Major Vandana Sharma is a woman leader, entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, a mentor , coach and an ex military officer from the Indian Army. She has twenty one years of diverse experience across multiple sectors. Her contributions include many value chain projects and people initiatives across organizations like Indian Army, Wipro Ltd, GMR Group, TNT, Teamlease and Myntra. She was the Chief People Officer at HolidayIQ before foraying into her entrepreneurial journey in Aug 2017 when she founded StartupPeopleConsulting.
Vandana has had two successful careers : One as a Military Officer for a decade where she has been part of the elite Indian Armed Forces and broken several stereotypes around Women in Uniform. She has demonstrated skilful combat leadership in the War and peace missions for India, establishing commendable contributions in an otherwise male dominated profession. Her contribution to the Kargil War of 1999 have been recorded and commended in the Military History of Army Ordnance Corps.
Subsequent to that, she forayed into the Corporate World and seamlessly integrated to lead operations roles as well as Org transformational people practices across IT, Infrastructure, Logistics, education retail, Indian e commerce and M commerce companies over the last one decade.
She continues to learn as she moves, adapts from one industry to another and gladly shares her learnings on Entrepreneurial leadership, creativity, innovation and people practices with young startup enthusiasts , young companies and the future leaders of India Inc.
The sheer diversity of roles and her undaunted spirit demonstrated by taking up first time/ high risk projects across Industries has helped shape her personality as a brilliant Human Resource Leader. Vandana leads from the front and is admired by her female and male counterparts equally. Women and young college students across Indian Business schools and colleges, draw high inspiration from her to stay fearless and achieve more by having conviction in their dreams and working towards them.
Vandana mentors a lot of young Indian startup founders on building effective organisations and driving a more productive environment and culture within constraint environments. She is a renowned TEDx speaker and career coach and she also speaks at various women’s forums to inspire and motivate more women to live Independent and empowered lives across the country.
She has a life beyond work which includes passion for travel, fashion, marathon running, trekking, writing, cooking and being a happy mommy to two boys aged 14 and 18
