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Ruby Anandajayasekeram

Ruby Anandajayasekeram is a Senior Legal Counsel at Shell Australia and works virtually from Melbourne with culturally diverse teams from around the world supporting Shell’s global downstream acquisitions, divestments and post-closing team in the Asia Pacific region. She has been with Shell since 2004 and has worked in both their Melbourne and London offices supporting a variety of Shell’s businesses. Prior to that, she worked at Allens Arthur Robinson (now Allens Linklaters). Ruby is passionate about and actively champions diversity and inclusion initiatives both within her organisation and externally, with a particular focus on the legal profession. She has had many successful mentoring relationships over her career, both as a mentor and as a mentee.

Keerthi Ravi

Keerthi has recently completed a Judge’s Associateship in the Supreme Court and has recently co-founded the Diverse Women’s Mentoring Association, a non-profit association which matches diverse women with mentors from professional services backgrounds, largely based on her experiences of being mentored by wonderful people such as Ruby.

Ruby’s story

Education, sacrifice, family

From as early as I can remember, my parents instilled three core values in me—the power of education, the significance of sacrifice, and the importance of family. It is impossible to understand who I am without understanding my parents’ story. Both Sri Lankan, they met and fell in love at university. Their love story and marriage challenged both the religion and the class distinction norms of the day. Despite their different backgrounds, they both recognised the power of education to provide opportunities in life and sought high educational success for all their children.

Sacrifice and family values are an integral part of their story. When my dad received a scholarship to study his PhD in Canada, my parents needed to choose whether to go their separate ways or marry and move overseas so my dad could pursue his doctorate. Recognising the long-term value of this opportunity for their future family, they left their country of origin as newlyweds with only 75cents to their name and a strong determination to build a better life for their children—a typical migrant story but also a decision which required my mum to sacrifice her own education and career. At this time, the civil war had started in Sri Lanka, so my family continued to follow my dad’s career and the different countries it took him before we migrated to Australia.

How I see myself and how others see me

I am often asked the question ‘Where are you from?’ I respond by saying I’m Australian, which then triggers the next question ‘Yes, but where are you really from?’ How do I answer that question when although my parents are Sri Lankan, the first time I visited the island was only two years ago? Let alone that I was born in Canada, grew up in Kenya and Tanzania where I went to international schools, had short stints in Mexico and Jamaica, all before coming to Australia at the age of thirteen.

These conversations have made me realise that there are two realities in life—your own image of yourself, and then how others see you. Navigating your career, and life more broadly is about understanding and reconciling these two realities. Mentoring affords an opportunity to both mentors and mentees to facilitate this understanding and reconciliation.

Others will often judge you first by the way you look and, if you look different to them, will assume you come from a different cultural heritage and possess different values. Yet whilst appearing different to many around me, I don’t define myself by this outward difference. Instead, whilst celebrating my cultural heritage, I define myself as Australian and believe that hard work and merit have been the basis of my achievements, and that I have been judged on those factors alone rather than on the colour of my skin or my cultural heritage.

That is not to say I have been immune from biases and assumptions in my career, but from my perspective, these probably stemmed from my gender rather than my cultural heritage. After having my daughter, people (with good intentions) sometimes assumed my commitment to family would be at the expense of my career, without necessarily asking me whether those assumptions were valid. In some ways, I similarly applied my own unconscious biases, values and assumptions when I became a mother. Having been brought up with a mother at home and a father who worked, I naturally assumed it was my role to be the primary carer. But I also wanted to have it all—seamlessly balance motherhood with a successful, uninterrupted career. When I tried to return to full time work, I really struggled and this dream hit a reality check. My wonderful husband stepped in and offered to work part-time to care for our daughter, and when we discussed it, it never occurred to me that we could have had that conversation earlier—I had simply assumed it was my job to care for our child and juggle my career while he continued to work full-time. Everyone has a different journey and needs to work out what works best for them as a family. Once he stepped in, I have really understood the value of letting go, to ask for support and not attempt to control everything.

Balancing motherhood and my career has brought to the foreground the importance of challenging traditional assumptions and biases in order to reconcile how I see myself and how others see me.

Encouraging this thought process in a mentee is an essential aspect of being a mentor.

‘I felt honoured and privileged when Keerthi contacted me.’

I have experienced the power of mentoring as a mentee myself. I have been lucky to be mentored by some amazing people throughout my career and I attribute a large part of my success to mentors believing in me, encouraging me to move outside of my comfort zone, and actively sponsoring me. My first mentoring experience was provided through a professional association, and recently I looked back on the application form and was surprised to see that I had asked for a female mentor. I can’t recall why I made this request but I suspect I was looking for a role model in the days when senior women were in the minority in the legal profession, and perhaps I thought I would feel more comfortable and safer opening up to someone who I thought would be more like me and would have faced similar challenges. As it turned out, I was matched to a male mentor who was amazing, who challenged my thinking and pushed me to think laterally and out of the box in a way that I may not have experienced otherwise. One of the most valuable pieces of advice I remember receiving from him was ‘Don’t wait until someone recognises you. Put your hand up. Tell people and be heard.’

