Born and raised on a farm in a remote village in Gurugram, NAB India’s Kavita spent her childhood tending to crop like wheat, millets, and taking care of the cattle on the family farm.

Unfortunately, due to financial struggles they had to sacrifice many basics, such as a quality education. Despite this, her parents had a strong desire to provide their children with a good education.

“My mother took up another job to fund our schooling fees,” Kavita said. “This eventually helped us move to a better school within the village.”

The new school was based on English curriculum and, as Kavita was not raised in an English speaking home, she had to quickly learn to keep up with her peers and studies.

“I focussed on reading English newspapers and career magazines, which helped build my communication skills,” she said.

“My sister and I topped our school and received a small scholarship, which was critical in advancing our education.”

During this time she discovered her fascination with IT and the corporate world through career magazines and ultimately decided to pursue engineering.

“My sister and I both pursued Bachelors in Engineering and Information Technology and had to take education loans to cover the costs,” she said.

“We ended up being the first women in our village to earn engineering degrees and land corporate jobs.”

After graduating, Kavita started her career in a service-based organisation, and received training in data warehousing before gradually transitioning to big data.

“I then had the opportunity to move organisations and build my cloud technical skills by working in Google Cloud,” she said. Kavita always wanted to work in the financial industry and she got her chance just over 18 months ago, becoming the first person in the data delivery domain at NAB India.

“I genuinely love what I do and every day at NAB brings new experiences. Handling customers financial data comes with the responsibility of maintaining data privacy and security.

“This role has deepened my understanding of financial metrics, regulatory requirements, and the critical role data plays in strategic decision-making within the financial sector.”

Kavita’s passion for learning continues at NAB. She was one of the first to complete the Databricks Certified Data Engineer Associate certification, and she’s now completing a postgraduate degree in AI and Data Science.

“As a mother of a two-year-old daughter, support from my People Leaders to balance my professional and personal responsibilities, as well as continue to pursue further education opportunities, has been key,” she said.

“I hope to one day inspire her and many others, just like my mother did, to stay positive, work hard, and never give up on your dreams,” she said. “Your efforts will eventually pay off.”

Visit the NAB Careers website to find out more about a career at NAB.