Two public health professionals share their experience of going through, and successfully ‘lifting off’ from the 2023 India cohort of the WomenLift Health India Leadership Journey.
The State of Working India 2023 report shows that the health and social sector’s women’s workforce has steadily increased in the past two decades. As per the report, in 2021, the number of women in this sector was three times that of men. Yet, due to women’s unique challenges, they occupy only 18% of leadership positions in the health sector and 34% continue to earn less than their male counterparts. There is a dire need for a strong push to even out these numbers and improve gender equity in health.
This is where WomenLift Health (WLH) India fits in perfectly. WLH was founded in 2019 and aims to expand the power and influence of talented women in global health and catalyze systemic change to achieve gender equality in leadership. A non-profit, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, WLH has made great strides in driving forward the mission of reimagining and transforming leadership in Global Health. The authors of this article were selected for the WLH’s 2023 India cohort for a year-long India leadership journey, through a competitive application process and share their experience of the well-curated program. Dr. Pragati B Hebbar, Assistant Director of Research at IPH, Bengaluru says “From a feeling of imposter syndrome despite several professional achievements to now gracefully accepting the efforts and the successes, this journey has changed and broadened my perspective about leadership, empowering me to pay it forward to several other mid-career professionals especially women who are hesitant to forge ahead.”
The one-year-long leadership journey includes two in-person residencies, one in the beginning, called the ‘Immersion’ and one at the end, called ‘Lift-off.’ In the interim, there are self and work-colleague assessments of the fellow’s leadership styles and personality. The online component includes regular online interactive learning touchpoints, six one-on-one coaching sessions, and group discussions between mentees and a mentor. The learnings are applied by the fellow in their leadership project, the planning and execution of which happens throughout the year.
Below we provide some more detail on how we experienced the pillars of this trajectory.
Self-discovery: The journey began with conducting online assessments of and by ourselves and by our colleagues. The reports of these assessments included a focus on leadership competencies, personality traits and sub-traits, conflict management styles, influence styles, and work-life balance. We delved deep into these reports and hence into our authentic selves, while embracing the findings with vulnerability. These reports were central to our first in-person residency (the immersion), online break-out room discussions, and our one-on-one sessions with leadership coaches who were assigned to us at the start of the journey.
Community: The authors were among 30 women in the 2023 India cohort. It was striking that despite most fellows being new to each other, an instant connection was established among them from day one. The cohort, the WLH team, and course facilitators successfully created a phenomenal safe space where intense, relatable, and sensitive experiences were shared, which forged strong bonds between the fellows. The online learning touchpoints, additional journey plus sessions on pertinent topics such as storytelling, building allies, leveraging our power, inspiring action, leading change, etc.;
coaching and mentoring sessions, flowed seamlessly through the one-year journey, while we connected intimately over WhatsApp and fellow-driven in-person meet-ups.
Coaching: We had six coaching sessions with internationally certified leadership coaches. This was a core element in the journey. All fellows concurred that they benefitted greatly from these sessions not just in their professional but in their personal lives as well. The coaching process involved goal setting, and reflections in a structured manner through which fellows took away actionable changes to implement in their day-to-day lives. A group of 4-5 fellows were assigned to one mentor, a distinguished health professional. This additional mentorship helped drive meaningful discussions through the journey.
Action: Our leadership projects made up another important part of this journey. Our application to the program required a short concept note of the project, and once we were inducted into the program, we elaborated, developed a theory of change, conducted stakeholder analysis, and implemented the project to reflect what our leadership journeys meant to us. We were provided technical guidance and templates to work on a topic that fuelled our passion in one of the four themes that WLH had listed— ‘Centering women and girls in health’, ‘catalysing institutional change’, ‘optimizing pathways to leadership’ and ‘building integrated and resilient health systems’. The author KVM used her project to lay a foundation, transition, and grow into her new role as the Executive Director of a non-profit for rural women in Solapur, Maharashtra. It involved understanding women’s perspectives regarding preventive services through community participatory methods and initiating discussions at community meetings. Author PBH used the project as an opportunity to design leadership training for the next-in-line personnel at her non-profit academic and research organization in Bengaluru, Karnataka. Along with her colleague and co-fellow, PBH co-created, and implemented these modules under the program SPOORTHI, a blended leadership program for future public health leaders.
These projects and the leadership journey have been instrumental in transforming the lives of the fellows and the audiences reached through the projects. Through a deep sense of self-awareness and a newfound safe space that was rare for most fellows, we believe the journey has been most rewarding. The journey has been designed thoughtfully and the various contact sessions, along with the final ‘lift-off’ in-person residency helped fellows (re)build a strong foundation upon which they could practice leadership in an authentic, inclusive, strategic, and impactful manner. Dr. Kusum V Moray sums it up saying “This journey will always be one of the best things that happened to me. My biggest takeaway from this experience is that one needs to connect with people without getting wound up in their titles or the hierarchy. Communicating with this in mind will enable my inner leader to step out boldly.”
WLH’s vision is to achieve a world where diverse, accomplished leaders collectively transform global health outcomes. To realize this vision, we as 2023 fellows, and now global alumnae of WLH, commit to pay it forward in our individual, institutional, and societal spheres. We commit to using our learnings from the program to expand our power and serve as instruments that catalyse systemic change. In the 2024 cohort, the number of women selected in India for the program has doubled from 30 to 60 and WLH aims to grow exponentially in the coming years. Data from their initial evaluation report shows the measurable impact they are driving, and it would be gratifying to see ourselves as a part of the critical mass of women leaders who will make this world a gender-equitable place.