When I was a child, I dreamt of touring the world, seeing new places and meeting new people. Those were the days when my parents could barely afford to send me anywhere beyond our hometown in India, which was in the picturesque state of Goa, some 600 kilometers south of Mumbai, the city where I was born and continue to live today. Our trips to Goa, a former Portuguese colony, were something to look forward to every year, as I love beaches, greenery, European cuisine and music. It was only during my articleship days, attempting to become a chartered accountant with a leading firm in India, that I had my first chance to travel to other cities and audit their clients. Between work and travel, I managed to see and experience some of the sights and sounds of these cities. Of course, my journey into the field of accountancy was more out of desperation than by choice, as I wanted to become a doctor, but never made the grade at the Jesuit college I went to and finally graduated from, with chemistry as my major and microbiology as my subsidiary subject. Auditing had become something I begun to enjoy then, even though it was financial audit at the big corporations to which I was assigned.
I went on to work in the manufacturing sector, in a company that gave me my first break in IT as a software programmer, putting my accountancy career on the back-burner, never to be pursued again. Software programming became my new passion, as I realized, even by my own admission, that I was becoming really good at it, even though coding in COBOL was quite painful in those days-sometimes running into thousands of lines of code. Believe it or not, I really enjoyed it, and I remember the real excitement and joy of seeing your program deliver meaningful output in the form of desired reports or processes for the organization’s operations teams and management. Those were the days!
Travel was still a scarce commodity for me then, as my wages were meager. In order to fulfill this desire, I moved on to a large advertising agency, at that time the largest and the best in class in India. So, as you can see, it’s been quite the varied path for me, from a science graduate who failed to become a doctor, to my efforts to become an accountant on the rebound at a leading firm of chartered accountants, to a manufacturing company that gave me the opportunity to move to IT (thankfully so, as clearly debit and credit were not my cup of tea!) and finally to the informal ambience of an advertising agency. In hindsight, I wouldn’t call this a waste of years, but rather an enriching experience of learning new processes, client interaction and people management. All through this twist-filled journey, I had many mentors that helped me choose wisely and focus on my strengths and skills to help shape my destiny.
It was the advertising agency, however, that I fell in love with immediately, with the very informal culture that it employed. It is here that I made everlasting friends and acquaintances, who still keep in touch with me years after I parted company. I was introduced to the world of jazz and blues, too, as the agency was involved in many advertising campaigns promoting the various musical fests in the city – Jazz Yatra & the Mahindra Blues Festival, to name a couple. These fests exposed me to jazz legends such as Stan Getz, Charlie Mingus, Al Jarreau & Earl Klugh, and blues greats like Buddy Guy and Taj Mahal.
It is also here that the dream of traveling finally came to fruition, with the company arranging overseas conferences for the IT department, appropriately called the Systems Services Department back then. The trips were to countries in the “neighborhood,” such as Sri Lanka and Nepal. Other journeys to more distant lands followed, proudly funded by what I earned and saved. Chicago was the first stop in the list, as I had and still have family there. This was followed by many others, and hopefully I will continue to travel and see many more countries and cities across the globe, notwithstanding pandemics of the type that we are currently experiencing.
It was also at this time that I learned about ISACA and the ISACA Mumbai Chapter from one of my subordinates, who prodded me to register for the ongoing CISA review class, already four sessions old. It was in the course of that conversation that I had with him that I suddenly realized that I had no real certification or qualification of merit that I could truly boast about, other than a BSc in chemistry and microbiology, subjects which were at a total disconnect with what I was doing for a living. I promptly registered for the remainder of the course and completed it and, surprise of surprises, passed the CISA exam at my first attempt that December. I earned my certification the following March. Since then, there’s been no looking back. I realized my true potential in the field of information security and went on to qualify as an ISO 27001 Lead Implementer and then an ISO 27001 Lead Auditor. The crowning glory and the highlight of my days of an implementer was to get an award from the ISACA Mumbai Chapter for the best implementation of security that year for my company and project. So, you see, I have been on both sides of the fence – an implementer of information security for my company, and now I am associated with a certification body to audit this standard.
I also decided that it was time to give back to the organization that gave me my first certification, so I began volunteering for the ISACA Mumbai Chapter. I was elected to the board of the chapter in 2016. Four years later, I have had the privilege and honor to lead the board as its president, and I thoroughly enjoy what I am doing, assisted by a wonderful team of professionals. One other privilege that I have been fortunate to have had as a chapter leader has been to travel overseas to ISACA conferences and meet and network with the global community, making new friends in the process. This has truly brought out the extrovert in me.
By now, ISACA has become part of my DNA, flowing through my bloodstream, while travel and music provide the necessary supplements for a full and enriching life.
