In the first of our W!T Interview Series, Neetha Jagan – Skills Leader, Professional Consulting Services (Travel Solutions), Sabre Global Capability Center shares her thoughts on how ‘empathy’ plays a big role in shaping one’s career.   What’s your current role at Sabre and what excites you about your work the most? In my current role, I am responsible for skills enhancement for our Professional Services, Consulting and Support employees. This involves creating different learning initiatives, experiences, platforms and projects to upskill our employees on key skills and competencies and help bridge their knowledge gap. Why is empathy important and more so, now? According to me, in order to understand why empathy is important, it is important to first understand what it means in the current context of work. From emotional researchers’ standpoint it’s “the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.”. Now imagine having this ability with your customers, team members, co-workers and pretty much anyone you work or interact with. It automatically helps you resolve conflicts, establish trust, boost productivity, improve team morale and build lasting relationships at work which has a direct impact on business results.  In these times when everyone is going through change and uncertainty, empathy is the need of the hour. When we feel understood, especially in challenging times, it is motivation enough to power through any situation in work or personal life. If you Google statistics and facts about the importance of empathy in organizations, you will see that empathy is one of the most critical skills that helps in almost every area of work. Can empathy be taught? How can it be practiced? Like all behavioral and leadership skills, empathy can be taught. But the success really depends on how one applies the learning! Just like any muscle in the body can be strengthened and developed by exercising, empathy (or any other behavioral skill) can be improved if we consistently and consciously apply it in our daily interactions. For best results, it needs to be understood in its true sense (comes with experience!) and practiced before mastering it. We all grow and learn with experience and with that our ability to empathize gets stronger. Share your thoughts on careers in tech for women and what can we do more for young women to consider it? How do you see W!T@Sabre contributing to this in future? Firstly, I feel privileged to be part of the core team of W!T@Sabre even though I am not a pure-bred technologist. Having said that, my daily interactions are with men and women in technology across teams and across departments. I am blown by some of the super intelligent women in our organization that I have come across who have created magic using technology which provides cutting edge solutions for some of the most prestigious airlines in the world. So yes, every young woman who considers a career in technology or related to technology can make a difference in whatever industry they choose to be and create wonders! We have a responsibility to inspire young women to consider it by being great role models. Another thing I feel we should more actively do is – ensure we reduce the gap between education and industry by including application-based learning in the engineering curriculum which in turn will make more women consider a career in technology. In future, I hope through our CSR initiatives WIT@Sabre team can help in this area. What according to you is the biggest challenge that prevents women from progressing in their careers? I think societal pressure, family commitments and other external challenges can cause roadblocks. But if we have the determination and the right mindset, all these external challenges can be overcome. I believe if we are persistent, we can achieve anything – even in the face of adversity. We have so many examples on social media of children, men and women accomplishing extraordinary feats despite their situations being non-conducive. So, I firmly believe the power is within us. Give one example of an initiative that you may have experienced in your career that made you feel ‘wow’! We have launched many learning initiatives at Sabre and I feel ‘wow’ that each one of them gets support from our leadership team and is well received by our employees. For example, whether it is a full- fledged global learning initiative or a short virtual knowledge sharing session or an initiative like the Employee Development Day we had at our Bangalore GCC last year – I am amazed at how successful they turn out to be. This exemplifies the ‘wow’ learning culture at Sabre. What is the one thing no one knows about you or wish they knew? Well, not many know that I barely spoke English till I was in high school! And today I specialize in creating and delivering global learning projects for multinational companies. I hope this inspires everyone out there who have self-doubts to overcome them and move ahead with focus and determination.