Student Leader Interview - Yeesheshvi Bhadana from Lady Shri Ram College

Yeeshesvi Bhadana is a student at Lady Shri Ram College for Women. She is going to join McKinsey & Company as a Business Analyst post-college. She is an active student leader seeking to make the world a better place, by taking one step at a time.

1) Tell us more about your role & responsibilities at your college. 

I’m currently the President at Enactus, Lady Shri Ram College for Women. Enactus is an international social entrepreneurship society which promotes upliftment of underprivileged communities whilst solving some of the world’s most pressing problems such as air pollution, lack of decent healthcare and sanitation practices et cetera. 

Apart from this, I’m on the board of 180 Degrees Consulting, LSR which provides advisory services to NGOs and other social organizations and is currently at a nascent stage.

2) How did you rise up to your position and how can a student aspiring the same, approach it? 

It most certainly wasn’t easy. Throughout all these years, I’ve majorly focused on Enactus. Managing that with a rigorous schedule of classes (my major was Statistics!) from 8:45-5:30 PM required me to prioritize and make a plethora of spontaneous decisions, all the time. 

I think students who wish to lead societies in college need a solid blend of 3 things. 

1. Align their interests with the organization they wish to lead, dream BIG and deliver on those action points

2. Prioritize everything that they need to do on the basis of impact and urgency

3. Utilize the potential of every day

The sentiment behind these pointers is that, when I’m recruiting members for Enactus, I’m looking at students who have the zeal to work for it, the ability to take on new challenges and most importantly deliver on them. 

However, to do that, it’s very critical to know how you’re going to manage the other hundred things that you must, i.e. classes, internals, NSS, personal engagements etc. Once the priorities are set, I believe it’s easier to focus and to get things done.

Lastly, I feel very strongly about how one overestimates the potential of one day yet underestimates the potential of a slightly longer duration, say a month, 6 months or even a year. I think anybody can be wherever they want to be if they take small steps in that direction consistently. 

3) What's it like to juggle between a leadership role and normal college life? 

I believe it’s in the midst of the constant juggle that the beauty of college life lies. It’s a struggle to maintain a balance between leadership roles and college life but I feel that is exactly where the real learning lies, in picking up the battles that matter most.

I remember being very stressed in the first months once I got elected as Vice President at Enactus in my second year, the academics got exponentially time-consuming and so did my work at Enactus. My friends would often joke about how on countless days I attended college in formals, to go for meetings post a few classes. Yet with time, I figured it out, missing lectures, doing away with some social media handles, trying to incorporate physical fitness by walking during field visits, and it genuinely didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything, because I was doing what I genuinely believed in!

It was during the leadership role that I really evolved as a person, learnt how to build lasting relationships to drive real impact, to look at problems as opportunities and then spend hours figuring out solutions, failing and yet never giving up until we got where we wanted to be. 

The struggle is real, but it’s rewarding, and an experience everyone must go through once during their college life and be a part of something bigger than themselves.

4)What have been some of your biggest challenges and learnings from what you do?

The biggest challenge that had me perplexed for days, was scaling projects at Enactus LSR. Since we were a relatively new team, ideating next steps was one thing but successfully executing them was yet another task. In the process, I learnt that while networking with professionals in the field could be a stepping stone, it was only trial and error that could get us there.

The biggest learning for me was to overcome my fear of failure, to pitch, to try and to never really give up regardless of the adversities stacked up against me.

5) What's your message to encourage students to do internships and attend conferences?

I don’t think I can stress this enough, internships genuinely have a lot to add. They can be in whatever field, corporate or social, they help set expectations from the work-life in that field, the culture, the work involved and essentially serve as a trial ground for that job/firm. 

Since in college, there’s very little time to actually get professional experience, I think one should exploit the summer breaks to intern with great firms. Moreover, while at internships, always strive to learn as much as possible (there’s a drastic difference between college and the corporate world), network with as many people as you can (don’t be afraid to reach out, you never know when it might help) and be open to criticism!

Want to join the Eat My News's global community? Here is an opportunity to join the Board of Young Leaders Program by Eat My News. Click here to know more: bit.ly/boardofyoungleaders