Mr. Ratan Tata once said, “I don’t believe in taking the right decisions. I take decisions and then make them right.” In our life, we often come across many situations where we have to make a decision and we spend a lot of time thinking about the pros and cons in order to make the right decision. The journey of Veena Anand from a financial consultant to COO is the testimony of her taking decisions and making them right.

Veena Anand engages in an exclusive interaction with Women Entrepreneur Magazine.

Tell Us About The Subramaniam Academy Of Performing Arts And Take Us Through Your Educational And Professional Background. What Motivated You To Foray Into An Online Music Academy?

Subramaniam Academy of Performing Arts (SaPa), started by Dr. L Subramaniam and Kavita Krishnamurti Subramaniam, and led by Bindu and Ambi Subramaniam is trying to build the entire ecosystem of music education to make music a viable career choice and make it accessible to everyone.

“SaPa in Schools” program where we work with schools to incorporate music into their curriculum , reaching almost 30,000 students, and the SaPa Centres where we teach music to people from all the age groups are the two primary streams of SaPa. I joined Ernst & Young after completing my graduation. After completing my MBA from Great Lakes Institute of Management in Chennai, I joined Infosys as a Financial Consultant, and later on during a career break, I also pursued my Master’s in Economics. I took a leap of faith teaching Economics for senior school.

This was because of the belief that the Founder of the school had in me, when I met him for my child’s admission. This made me take the quick decision of entering the education field. After we moved to Singapore, I completed my Master’s in Educational Change and Leadership from Columbia University and NTU. Post my Master’s, I felt that whatever I have learned and what I have to offer will be more useful back home in India. With the support of my family, I came back and started working with CENTA where I led content creation for the teachers learning app. Later Bindu Subramaniam, CEO of SaPa and a good friend, convinced me to join SaPa to head the Outreach activities and after a year of heading Outreach, I was promoted to head all the operations of SaPa.

Shoulder Including The Challenges You Face As A COO And How Do You Overcome Those Challenges?

I lead operations of the in-school music program (B2B), the music center (B2C), the learning management platform technical team, and the HR team at SaPa.In addition, I assist the Content and Teacher Certification teams with pedagogy and curriculum design inputs. During the pandemic, we shifted from in person program to a completely online program with the help of our online learning platform through which we delivered our created content.

 "Don’t wait to be chosen. Choose yourself, you will figure it out"

Ensuring an environment that is conducive for creativity, supports musicians to pursue their passion and offers a fair workplace for employees to achieve their career ambitions as well as to ensure that we are delivering our organisational goals are the toughest challenge I face. To overcome this, we avoid a top-down hierarchical approach instead the entire team sits together to create organisational plans and everyone has visibility of the end goals, this ensures that everyone takes ownership.

How Has Your Past Corporate Experience Helped In Your Current Roles And What Is The Uniqueness Of Sapa As Compared To Its Peer?

 Having tried multiple things in the past, I bring a varied range of experiences from curriculum design to teacher training and methodology to business skills like project management and financial planning. My background in Education Change helps me contribute to curriculum design and educational pedagogy meaningfully. Our objective is to be people first in everything. When someone joins SaPa they join a community and we focus a lot on community engagement to achieve our objective. Along with that, our high-quality in-house content creation, learning, and teaching methodology are some of our unique features.

What Has Been Your Most Remarkable Achievement So Far And What Is Your Guiding Leadership Philosophy?

The growth to COO, after a career break is the most remarkable achievement in my life. The pandemic hit our B2B business but we saw a tremendous increase in our B2C business with a greater number of students as well as the international growth because of our quick adaptation of delivering content effectively online. Today we have students from 18 countries. My guiding leadership philosophy is ‘servant leadership. I begin by asking what I can do to help our people do their jobs in a better way.I am just a tool who helps the team achieve the organisational goals. I am also passionate about helping women re-enter work after a career break by consciously hiring them into our team and providing them with all support and guidance they need.

How Do You Keep Yourself And Sapa Aligned With The Periodic Evolution That Occurs In This Field And What Advice You Would Like To Give Young Women And Girls Who Are Aspiring To Become Entrepreneurs In The Future?

Being a part of the alumni community at Teachers College, Columbia university and National Institute of Education, NTU keeps me on top of all the latest developments in the field of education and I always welcome and embrace any tech-related developments in learning. Each of us comes with a different timeline for doing things. Therefore whatever be your timeline, you are answerable only to yourself and grab the opportunity as and when you see it.

Veena Anand, COO, Subramaniam Academy Of Performing Arts

A financial consultant, teacher, and COO, Veena Anand completed her Masters in Educational Change and Leadership from Columbia University and NTU and possesses a range of working experience.

Quick Facts:

• Educational Qualification: Masters in Education Change & Leadership (Columbia University & Nanyang Technological University); MBA (Great Lakes Institute of Management); Masters in Economics (Madras University)

• Services Provided By Firm: Live Classes in centres, In-School music program, Self-paced Video courses, Live Masterclasses.

• Headquarter: Bangalore

• Other Locations: Chennai, Mumbai.