My Corporate Work History
My career aim
My nine-year corporate journey has been driven by a singular purpose: to actively improve the employee lifecycle experience through technology and product innovation. It’s been a continual exploration of how people, technology, and strategy intersect to shape meaningful employee experiences.
Over the past nine years, I’ve navigated varied teams and roles from talent acquisition, HR business partnership, HR operations to automation, product management, and technology architecture.
Each promotion and role change has been driven by me actively defining my career, backing up my curiosity with a clear track record, and the resolve to deliver impactful, empathetic solutions at scale.
From discovery to implementation, I have led agile HR and technical teams in strategizing and executing solutions that improve people's careers and lives.
My experience cuts across HR strategy and product leadership, navigating high-velocity environments to transform how organizations manage their most valuable asset: people. My focus remains on crafting meaningful, delightful, and connected employee lifecycle journeys through strategic tech and collaborative execution.
I lean on an agile mindset and customer empathy to build solutions that resonate with users.
These days, I focus on identifying connections within Avalara’s digital employee ecosystem to amplify value. Each week involves thoughtful collaboration, strategic design reviews, and practical problem-solving that enhances the capabilities and effectiveness of global teams.
Quick overview on my journey
My corporate experience has been at Avalara since April 2016. But each year has been like joining a new company. Avalara is a global SaaS FinTech leader in indirect tax compliance, with 5,500+ employees across 4 continents.
Throughout my tenure at Avalara, certain values have anchored my approach: frugality to optimize resources, urgency to drive timely outcomes, adaptability in the face of rapid change, resiliency through organizational changes, and humility to continuously learn and grow.
In less than 4 years, I progressed from being a recruitment intern for a 150-member office to the Lead of HR owning Operations for India for 1,300+ employees through periods of rapid hiring and transformation.
I then switched career from functional owner in HR vertical to a technology team member under Engineering vertical.
In less than 3 years, I progressed from a new team member in a new career stream to the business unit's architecture and people manager, having delivered national and global projects including system upgrades, platform migrations and capability introductions.
In my career, I have worked in:
HR Product Management - Employee Lifecycle Experience, Operations, Business Partnership, Employer Branding, Talent Acquisition, Glocal Scaling, Lean Team, Agile, Empathy, Program Optimization, Change Management, Relationship Building, Career Pathing, Talent Management, Mentorship.
People Technology - Workday, Simpplr on Salesforce, ServiceNow, Kainos, iCIMS, Jobvite, Enboarder, Atlassian, IT Suite, Technology Adoption, Process Automation, User Experience.
Here's my LinkedIn profile for a more traditional resume-style narrative.
My roles
Recruiter at Avalara | Apr 2016 - Dec 2016
Joining as a recruiter in a 150-member organization that wasn't well-known in the city but filled with hardworking employees was fun. Every week had new challenges to be faced and I delivered many improvements. I filled several positions at different levels. I introduced employer branding programs and launched multiple campaigns. I quickly realized I could only go so far in recruiting without automation. So, I made my daily life more efficient by standardizing job descriptions and building workflows in our ATS. The end result was that we were able to hire experienced subject matter experts and engineers in emerging and niche roles and technologies.
HROps and HRBP Generalist at Avalara | Jan 2017 – Mar 2020
As in most small-to-medium orgs, I delivered many improvements by starting and improving people processes by being very proactive (which is just another way of saying I first did things responsibly and asked for permission later).
It was a classic 'just-take-ownership-and-build-it' phase, where I took the autonomy to review people framework and advised site heads and managers while creating and improving processes from the ground up.
I mapped India employees to a new job architecture, redesigned policies and handbook, evaluated and introduced new time/absence and learning systems, streamlined EMEA employee data and managed two annual performance evaluation cycles.
I also took the initiative to start women’s ERG, sports cell, CSR committee and built our employer brand by creating marketing materials and campaigns. I delivered 'Great Place to Work' certification and a 5x increase in participation in our tech meetups, all at zero cost.
A regret/learning is that I did not adequately list the amount and variety of work I was doing in my performance reviews, resulting in my official role change being delayed. I was so focused on the work that I incorrectly assumed its impact was self-evident.
Lead HR at Avalara | Apr 2020 – Aug 2021
Surprisingly, I found this role to be less busy than my earlier one. Having to slow down when I knew how to accelerate was the main challenge I had to learn to navigate.
