In her own words, this is what the ‘Are You In The List’ 2015 winner has to say about herself.

Neha Saxena Shenoy, Senior Manager, Adobe

I am passionate about designing & executing creative new HR initiatives that solve specific business challenges. In my 11 years work experience, I have worked across HR generalist and specialist roles, in areas of business partnering, talent development and management, and change management, to name a few.

In my current role as Senior HR Business Partner at Adobe India, I am responsible for creating and executing People Strategy for Sales, Consulting, Services, Sales Ops, IT across India. Prior to joining Adobe, I spent 7.5 years at GE in roles of increasing responsibility. I have also been privileged to be part of an exclusive, cross functional ‘Global New Directions Team’ which advised GE’s CEO, Jeff Immelt, on unique strategies to help GE attract, develop and retain talent in 21st century.

A graduate of General Electric’s Global HR Leadership Program, I have lived in five different cities, two countries & 11 different homes in the past 13 years. It helps me relate to different people & understand them better.

Core Differentiator: Ability to drive results in unstructured and ambiguous circumstances

I have a strong reputation for understanding business & employees’ needs, creating a solution, successfully putting structures & processes in place, building stakeholder buy-in and executing the solution. 

For example, as the Diversity & Inclusion leader for GE South Asia, I set up & built consensus for diversity strategy and agenda for all eight GE Businesses, from scratch. I created and launched the program ‘Restart’, for hiring women who have taken a career break; and resultantly increased overall intake of diverse talent by four percent.

Biggest Priority: Talent selection and development 

Personally, I believe in hiring for right values and attitude and working with individuals to coach and develop them. One clear priority for me is to customize and personalize talent development and retention. 

The one thing I will:

Change in HR: Business as usual approach to HR

Focus on more strategic, solution focused HR by building a culture of joint ownership and leveraging more technology & self-service for operational/Business As Usual activities. 

Retain in HR: Balance between business & employee focus 

It’s important for HR to continue to have an ear to the ground and the trust with clients (both business leaders & employees) that they can talk openly without filters. This creates a win-win environment.

My ideas to disrupt HR:

Two areas that I can contribute to disrupting are:

a. Performance Management: I plan to make use of my experience in the domain of performance management during the course of my career; and customize my approach to the organization context based on the best practices I have worked on.

b. Career Management: I am passionate about mobilizing talent, creating opportunities and taking bets on key talent. 

Here’s the list of other winners:

JAY THAKKAR - Head - Compensation & Benefits and HR Operations, Aditya Birla Housing Finance Limited

NEHA SHARMA - Senior Employee Relations Manager, ICICI Bank

AMIT PAPNEJA - Manager-Field Readiness, Asian Paints Ltd.

AVIJIT SHASTRI - Divisional Manager - Channel HR, Commercial Vehicle TATA Motors

NIRANJANA HARIKUMAR - Lead- Learning and Organizational Development, Piramal Group

AANCHAL BHUGRA KOTHARI - Senior HR Business Partner, Reliance Industries Ltd.

SOUMITRA ACHARYA - Head HR Analytics, Mahindra & Mahindra

KUMAR ABHIMANYU - Participant - Career Acceleration Program, Reliance Industries Ltd

ALI IMRAN SYED -Global Learning & Organization Development Manager, Avery Dennison 

RICHA SINGH - Senior HR Officer, HPCL

VARUN TANDON - Associate Consultant, Salto Dee Fe Consulting

BHRIGU JOSHI - Head - Talent Management & Development, MakeMyTrip.com

SHAILY RAMPAL MISRA - Associate General Manager, HCL Technologies Ltd.

ABHINAV IYER - Senior Manager - Leadership & People Sciences, Wipro

BENJAMIN RAJKUMAR - Manager - Leadership Development, Titan Company Ltd