Dr Chitra Anand

Over the past several decades, we have become a more untrustworthy society. 2020 accelerated this into 2022-23 with a set of implications that has exposed a set of flaws – This includes flaws in institutions, businesses, governments, and media. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, we are in a “cycle of distrust.” This is a result of an epidemic of misinformation which has led to a wider spread of mistrust amongst societal institutions and leaders around the world. This has left many of us in existential crisis – distrust is now a default emotion.

Businesses have an opportunity to step up and intervene – in a new kind of leadership, where trust is at the core. Business partners who trust each other spend less time and energy focused on self preservation. When trust is present both sides achieve better economic outcomes.

2022 recipient of The Globe and Mail’s Changemakers Award, Dr. Chitra Anand has hypothesized and tested a ‘Trust Trifecta’: Humanity, Reciprocity, and Practice. During this session, Dr. Anand will share insights into the impact of the intersection of these notions and when met in this specific order – we can all benefit from the outcomes. Dr Anand has designed this as an immersive, multi-sensory keynote, featuring music with M’ Michele, an electronic harpist with a masters in linguistics.

With marketplaces being disrupted at a rate like never before, companies need to re-think how they operate. To succeed, modern businesses need to foster the creativity of their team by providing an environment that promotes constant innovation. In this talk, Dr. Anand explores how Intrapreneurship can be used as a gateway for organizations to achieve sustainable innovation. She will show audiences how to harnesses the entrepreneurial drive within an existing organization to foster new ideas, creative thinking which will provide companies the problem-solving mindset to succeed in an ever-changing world. With over 20 years spent in the technology sector working for some industry-leading organizations including Open Text, TELUS, and Microsoft, Chitra has led disruptive projects and initiatives which have created new ways for organizations to operate and think about the way in which they do business. Her book The Greenhouse Approach (a mandatory read for the Forbes School of Business MBA Program) shows organizations how to reimagine current norms and structures and develop a culture of innovation.

Learning objectives:
1. How leaders can practice intrapreneurship within their organizations, identify the true agents of change, and mobilize these agents to act.
2. Practical ways to apply Greenhouse principles that will drive intentional innovation within your organization.
3. Develop methods to best support the intrapreneurs that live inside your organization.

Mental toughness is a term that is gaining more and more momentum both in the workplace and in our daily life. Mental toughness is an umbrella term that entails positive psychological resources, which are crucial across a wide range of achievement contexts and in the domain of mental health and business.

Mental toughness has been studied as an important individual difference factor that allows individuals to deal effectively with challenges and to persist under pressure. High pressure and stress is a constant and has been for hundreds of years and mental toughness is the gateway to overcome and sustain a new paradigm of performance.

Dr. Anand through her decades of research has uncovered some fundamentals of mental toughness – the core ingredients and ways we can start to turn this into a practice. It is the process through which we do things on a more regular basis through the acknowledgment and dedication of this.

Through this critical talk Dr. Anand will help us understand how high stress situations are in fact a stimulus for growth.

She will:
• unpack how the journey and the process to an end goal no matter how challenging will enable us to uncover the fundamentals of mental fitness.
• help us train our brains and mindset in a way that will start us to reframe how we endure situations in the business world and life through ideas such as neuroplasticity (as a broad concept that has emerged in the context of sports training).

These are a set of attributes that allow a  person to become a better thinker and performer through the ability to cope with difficult training and difficult competitive situations and emerge without losing confidence.

What is an intrapreneur? An intrapreneur is an entrepreneur within a large, complex organization: a startup within a company. These people spur innovation, creative thinking, and new ideas, driven by passion and genuine love for their work. But how do you identify these people within your company, and encourage their good work? Chitra Anand is a lifelong intrapreneur and top researcher in the field.

In this talk, she breaks down the traits of an intrapreneur—fearless; agile; “greenhouse” thinkers who sprout and germinate ideas, plans, and execution strategies; and can easily navigate an organization—and how to find and mine talent within your company. She explains how to bridge the gap in organizations that are set up against intrapreneurship. And, she provides practical takeaways for your company, focusing on deliberate innovation that rapidly responds to market trends.

In today’s global market, consumers are more empowered than ever. Intrapreneurs know how to meet consumer demand quickly, and ensure your company doesn’t get left behind.

Dr. Chitra Anand has worked in the tech space for over 20 years with some of the worlds most notable organizations. Women who want to study, work in, and lead businesses in science and technology have much to add and should be proactively empowered to do so. Only 18 percent of undergraduate computer science degrees and 26 percent of computing jobs are held by women. It’s worse at the top of the corporate world — just 5 percent of leadership positions in the technology industry are held by women.

A better question might be, how can we collectively work to improve women’s participation in the tech industry at each key stage of their careers? The problem is far deeper than stats. They are embedded in our culture, language and unconscious biases that we all hold; both as men and women. How do we uncover what these are and how do we take those insights to drive real sustained change? How do we continue to trailblaze knowing these challenges in a hyper competitive market?