Women in Leadership: Swarupa Thakur

At Nucleus, we’re celebrating the amazing women at the helm of everything we do. We’ll be introducing you to the fantastic female leaders making waves within our organisation.

Introducing Swarupa Thakur

Leadership is not gender-specific. An individual who can influence and encourage people to work towards a shared goal is what makes a truly effective leader. Someone who possesses great leadership qualities or who has developed themselves into becoming a great leader – that’s exactly what we’re looking for when identifying people to lead teams within our organisation and Swarupa covers both!

Swarupa started her journey to Nucleus from an engineering background and worked as an enterprise solution developer in her past employment at Capgemini. She certainly knows her stuff when it comes to all things IT, having worked for over 12 years in the field where she expanded her knowledge and learnt to apply her technical skills. She worked in supply chain and finance, where she was responsible for providing solutions for a tranche of different domains.

Back in 2018, Swarupa decided it was time to follow her passion and she was ready for a new challenge. It was at that point that she joined Nucleus as a Salesforce Solutions Architect and initially, it was a rollercoaster of emotions! Concerned about her lack of domain experience specifically in finance, she worried she’d be unable to deliver the solutions we needed, especially as we’re a Fintech lender with a varying suite of both secured and unsecured business loans.

We Saw Great Potential and Swarupa Proved Exactly Why!

But of course, Swarupa delivered exactly what we’d expected and more, getting stuck in and thriving with the support of her fantastically cohesive team.

Staying and progressing with Nucleus came with many perks, as we’ve invested time into her growth as we could see she was a very talented and capable employee. She works closely with other senior leaders in the organisation who helped shape her into the brilliant, highly knowledgeable team member she’s become.

Nucleus provided the opportunity for Swarupa to step into a leadership role and she was promoted last year, becoming our Senior Business Analyst of Information Systems.

Here’s something that Swarupa had to say about what she learned in her journey as a female leader:

“Give a voice to the people who have not reached their full potential yet, as you’ll see just how much they thrive and fly with the right guidance at their disposal. 

Though I truly believe that we can all lead from wherever we are in the business, irrespective of role and designations.

For this – being responsible, learning how to connect with people and establishing trust is critical. Without that, leadership is impossible and I’ve worked extremely hard to ensure I’ve ticked off all three.”

My Personal Trifactor to Success in the Finance World

Swarupa concluded with 3 top tips for how women can climb to the top and become leaders at the businesses they work for, as she’s done exactly that herself in a rather short space of time too!

1. Be open-minded and accept change

Change is difficult, which is why often, the majority of us don’t like it. But without change, there is no change and things become stagnant. Nucleus launched over a decade ago as an alternative lender with one lending product. It’s evolved to being an award-winning Fintech with almost ten products under its belt. If Nucleus hadn’t embraced change, including the amazing technological innovations at the heart of our operations, we’d have been left behind in the dust! Similarly, if I’d never taken the leap to Nucleus and challenged myself, I wouldn’t be the leader I am today.

2. Be a learner; never stop learning

I’m always learning and I doubt I’ll ever stop! As I’m in such a fast-paced industry, keeping up to date with the latest tech innovations and development strategies is integral to my role. At Nucleus, we like to be the Fintech lender leading the pack with innovation, rather than lagging behind everyone else. We incorporate AI and machine learning at every possible stage and given those are industries that change faster than the wind, it’s vital that I keep learning, so I can lead my team to success.

3. Be yourself and remain true to yourself

This one is really simple, yet massively key to being happy in a leadership role. Whilst my capabilities have changed and grown over the years, I’ve remained true to the person I’ve always been and it’s a great anchor for me. It’s easy to get lost when you’re being pulled in every direction and whilst I love the constant challenge and opportunity to do something different, I like to remember exactly who I am amongst it all. When everything else around you changes constantly, sometimes it’s important to be exactly who you were when it all began.