, and experiences. Here are the excerpts from the interview
Swathy Rohit
Founder & CEO, Health Basix
COO, SNR & Sons Charitable Trust, Coimbatore
On women
I have been very lucky in my life to have amazing women role models and peers to look up to. It is a really tough job to balance work and family. Education has been one of the only fields that has consistently provided equal opportunities for women to shine for a very long time. It is still a long way away from equality in many other fields and one should look at the field of education to learn from.
Participation numbers of women in the work force in India is far from satisfactory. We were behind even countries like Saudi Arabia. A change in mind set is needed. Men are to value, accept and treat women equally at home and at the work place.
On health & education
I am a Mechanical Engineer by education and worked in textiles manufacturing for 5 years before I came into education and healthcare. I used to run SNR and sons Charitable Trust which has 17 educational institutions and a 1,000 bed hospital under its banner. I have always been passionate about kids health and education. A health incident with my son really made me relook at how we as parents in India focus on education and rarely focus on health. The health statistics of our children is alarming 1 in 5 is pre diabetic according to a recent WHO study and mental health numbers are also steadily on the rise. Our vision at Health Basix is to be the best platform for all things parenting and healthcare for school kids. Being the best means providing outstanding quality, access, service, trust and value, so that we enable every child to live their best life.
On leadership
The qualities for a great leader are empathy, patience, perseverance, resilience and adaptability. I wasn’t born with a lot of the above qualities but my time at the hospital and educational institutes with kids, teachers, doctors have really helped me become a better leader and motivated me to constantly work on myself.
New normal
Our main focus as we all start adjusting to the new normal has been to make our learning environment safe, fun and welcoming to our kids. Next comes the identification of learning gaps and helping everyone get up to speed as well as really taking the time to work on their mental and physical well-being. At Health Basix, we believe that the single most important thing is for kids to learn to be healthy and as they need to be healthy to learn.
