International Women’s Day 2021: Catching up with Swapna and Lena

In celebration of International Women’s Day, we are excited to highlight the incredibly diverse and talented women across Trax. Throughout the month of March, we will be sharing peer-to-peer interviews with women in various roles and life stages to discuss their careers, how they manage their wellbeing, and where they look for inspiration.

Swapna: My name is Swapna, and I’ve been with Trax for a year and a half. I specialize in Computer Science and Technology. I worked with a couple companies before joining Trax that gave me good experience. In my role, I handle all major clients for the APAC region to help build data analytics and drive activities to support business in decision making. For example, when a client starts the BI phase, I’ll make sure the whole analytics cycle is taken care of and deliver the final product to the client. On the personal side, I’m married and have a 5-year-old daughter. She just started school, so I’m really happy to be working from home because I can spend a lot of time with her.

Lena: My name is Lena. I’ve worked at Trax for six years now in the Tel-Aviv office. In my free time I love to travel abroad. Last year was a bit different in this matter as we couldn’t travel, so I spent some time traveling in Israel which I hadn’t done before. I found amazing sites. In addition to travel, I also love spending time with friends and family, dancing and diving.

What brought you to Trax?

Swapna: I saw an opening for a Data Analytics job at Trax which made me happy because the company is working on highly technical things I found impressive. When I came to the interview I just felt the positive vibes. The interviewer made me feel like I wanted to work here. When I finally joined, the onboarding process was a huge help.

Lena: After the army service I was looking for my first challenge. I joined the company through a friend who worked here six years ago and was looking for a developer to join her team.

Has your role changed since joining the team? How so?

Lena: It did. When I joined 6 years ago, I started as a developer, part of the applications team. After a year I moved to a different team and become a TL. Now, I’m in my fourth position at Trax, in the Digitization Group, leading the smart web development team. We develop the manual labelling system that is used by the Digitization layer in the company. Leading people was not new for me, but it’s really exciting to see how the developers grow and an amazing feeling to know that you had an influence on that. They are always learning new skills and improving themselves. It’s a nice thing to be part of.

Swapna: I joined in 2019 and my title hasn’t changed, but my role totally did. Every day I do new things and face new challenges and it’s a great experience. When I joined, I realized customers are hungry for analytics and wanted to know what they can do with Trax data. This made my job really challenging, but I was given the opportunity to showcase my analytical talent. I am trying to make smooth process for client to get the BI dashboard easily accessible and action oriented.  I have spent a lot of time working on our analytics to make it better and reusable. I am practically building new things on a daily basis since we are exploring multiple BI tools.

What’s your favorite form of self-care?

Swapna: I’m acting in short movies –“Raising to the Stars” and “Free Birds in Lockdown”( about how families deal with lockdown in Singapore). I am passionate about fashion. In 2018, I won the Mrs. Singapore Fashionista Award and in 2019 I was selected for Mrs. Glamorous Finalist. I love everything that is related to fashion, it fills me up.

Lena: I don’t have anything that special like we heard from Swapna, but I love to work-out. I started yoga last year because it’s something you can do from home. Before that I used to take dance classes, like salsa. In Israel there are places where you can practice and then have a party after, which is awesome because you can improve your skills and then practice right after. It’s really fun.

What’s at the top of your bucket list?

Lena: In the beginning of the year, I made a list of the things I wanted to achieve. It wasn’t that long, but my main goal for 2021 is to be able to run 10k. Right now, I can’t really run much, so today this is on the top of my bucket list.

Swapna: On the professional side, I want to bring value to the company through my analytical skills. As for the personal side, I really wanted to learn swimming for a long time. I started and enjoyed the classes, but I never actually learned to do it by myself. I also want to learn inline skating.

Where do you go for inspiration?

Swapna: It’s extremely important to talk about my father, Devidas N. Gokhe when it comes to inspiration. He believed that nothing can stop you from achieving your goals if you focus on your goal and yourself and it’s very important to ignore people who make your path difficult. It’s better to take it as a challenge and show them results. The person behind who I am and aspire to do best in any difficult situation is my husband, Manish Arya, without his support I would have not achieved anything in life. In Trax, my first manager, Nikhil Krishna who always motivated me to do my job. He says: “You lead yourself and bring value by yourself” and he inspires me a lot. There were times I felt low, but after talking to him, I was up and effective. He’s someone I look up to and who want to be like as a leader.

Lena: To the beach, don’t know why, might be the sound of the waves, but it’s really relaxing and helps me clear my head.

What are you most proud of in your career history?

Swapna: In one of my previous companies, I was rewarded as “Business Intelligence and Advance Analytics” for my efforts in the analytics team and that award was something to really be proud of. Also, in Trax I was rewarded as a Customer Happiness winner team member in 2020. These things motivate me to be better and achieve more.

Lena: It hard for me to think of one thing. I first became team leader in the army, after finishing the officer’s school. It was an achievement and a proud moment for me, you can say that It was a life changing moment. Be able to lead people means you get to influence them and that you should be an example for them, which makes you better; a better person and better in your role.