Paying It Forward

Debarati Sen, the newly-appointed Global Vice President of 3M Abrasives Systems and non-Executive Director, 3M India, speaks with Priyanca Vaishnav about how she became a personal safety champion, the values that define her, and her collaboration- and diversity-led career trajectory.

- Priyanca Vaishnav

As a woman out to seek women role models for herself and for other women alike, one stops defining success by mere turnover numbers and designations. However, as Debarati Sen, who took over as Global Vice President, 3M Abrasives Systems and non-Executive Director, 3M India this month (after her 3-year stint as MD of 3M India), puts it, “Talent at all levels needs to look up and recognize role models.” Passionate about the cause of single mothers making roaring successes of their careers and selves, in just short of an hour-long conversation over tea in a hotel conference room overlooking Mumbai’s most iconic landmark, Sen straightens things out on the equality front: as one of the two daughters who both grew up to be influential and aggressive successes in their career paths (Sen’s sister is a successful geriatrician in the United Kingdom), blending in yet not standing shortchanges seems to be her mantra.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

The second daughter (absolutely by design, Sen clarifies, “My parents wanted daughters and had daughters”) in an educated middle-class household, Sen recalls, “Back in the day, when parents had daughters and no sons, no matter where you went — and I remember this vividly from when I was four years old — people would say ‘you have two daughters but no son,’ and they would grab my mother’s hand and start performing a Sankalpa with mutterings of shata putra vati… and so on. The little me would understand that that was to have a boy child, and I would retrieve my mother’s hand back in a snap and tell the priest there’s no need in Bengali. That’s what I started my life with.”