Jayasree Iyer, Banking Industry Executive
Jayasree Iyer has 20 years of experience in the US Banking industry in Product Management, Product Innovation, Risk & Fraud Prevention, Customer Relations, and Operations. Prior to joining Suntec, she worked as Vice President of Innovation for Wells Fargo, APAC. Prior to that, she was Vice President for Operational Risk heading Corporate Risk Operations at Wells Fargo. Before joining Wells Fargo, Jayasree worked as Director of Risk Management Products & Services at Yodlee Inc. which is now part of Envestnet, where she led product management of a state of the art risk management product Jayasree is a certified ACH professional from NACHA and has been granted two United States Patents. Jayasree is very passionate about empowering women and is a frequent speaker in Women's Leadership Forums. On personal front, Jayasree is married to Subu and has two boys Pranav and Rahul. She is an avid music listener of Indian classical music and comes from a family of Veena players. She also loves to write short poems during her spare time!
Q: Why do you choose to spend your time mentoring others?
A: I strongly believe that helping women navigate through the issues that they're facing by sharing experiences helps them to realize that they are not alone, and many have already taken the same path before them. I want to share a story of when I was a mentee. When I was pregnant with my first child and very apprehensive and nervous, my mentor told me, "You're not the first woman who's delivering a baby. Millions have delivered before you, and millions will be delivering after you as well." It helped put things in perspective and reminded me that I wasn't alone, and I wasn't facing a problem that was unique to me. Women all over the world need that comfort and to be reminded that they're not alone while taking challenges head-on.
Mentoring allows for creative conversation and leads way to multiple approaches to solve the same problem. And when the mentee can understand that she has the power to choose and she can create a path of her own, or she can also follow an already laid path - it is gratifying to me. A determined woman is unstoppable. She is like a strong mountain against which whatever collides gets crushed to tiny specks of dust. Mentoring to me is creating, and sculpting determined women who can face anything without attitude, but with utmost confidence.
Q: What have you personally gained from mentoring others?
A: To me, there is nothing other than gain from mentoring. Mentoring is an immense learning experience for me. Mentoring reiterates that no matter what part of the world a girl is born and raised and becomes a woman and starts working, the issues she faces are no different around the globe. This serves as a constant reminder for me that I need to continue to stand up for myself, and I do that for all the women who may follow my same path. Mentoring helps me to impart faith and belief to mentees, allowing them to transform, bringing them an immense sense of courage and confidence. This gives me satisfaction and reminds me that as a change agent, I still have a long way to go and a lot more to stand up for.
“Mentoring helps me to impart faith and belief to mentees, allowing them to transform, bringing them an immense sense of courage and confidence.”
Mentoring also helps me determine what to ignore in life, which helps me stay focused on the most important things. Ignoring the noise or signals that might create self-doubt or that deplete your confidence helps you to focus on the right path. This practice reminds me there is a debt that I owe to the less fortunate women and the need to go out and offer them support. I draw energy from mentoring and keeps me motivated.
Q: To what do you attribute your success?
A: I attribute success to the fact that I recognize people, whoever I interact with, whether in a professional or personal capacity and treat them as human beings first. I try to understand people the way they are and connect with them at a human level first. When you understand the person, and you're connected, then a beautiful relationship forms. And when it comes to professional success, there's no secret mantra for me - it's hard work, laser focus, and having honest and transparent conversations.
Success, to me, is very momentary, it's in the moment, and it's a collection of many moments, which creates the graph for my success with infinite dots. These dots define my success as a daughter, sister, wife, mother, daughter-in-law, aunt, working professional, friend, mentor, mentee, etc. Some dots represent beautiful stories of failure when I've been able to quickly pick myself up, stand up firmly, and move stronger and faster forward.
“When people who are dependent on me at any level or dimension become successful, that brings me happiness and makes me feel successful as well. ”
Success is not just my personal success but also for the people around me, whether it be my team, my family, my friends, or my community. When people who are dependent on me at any level or dimension become successful, that brings me happiness and makes me feel successful as well. Success is about feeling successful. No matter how high you go, no matter how many remarkable achievements you have, unless you're able to feel that, it doesn't mean anything.
Q: What does good mentoring look like to you?
A: Great mentoring is a very transparent conversation with an experienced friend. A mentee should view their mentor as a good friend who they would be honest with and not give a false picture or make things look good because that defeats mentoring. And a great mentor asks insightful questions that help the mentee arrive at solutions to their issues and is someone they can go to when dealing with problems. Life is not going to be one success after another; there will be failures. Good mentoring helps mentees solve the problems and leads them to success, but also supports them through failure.
Q: How has mentoring impacted your journey?
A: I have been absolutely lucky for the amazing mentors that I've had throughout my life, genuine human beings who really want me not to make mistakes, and if I do, they helped me correct it. They have taught me that issues or problems that we think we will always have will not always be there and that they're not unique to me.
The most life-changing lesson I've learned is about never giving up. Consider a larger fish chasing another fish, which is its prey. In this case, envision a shark chasing a marlin. So what can the marlin do if it wants to escape from the shark? The only thing it can do is to keep swimming and swimming fast, away from the path of the shark to a safe place. If it doesn't keep swimming, it's going to die. So as human beings, especially women, we are no different than marlins. Problems will always chase us. We have a good amount of intellect, and most importantly, we never give up.
The more determined a woman is, the more unstoppable she is. So just has like the marlin outruns and out-thinks the shark, we too shall be beating the issues and problems that follow us, that tend to create fear or worry. You can't run away from things; one cannot. A tint of spirituality comes in handy – when you believe that a larger power protects you, you have confidence to keep swimming like the marlins.
Q: What advice would you give to someone who is starting to mentor?
A: First, please be genuine. If you're thinking about being a mentor, please be honest and ask yourself, do you have an unadulterated urge to support your mentee through their journey? Are you really interested in solving and listening to other people's issues? If you do not feel this urge, it's better to take a step back and think about it a little bit more. Other essential skills are patience and the ability to listen. These will come naturally if there is a strong sense of unwavering faith in one's own ability to touch and transform other people's lives. Patience is needed to let your mentee naturally unfold themselves. As mentors, we can jump a little bit ahead sometimes and assume we know how something is going to go, but we don't know, and everyone is going at their own pace.
Q: Why do you choose to be a mentor with Ceresa?
A: I came to Ceresa because it is a global platform. And as I mentioned earlier, women all over the world are facing the same kinds of problems. If I'm able to make a difference in anybody's life across the globe, that's a huge accomplishment for me. And Ceresa is the perfect platform for that.
Also, Ceresa stands out because of the mentor-mentee matching. The amount of care and logic put into arriving at the right match is outstanding. And I believe this is the single reason for success and makes the journey worthwhile and rewarding both for the mentor and the mentee. The entire mentoring framework is pretty immaculate, and the mentoring tools that Ceresa offers are absolutely handy, practical, and help to get the best out of mentor and mentee. The tools are just perfect. And the ability to touch anybody globally is what brought me to Ceresa.
Mentorship: integral to the Ceresa whole-person approach
At Ceresa, mentorship is an integral part of our leadership development process. The mentor-mentee relationship is a key component in providing the structure, and at the same time fluidity, necessary to facilitate pointed leadership and career growth for both the participant and the mentor.