This advice resonated with me in the context of my cultural upbringing. Early in my career, I had been receiving feedback from my peers and manager that I possessed excellent judgment and was really good at my work, but lacked confidence in meetings. I was mystified by this feedback. I would never have described myself as lacking in confidence, so what was going on? Working through this feedback was a pivotal moment because I realised it was my cultural values at play. Having been brought up to respect my elders and not argue back, no one ever told me that when you go into meeting with senior people that set of values is not relevant. What I viewed as showing respect, others viewed as lack of assertiveness.

As my own career flourished I began to realise that a small investment of my own time can make an enormous difference to the careers of others. I am energised by mentoring others, actively sponsoring them and opening up my networks—and it’s a two way street—I continue to learn so much from my mentees.

My neighbour, Randell, asked me one day about how people approach me to be their mentor. ‘Well, they just ask—simple as that, or it happens organically’ I replied. ‘Really—that’s all there is to it? Then I’m going to introduce you to this amazing woman. I think you would connect really well and I think she could benefit from just meeting you.’

I then met Keerthi, this amazingly talented woman who had already accomplished so much so early in her career. Keerthi and I had an initial natural and comfortable connection because of our cultural heritage and common understanding of cultural value systems which helped to establish trust quickly.

There were a lot of things that Keerthi did not have to explain to me because I ‘understood’. But it was our diversity of experiences and perspectives that brought the most value to our relationship.

Early on, I knew that Keerthi could achieve whatever she wanted. Yet Keerthi described herself in quite narrow ways. I encouraged her to think outside the box, to think more broadly and to consider other options. This is a key role for mentors—to challenge your mentee’s thinking and stimulate them to think differently, to help them see things that they might not see because of their own blind spots, and to help them maximise their potential.

I also recognised the importance of connecting Keerthi to some of my network. ‘Interested in in-house roles? Then let me connect you with …’, ‘Considering working overseas? Then you must talk to …’. Asking is an incredibly powerful thing that women in particular don’t do enough of. People are always prepared to share their experiences or provide advice. Just asking someone for a chat can lead to so many different opportunities. I saw my role as facilitating the connection, and then Keerthi could make of it as she wanted.

The special role of mentors

I believe in having a diverse range of many mentors throughout your life. I see them like a board of advisors, with each bringing a different perspective and lens to situations at different times in your life.

I believe mentors have a number of special roles to play in helping to shape their mentee’s career. First, mentors give their mentees confidence—they are able to see your potential when you might not see it and they can instil confidence in mentees to feel comfortable about speaking up about their own achievements. Mentors validate that it’s okay to talk about your accomplishments without sounding like you are blowing your own trumpet. Secondly, mentors are not just there to build confidence they can also help to build visibility. The relationship may also naturally evolve into sponsorship, which is what happened between Keerthi and I. Sponsorship is powerful. Mentors can build their mentee’s visibility through introductions—just one sentence in an email to a network will resonate and they will take it further.

Tapping into the diversity of experience in any relationship helps each one of us realise our human potential. Yet often as migrants we just want to integrate and be like everyone else. As kids we want the ham and cheese sandwich for school lunch, not the rice and curry mum packs in our school lunchbox. Funny though, how all the kids at school wanted to swap their ham and cheese sandwiches for lunches—they appreciated our difference more than we did, as kids perhaps we should have celebrated ours more.

Shell has provided me with a great career where I continue to learn and be challenged. I’ve worked in London as well as Melbourne and in my most recent role, Shell has been incredibly supportive in enabling me to work virtually, as the only lawyer based in Melbourne (my hometown) supporting matters in the Asia Pacific region. I also lead a global community of Shell lawyers, designed to capture, share and leverage our legal knowledge and experience in the areas of health, safety, security, environment and social performance. It’s been a great role where I have had the opportunity to work with culturally diverse teams from all around the world, and continues to be a great adventure for me.

Shell uses the iceberg of differences diagram to explain the dynamics of diversity and I think this is a really useful metaphor. There are the characteristics you possess that are above the water line—the obvious things people see about you, to do with your gender, age and cultural background. Then there are the characteristics that are more hidden, or below the waterline. These may include your life experience, values, perspectives, thought processes, education, family background, motivators, or status in the community—all the other factors that together make up who you are as a person. Diversity and inclusiveness (and in my view, successful mentoring) is about recognising, understanding and including the whole person, not just what is obvious and can be seen. Once those underlying characteristics are activated, we can bring our whole selves to a relationship and realise our full potential. We are all different, we all have different experiences and we can all learn from each other. Having many mentors from diverse backgrounds is not only beneficial for individuals, but also the workplace and the broader community.

