GreenBook Future List Spotlight: Mary Eapen

What’s a fun fact about yourself that would surprise people to know?

Ever since I was a child, I have loved the water. In fact, I have wonderful memories of learning to swim at my school’s pool, going fishing by the backwaters, and scuba-diving in the ocean. In my school days, I even got the opportunity to compete at the National Swimming Championships. More recently, I jumped at the chance to go swimming in the open ocean with some Whale Sharks. Barring the first few minutes wherein I almost accidentally dove into the open mouth of one whale shark, all the while feeling impossibly small in its massive presence. It was a truly wonderful experience – clear blue waters, a golden sun, and a big friendly giant fish to keep one company.

 

Since starting your career in MRX, what would you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?

I currently have almost 8 years of experience in driving value for businesses by leveraging data, analytics, models, and products. During this time, I have realized that the application of theory into action is what interests me the most and has driven my choice of projects. As a result, over the past few years besides the usual client engagements, I was proud to be responsible for developing and rolling out a suite of proprietary products for my organization where technology meets analytics to create actionable outcomes.

Moreover, I was deeply humbled and honoured to receive the ‘40 under 40 Data Scientists of India’ award for 2020 and of course the ‘GRIT Future List’ for 2021. With under 8 years of experience, being placed in such distinguished company is a great achievement. While these awards are a recognition of one’s efforts and the support and guidance from all those around, it truly inspires me to continue to strive hard.

 

If you could go back in time to when you first started your career, what advice would you give to your younger self?

Unfortunately, during my initial days in the corporate world – I was plagued by immense self-doubt. I would always overthink situations and second guess my decision to voice any of my concerns or questions. However, in time I realized that voicing my thoughts was valid and in a specific case a boon as it led to a necessary course correction for a critical customer project. Since that day, if I have a rational reason in mind for raising a potential concern I step past my self-doubt and discuss it with the floor. This now helps me to mitigate issues before they become ground realities for the team.

 

What do you think the key characteristics or qualities of a leader are? How does this play into MRX?

While many characteristics make a great leader, I believe the following are critical:

• Regularly coaching and mentoring your team
• Delegating tasks and providing autonomy to your team
• Fostering a culture of continuous learning within your team

In this manner, you are trusting your team to rise to the occasion, explore innovative solutions, get their hands dirty, and grow into their roles while fully knowing well that you have their back for any guidance and support. This will allow them to stand on their own two feet confidently, and successfully deliver all the while learning and growing.

 

If you could change one thing about insights, what would it be?

For some reason, the analytics and insights industry is enamoured with the usage of trendy catchphrases. A key example of this being ‘Artificial Intelligence’ or simply put ‘AI’.

Across the board, such terminologies are overused and hyped by both the media and the industry to such a degree that these have now become common everyday terms and thereby have lost their true meaning. The fact that advanced AI solutions make a great sales pitch for potential new customers further adds to this problem. Hopefully, in the future, Artificial Intelligence will rise to meet the high expectations already formed in the minds of the people.