Sabina Ahmed Borah

How did Birmingham Business School shape who you are today?

Joining the University of Birmingham itself was a major turning point in my life. I moved to the UK about three years ago from India and came here for university. Ending up at the University of Birmingham has been a great experience. It's a culturally diverse environment, and I've met so many amazing people. The university curriculum itself focused on areas that I really wanted to study. I have a previous foundation in data engineering and data science, so I was also interested in the business and analytics side of things, which was covered in the programme.

Overall, it was a great year that unfortunately flew by really quickly. I got to meet some really great people and work on some really great assignments. The university also organised field trips for us to places like the Lake District and many other locations. It's been a great journey so far.

How did the Future Leaders Certificate benefit your career?

Looking back, I would genuinely say that the FLC programme has been something that really moved me towards the industry-led career that I was just about to start. Graduating from a business school with a business degree, it's so crucial and essential to have that sort of industry experience while you're studying. The FLC really provided that exposure. It was slightly different from the normal university curriculum and wasn't just tailored to training within the classroom. It was outside of that.

While doing my degree during the FLC programme, I was also part of supporting an initiative for Siemens. It was an AI delivery forecasting project for Siemens that we got the chance to work on, and I really felt that pushed me towards doing the kind of work that I'm currently doing right now.

For me, responsible leadership has a lot to do with being mindful of who you are leading. Not just leading people based on your own experiences, but also taking the time to understand where those people come from, their journeys, and their perspectives. The UK as a country, and this university in particular, are incredibly culturally diverse. Because of that, I feel responsible leadership is rooted in empathy. It's about understanding and valuing different perspectives.

What do you understand a responsible leader to be?

I feel like it has a lot to do with being mindful of who you are actually leading. Not just in the sense of leading that person from your own leadership experience, but also trying to understand, where do all these people come from? Trying to understand their journeys, their perspectives, because the UK as a country and this university in itself, we're all culturally, very diverse. Responsible leadership has got to do with the empathy that needs to be there.

How would you define responsible leadership in your line of work?

Currently I am part of an initiative in Accenture which is which has a lot to do with purpose health and well-being, inclusion diversity, and corporate citizenship for the company. It is about leading with value. This is the sort of thing that we really want to practice and we really preach. Drawing onto the values of responsible leadership, it's respecting and trying to understand where people come from and acknowledging their diversities. Just having that sort of empathy is also something that I am currently implementing in my current role as a purpose lead. Contributing to the community in terms of inclusion diversity initiatives should not only be constrained towards  the workspace that you're you're working at, it should be something that you incorporate in our day-to-day lives as much as possible and try to influence people that way in in the right way.