I was honoured and privileged that Keerthi reached out to me—I have loved being her mentor and I have learned so much from her.

Keerthi’s story

I was born in India but became a ‘citizen of the world’ almost immediately. My family followed my father’s career and the places to which it took us included Oman, Kuala Lumpur and eventually Australia. Fitting in to different cultures and environments was not a problem for me from an early age—attending international schools meant I developed friendships with children from diverse backgrounds as a natural way of growing up.

I grew up with a very strong and consistent message from my parents and grandparents—that you must be educated, and that you have a responsibility to your family and generations to come to do something worthwhile with that education. My parents sacrificed their own careers by moving to Australia so that we, their children, could have a better life. This sacrifice came with an implied responsibility, that the good education I was given be used to carve out a better life for myself and generations to come, and that studying hard and building a successful career was the path to such prosperity.

The power of one

My parents often remind me of my passion to lead as a young child—being the class prefect at school, being in charge and bossing my friends around, and telling everyone what to do. Then, for the first time, when I arrived in Australia I had difficulty assimilating at school and for a while I totally lost my confidence. I was first enrolled in a school where I was the only non-Anglo Saxon student in a school full of Anglo Saxon boys and girls where my differences—e.g. my accent (which was hard to pinpoint given the diversity of education I had already received), cultural habits (bringing Indian food to school was quite peculiar) and desire to be competitive in the classroom (I found it bizarre that there were no exams at primary school level)—I believe, damaged by self confidence. I subsequently moved to Cheltenham Primary School (a credit to my father who saw how miserable I was) and went on to Macrobertson Girls High School, both schools where there were many students from diverse cultural backgrounds, and suddenly I wasn’t the only different girl anymore, and I flourished again. I recall one teacher at Cheltenham Primary in particular, who took an interest in me, recognised my potential and instilled in me the confidence to overcome my apprehensions and insecurities. Almost overnight I totally changed, reverting back to my natural leadership talents and within six months I became school captain. Restoring my confidence in this way was an incredible legacy left by that one teacher.

‘You must meet Ruby. She’s done it all.’

I always wanted to be a lawyer from a very young age and I followed that dream. After graduating my law degree I began working at Corrs, a large commercial law firm. It was here where I confided to Randell, a work colleague, friend and mentor, about my aspiration to facilitate mentoring opportunities for women with diverse cultural backgrounds. The initiative, the Diverse Women’s Mentoring Association (DWMA), was launched in 2017 but back then it was still a dream. At the same time, I had just been offered the role of a Judge’s Associate and was contemplating whether this would be the best next career move for me. After confiding in Randell about these dilemmas he told me: ‘You must meet this neighbour of mine, called Ruby. She has a very similar cultural background and upbringing to you.’ He had been talking about Ruby all year, and would speak very highly of her: ‘She’s done it all, is a bit older than you and has a very successful career. She might be a good person for you to get to know’ he said.

It was as simple as connecting with Ruby on LinkedIn and the relationship immediately blossomed. The hallmark of our relationship is minimal rules; other than agreeing to confidentiality, meeting regularly and me coming prepared, the relationship has been shaped by my particular circumstances and needs at the time.

I have had the benefit of many professional mentors throughout my career and I credit much of my success to their influence. However there is something special about the relationship with Ruby. We have only known each other for six months, but having a similar background, family experiences and values allowed us to communicate in a deeper way and I felt safe in sharing my more personal family journey with Ruby for the first time.

What do we discuss in our mentoring conversations? On a professional level, initially when I was at a career crossroads, I was looking for advice from a woman who had gone on that path before me. Looking back to those early days I recall being very targeted and funnelled in my vision—either stay in a law firm or go to the bar.

Ruby helped me broaden my horizons to consider possibilities I had not thought about. She opened up prospects, challenged my self-doubts and provided me with an assurance that I could explore new paths I otherwise wouldn’t have had the courage to pursue.

Ruby facilitated an initial connection with Allens Linklaters (of which she is an alumnus) which, in my view, played an integral part in securing my next role with Allens Linklaters, which I will commence in 2018.

These days our conversations range from how to address the challenges of being a culturally diverse female to family and personal challenges. The law profession seems to be coming to terms with gender diversity but still has a long way to go in accepting cultural diversity, in my view.

Ruby taught me to listen to my instincts and back my own judgment. These days if I am only eighty percent sure about a decision I am much more likely to proceed, whereas previously I would have to feel one-hundred percent sure. I am definitely less risk averse these days.

