Singapore
Shakilla Shahjihan
NUS EMBA Class of 2012
Divisional Vice President, Asia Pacific & Japan
Abbott Laboratories
Making a difference in the lives of others
Shakilla Shahjihan (EMBA 2012), Divisional Vice President, Government Affairs, Asia Pacific at Abbott, is a driving force of inclusion and professional development for females.
After her NUS EMBA, she launched the Women Leaders of Abbott (WLA) Asia Pacific Chapter in Singapore to empower female workers. She also leads the chapters in China, India, Japan and Vietnam.
She was also one of the founding members of the Singapore American Chamber of Commerce’s AmCham Women, a platform to advance gender diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
Looking back at her time at NUS, Shakilla says the NUS EMBA programme helped her find her passion in making a difference for females in society. We caught up with Shakilla to get her thoughts on her NUS experience.
How did your work in female leadership and volunteering come about?
I was in the middle of my career, having done a few things, and I wanted to expand my horizons and my way of thinking with people from different fields. So that’s why I decided to do my EMBA.
Then during the EMBA, there was a module on thinking creatively and strategically and another on leadership development that helped me find my passion. We had to write a journal on what we believed in, what has influenced us in the past and what brought us to where we are.
This exercise made me realise how important female leadership is and how I can help other females start earlier and build a brand for themselves. However, I also realised there’s so much more that can be done, especially in certain community segments that can use more help, and I wanted to explore this passion.
Besides my efforts in Abbott and AmCham, I am volunteering in two areas; one is for young university students who are starting their careers.
So I think that’s an area where I can help share my experience in terms of job interviews, how to answer questions, how to write a biography, and how to translate whatever experience you have learned.
I am also volunteering at Casa Raudha, a shelter for women afflicted with domestic violence, where I help women build their confidence, independence, and a better future.
What are your fondest memories of your EMBA?
We were in Mumbai for one of our modules when Associate Professor Jayanth Narayanan split the class into groups and gave us the exercise of going to the streets with just paper clips and trying to exchange for items in a test of our negotiation skills.
It was amazing to see classmates returning with bags of fruits and groceries at the end of the day. The idea of the exercise makes you learn to think outside the box, to ask, to share, and not to be afraid of asking. That was a fond memory of an MBA that I don’t think I would have experienced anywhere else.
What are your hopes for the future?
I would like to see more gender diversity in MBA classes. And within the MBA classes, I hope to see more from a female leadership perspective, how female leaders put themselves out there and expose themselves into all these experiences that can help us grow towards the future.
