From Delhi she moved to the megapolis of Mumbai, and professionally in this role, she headed the HR function for the Mumbai operations of a UK based, IT strategy consulting company. She got an opportunity to work at the Head Office in London for a couple of months and that was her 1st real exposure to working with a multinational workforce and that’s also when the travel bug bit. So, she and her husband moved to Dubai, UAE. Here, she performed a dual role in work – being responsible for the Talent & Performance Management processes at the Head Office as well as being the HR Business partner for the Retail division of UAE’s leading retailer for technology products, Jumbo Electronics.

The desire to explore and learn about new cultures continued to drive her and as a family they then relocated to the beautiful beach city of Mombasa, the 2nd largest city in the magnificent country of Kenya. She learnt lessons in facing obstacles with grit and grace from the resilient ebullient individuals encountering in this slice of paradise. Being in a new country, with a new-born baby, she opted to enjoy motherhood and cherished every moment of seeing her child grow.

From Kenya, they looked westwards and an absolutely different cultural experience awaited as they moved to the USA. Living along the Hudson river in New Jersey, gazing at the picture-perfect Manhattan skyline from her living room window was a dream come true. Strolling down Times Square listening to a veritable explosion of multiple languages, seeing people from different nationalities co-exist peacefully made her think how the world can be a beautiful place if we can learn to appreciate and enjoy what makes us all different.

Keen to now return to the homeland, the family shifted to Mumbai. Being back in familiar surroundings and with her child more grown up, She started experiencing a desire to get back to the corporate workspace. At the same time, feeling a sense of apprehension - ‘will I be able to successfully cope up with all the things that might have changed professionally’? The period that followed this questioning herself was an uncomfortable one. On one hand, she wanted to return and be the high performing individual she used to be and she knew she still could be. On the other hand, she was plagued with self-doubt – will I be accepted, is my knowledge outdated, what if I make a mistake’. These and similar concerns kept her in a state of inertia for a while.

To shake off this feeling, she decided to look objectively on why she believed she could be successful. She reached out to ex-colleagues, bosses, friends and took feedback from them on what they perceived as her strengths and what they thought she could focus on improving. The resultant feedback took her by surprise. She discovered her many hidden strengths as well as improvement opportunities. She chose to remind herself of the former to buttress her self-belief and took steps to redress the latter.

And, as the popular quote by Paulo Coelho goes “when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it”, around the same time, the Tata Group launched, possibly the 1st of its kind, return-to-work programme for women returners, called the Second Career Internship Programme, SCIP. Nidhi was fortunate to be selected in the 1st few batches of SCIP, where co-incidentally and interestingly the project she was offered, was an assignment in the sector she had started her career in initially, the hospitality sector.
Since then, she has not looked back. It was during her tenure with the Taj Group of Hotels that she did another self-assessment and realized that the area of human resources where she had most enjoyed working and had had maximum impact was in the space of organisation and leadership development, and that’s the area that she decided to specialise in her 2nd innings.