Just as importantly Ruby opened up her networks to enable me to speak with others in the legal and corporate worlds. I feel honoured that she had that level of faith in me. It’s unlikely the relationship will come to an end; it’s more likely to continue on a more informal basis. These days I just pick up the phone to Ruby—the days of formally requesting meetings, carefully crafting emails and double-checking her availability were important at the start, but are now behind me. I am about to move to Sydney and start a new phase in my career, so I will have a lot of questions to explore with Ruby.

On the home front, conversations these days are being dominated by my parents’ desire for me to start a family—and I admit, I’m resisting being told what to do. I hear them say ‘time to look for a husband, the body clock is ticking, time’s running out, we will always be there to babysit’—not that they want me to give up my hard-won career for motherhood, far from it. They have an expectation that I have multi-tasked all my life and it’s time to throw this into the mix. It gets back to sacrifice. Mum reminds her she had to give up things for her family and it’s the same with me—‘don’t be too selfish,’ she urges, ‘think about what’s right for everyone at a point in time.’ Despite my resistance I realise her advice is a good reality check—I do want to be a mother at some stage, but at twenty-seven years of age, I reckon I have still got time to focus on my career for a while longer.

Sometimes I wonder if culturally diverse women have an added complexity to this parenthood challenge. If their cultural heritage demands women take on the total caring role and stigmatise men who would welcome taking on a caring role, the challenge to be both a professional woman and a mother can be enormous. My advice to women is make sure the person you marry values you as an equal and is willing to make their own sacrifices at certain stages—there’s that word again: sacrifice.

I’ve learned so much

I used to believe that it was important to have a mentor from the same workplace who knows the workplace dynamics, now I am not so sure. Having a mentor removed from your workplace can be hugely beneficial. Ruby has no affiliation with the law firms or workplaces I have worked in and that strengthens the transparency of the relationship. Ruby can provide an honest, objective perspective and, as she does not know any of my bosses I can say anything to her without being concerned about breaching boundaries or that it will come back to haunt me.

My mentoring experience with Ruby also helped shape a better mentoring program through the DWMA. Being able to reflect on my own experiences, I can ask more targeted questions of mentors and mentees and structure the formal program in a more meaningful way. Ruby has also helped grow the association through opening up her networks who have subsequently offered to mentor young diverse women aspiring to become lawyers.

Reflections

Advice to mentors from Ruby

A few reflections I would share with other mentors or anyone considering becoming a mentor:

1 Make a difference—mentoring someone involves a very small investment of your time: for you as a mentor, it will be an enriching and rewarding learning experience, for your mentee, the mentoring opportunity could change their life.

2 Mentor many and mentor people who are different from you. The more different someone is to you, the more effort it may take to engage with them—but stick with it, it’s worth it! When you mentor someone different from you, you will see the world from their perspective and they will see the world from yours—what you both learn from those experiences will help you to embrace diversity, feel more comfortable with difference, and more importantly will make you a more inclusive person. These experiences will also help to create the next generation of inclusive leaders.

3 Don’t underestimate the power of your networks and be generous in creating connection opportunities for your mentee. If you feel comfortable promoting your mentee, sponsor them—it can make a huge difference to their career.

4 Successful mentoring relationships can’t be forced. In my experience, the most successful relationships evolve organically and both parties must be authentic, committed to, and invested in nurturing the relationship.

Advice to new mentees from Keerthi

When reflecting on my own journey, there are two key insights around mentoring that I think are particularly relevant to culturally diverse women:

1 Don’t focus on cultural diversity. This may sound counter-intuitive, but don’t approach the relationship from a cultural similarity perspective, which can put an unhelpful lens on conversations. Instead, approach it with a fresh pair of eyes, as you would any new mentoring relationship. Being different is a strength and it’s good to celebrate difference but don’t let it define the relationship.

2 Avoid the echo chamber. When I started on my journey I believed I needed to connect with as many lawyers as possible. Eventually I learned not to fixate on selecting a mentor from a particular cultural background or professional or personal experience. If you want to be a successful lawyer, for example, it doesn’t necessarily mean lawyers must mentor you. Whilst there is comfort in common language and experiences, you risk only hearing what your peers think, and reinforcing your own worldview. Hearing the perspectives of someone from a different background can be very powerful. It may help open up opportunities you had never dreamed of, or have conversations about career directions that you may never have with someone in your own professions. The world is a small place and there is no such thing as a bad mentor or bad connection. There are only a few degrees of separation from you and the rest of the world.

Whilst similar cultural heritage and shared values facilitated an initial connection between Keerthi and Ruby, ultimately the strength, substance and value of their relationship thrived from the diversity of their experiences and the different perspectives that they brought to the table.