As the HR Operations Lead for India, I was accountable for the operational lifecycle of over 1,300 employees during a period of intense hiring, multiple acquisitions and critical system migrations. I managed to keep my team lean to 2 members and we handled every operational people process across the lifecycle and compliance.
After few quarters in this role, I accepted that my original desire for more pace wouldn't be met in this role and I resigned.
Business Systems Analyst at Avalara | Sep 2021 – Jun 2023
This role marked my deliberate career shift from functional HR to technology. I switched my role because I wanted to simplify solutions through platform automation. More importantly, I wanted to work under an incredible director leader. It's been an enjoyable learning experience in many ways as it allowed me to research how platforms are being used in industries.
Starting from scratch, I learned to administer Workday and other enterprise systems. I also took technical ownership of our global intranet platform.
One major learning while doing a career switch and joining a really intelligent leader's team is that I was ready to put in the extra time and work hard to catch up to their pace of thinking. Yes, it may seem like common sense but environmental pressures amplified the amount of rewiring I needed to do.
Senior Business Systems Analyst at Avalara | Jul 2023 – Jul 2024
This was a simple vertical promotion supported by my leadership chain as I was delivering by utilizing my HR knowledge while maintaining multiple enterprise platforms.
Some projects during this time included building the foundation of automating self-service employee documents that freed up 1,000 work-hours and automating pre-boarding that led to $90k savings. I also supported a complex time-tracking and absence management system for our India offices. A personal project was pitching my multi-year talent management roadmap to the HR executive council by demoing a customized suite of Workday's talent optimization capabilities.
My director leader continued to give me space to explore and prototype new efficiencies and business value. Learnings from him continued to direct me to seeking the right questions.
Manager, People Technology Architecture and Releases at Avalara | Aug 2024 - Present
My aim here is to increase business capabilities. The workforce industry is moving so fast in so many different ways. I find the thread in the things we do and their value. Hence, the focus on architecture.
My ex-director was very helpful and supportive in getting me to this role. I had to prove myself by delivering a track record. My current Vice President continues to support me with her mentorship.
My primary focus is on enhancing Avalara’s people technology capabilities and ensuring our solutions deliver tangible business value. A typical week involves collaborating with executive leadership to discuss our capabilities, explore possibilities, shape our technology roadmap, inform buy-versus-build decisions, and ensure our architecture can support future needs.
I find the common thread between disparate systems and strategic goals to build a more cohesive and effective employee ecosystem. I have to balance the need for architectural purity with the business's demand for speed, flexibility and variety of options.
In this role, I have managed a team of Business Systems Analysts and Engineers. Taking on this role, I knew that it wasn't to have all the answers, but to create an environment where the right questions are asked.
I also maintain a hands-on role as a technical lead for Workday, building prototypes, guiding enhancements and helping the team solve complex configuration challenges.
Corporate Recognition
(although I have done higher-impact work after 2021)
- 4 Annual Awards - 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018.
- 2 Spot Awards - 2020 | 2018.
- 2 Quarterly awards - 2018 | 2016.
These awards were for delivering work across talent acquisition, business partnership, branding, operations and pretty much taking on new stuff and independently delivering quality projects.
My work style
I focus on giving my teams the autonomy to explore solutions while providing the strategic guardrails to ensure their work aligns with our long-term vision. In a place like Avalara, where processes evolve rapidly, I try to build an environment where the teams feel empowered and psychologically safe. It's a constant balance between enabling innovation and maintaining a stable, secure, scalable ecosystem.
I am not the manager type who monitors user activity, work timing or time-offs. My teams pretty much have full control over their work schedules if they are rational in using them. I have generally found that in high-paced environments, it’s often too late if these basic things are not responsibly self-managed. But that doesn't mean I give up on people at the first signs.
I expect sincerity and high-quality work output. My feedback is mainly centred on direction and alignment, as innovative self-managing teams are only constrained by missing context. But I have had to manage members on the other end of the spectrum as well.
If my teams want to truly learn, I will provide them with all the available paths to pursue their development. I have also generally found that team members looking to grow are quite self-managed and good at detailing their potential.
Where am I going next?
I'll just say - I want to do what makes my mornings exciting and nights peaceful. After all, progress is just discovering, falling and getting back up over and over again, disguised as a straight line.
So, what do you think?
There are many nuances in any person's work history. I'm building my personal website to be more reflective. This will pretty much be the only page on my site that follows this chronological style. If you are looking for a more bullet-point listing of my work, LinkedIn holds a summary of that information.
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