Ashvini Jakhar, President of the Graduate Student Board (GSB) Mohali campus, won the Global Student Leadership Award at the recently-held Global Business Conference 2013.  Here is an excerpt of an interview with the awardee.
 
What are the leadership principles that you followed during your journey at ISB?
While every individual has a different leadership style, I would like to mention what worked for me. Few attributes that really helped me were: delegating the GSB President’s office duties with absolute honesty and integrity (leading by example), adopting transparent processes within the student community (to gain trust & support of colleagues) and propagating a sense of both individual and collective accountability  (to deliver & show tangible results ).The last but most important is showing humility and sensitivity towards classmates since, student office bearers deal with people from different backgrounds that have varying sensitivities.
 

What was the nomination process like? What does the GBF look for in a student leader?
Each year, the Graduate Business Forum (GBF) invites nominations for the Global Student Leadership Awards and Responsible Leadership Awards. The Student Leadership Award was inaugurated by the GBF in 1991 to recognise leadership and innovation at the graduate business level. This award recognises MBA/PGP students who have had a significant impact on their school, programme, or the larger community or society, while still pursuing their studies. Nominations can be made by either the Graduate Student Body and/ or members of faculty.

Can you elaborate on some of your initiatives at Mohali campus?

When I started my journey as GSB President of Mohali Campus, my primary focus was to lay a strong foundation for the GSB, achieve the highest degree of inter-campus integration, and to ensure a world class campus-agnostic ISB experience at our newly inaugurated campus. Various initiatives such as the unified placement policy, revised intercampus exchange policy that allows seamless exchange of students across ISB’s campuses, and events such as the Leadership Summit and ISB-AISEC Y2B conference ensured that Mohali campus embraces the same glory and place amid corporate and academia circles as the Hyderabad campus. I am sure that besides these initiatives, a very successful placement season in the first year itself has reiterated the “One School-Two campuses” philosophy of the School very well.

You have had a great impact in the Mohali campus. As president of the Graduate Student Board, what is your fondest memory?
The impact I was able to make to our new campus wouldn’t have been possible without the unconditional support of my GSB Core, professional clubs and social club presidents and my classmates. Also, the administration supported us unquestionably through the year and gave us a platform where we could perform and make a difference to our class.
 
As president of Graduate Student Board, I was entrusted by my classmates for the smooth functioning of GSB at Mohali and it’s indeed a pleasure to look back and see that within the last 11 months we have laid a foundation to a very robust GSB with fully functional 13 professional clubs, 13 social clubs and 08 core councils.
 
Also, despite the initial teething problems, as a class, we have been able to meet the high bar of ISB experience espoused at the Hyderabad campus.
 
This great opportunity to lay a foundation for GSB at Mohali and leave a legacy for future classes is the most gratifying experience for me!

Any advice to the next class?

I believe ISB is a sea of opportunities, it offers everyone an unprecedented opportunity to excel in the field of his or her choice. So I would strongly urge the students in the incoming class to follow their heart and pursue any activity – academic or extracurricular – that enthralls them.