Sujit Sukumaran, DTM

Relevant work experience and how it relates to Toastmasters and your role as a Board Member:

Over the course of my corporate career, I have been involved with several organizations in the domains of policy development, strategy, marketing, product and content development, and training. During those years, I have been instrumental in every company's growth from a one country entity to an organization with a presence in multiple countries. I have extensively worked, during these years, in drafting policy, laws and regulations, driving performance and achieving all deliverable goals. The industries I have served include insurance, telecom, education and management consulting.

For the past 6 years I have been an entrepreneur and CEO of my management consulting firm in the UAE. I was instrumental in balancing the budget leading to no losses within the first three months from incorporation. We have the distinction of serving over 20+ corporate clients and leading 300+ assignments in strategy, performance management, business turnaround and branding for our clients.

What experience do you have in strategic planning?

As a management consultant for half of my work day, I am actively involved in charting strategies for clients to achieve breakthroughs, taking their business/purpose mandate to the next level. Some of our clients are non-profit organizations as well as charities and philanthropic initiatives. My work with them deals with designing policies and strategic interventions, tracking the efficacy of these measures, making interim changes and course corrections, and designing forecasts for the "where to next?" question once the initially envisaged goals are reached.

My second half of the day is that of a university professor where I also set policy at the university level for student performance, curriculum design, and best practices. This has ensured that our university has become a Top 5 university in the UAE in just over 4 years. We started from an initial intake of 10 students and have grown to a base of 600+. Our team spearheaded digital marketing initiatives, student enrollment and engagement activities via social media, which brought our student acquisition costs down by 80%. I was also instrumental in pioneering the "COVED" - Covid Education Strategy, which enabled seamless online learning for 400+ students without affecting their student experience or engagement.

What deserves a special mention is the fact that I am currently a PhD Scholar in the domain of Strategic Management and am focusing on Entrepreneurship and Organizational Sustainability as my topic. My research journey so far has honed my analytical skills, problem definition and root cause analysis abilities, scenario planning and forecasting skills all while working on tight deadlines with a team of collaborators.

What experience do you have in the area of finance?

As an entrepreneur myself, I manage the finances of my own business spanning across 3 verticals of advisory, training, and special assignments. When COVID hit, most of our competitors went under or shut shop, while we were able to carry on in a lean manner, with zero layoffs from the team, and a 7-15 time return on our digital advertising investments as shown by our new client sign ups. This not only helped us survive the crisis financially, but we were able to give bonuses post COVID for the whole team.

In terms of finance education, I am an empaneled faculty of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India teaching all of their core curriculum subjects and have trained in excess of 8,000 students in India and the Gulf so far.

As a Board Member on committees outside of Toastmasters I handle a $30 million US budget for our Community Management Association, with responsibility for procurement decision making, vendor appointments, tender evaluation, and negotiations, as well as policy review and approval for over 350 apartments housing 1,200 tenants.

I am also a personal finance mentor and an investment guide for over 60+ students. Together we are handling a portfolio of around $3 million US in stocks across the US and India markets. The initial starting value of this corpus was only around $500,000 US. What makes it even more heartening is most of these students of mine were from the lower end of the economic spectrum and this has enabled them to become financially independent. Today, many of them are also fellow Toastmasters!

What experience do you have in developing policies?

Apart from consulting for over 20+ clients in the telecom, insurance, and education domains and drafting policies for them on finance, operations, HR, and service excellence, some of my major milestones in this area were:

• Among the founding members of Al Mosanada, UAE's first Cancer Awareness body and was a youth representative. Made pivotal inputs for development of treatment best practice and management of cancer as well as sensitization for treatment of young patients.
• One of the Consultative Committee Members on the People of Determination (Disability Empowerment and Provisions) Law for the Emirate of Dubai in 2007.
• Industry representative, mandatory insurance implementation 2008-2009, Dubai Health Authority, UAE. Contributed to policy review, vetting and finalization.

What lessons did you learn from previous leadership positions?

Being in Toastmasters leadership for over a decade now, the single most important lesson I learnt is that of empathy and the value of listening without judging. The second lesson was that leadership often involves several difficult decisions and it is not possible to please everyone all the time, and so rather than taking the "crowd pleasing" decision, it is better to take the right decision in the interests of the organization, even if that means some people may have contrary opinions. The last and most recent lesson is that impact need not be a result of vigorous activity, but a consequence of small but firm and reassuring actions. As a Region Advisor during the pandemic most of our trios felt helpless in achieving the goals of the District as members were being lost, clubs shutting down and morale at an all-time low. Despite the same, our continuous communication and small reassuring gestures played a key role in not giving up too early and recouping whatever was physically possible.

What experience and key strengths would you bring to the Board of Directors?

Extensive policy making, legal expertise, strategic planning and deep digital marketing and content development experience. As a disability rights advocate with over 15 years' experience in the Diversity, Equality and Inclusion space, I am also committed to making Toastmasters an accessible organization for all people irrespective of their disability, orientation, race or gender. I am also particularly strong in finance, investments and identifying areas for pivoting into for future growth as our organization evolves and goes towards its 100th anniversary.

Why do you want to serve as an International Officer/Director?

As a Toastmaster for 16 years and starting as a Gavelier at the age of 15, I have seen first had the transformative effects that TI has had on my life as a communicator and leader, now as an entrepreneur and teacher as well. I firmly believe that the message that our organization espouses and the benefits of its program need to reach out far more. As an organization at the cusp of its centennial anniversary, I am also cognizant that what got us here though may not carry us for the next 100 years, in a rapidly evolving post-pandemic digitally savvy world. To that extent, I wish to serve on the Board with an intent of fostering greater inclusion, better representation across all age groups, growth in membership and increasing engagement and retention opportunities.

What volunteer experience do you have outside of Toastmasters?

• Among the founding members of Al Mosanada, UAE's first Cancer Awareness bodies and was a youth representative.
• Industry representative, mandatory insurance implementation 2008-2009, Dubai Health Authority, UAE.

Have you worked with other Boards of Directors outside of Toastmasters? If so, describe your experience.

• Managing Trustee, PRERANA - the largest disability advocacy group for the Indian diaspora in the Middle East. I handle diversity, advocacy and inclusion.
• One of the Consultative Committee Members on the People of Determination (Disability Empowerment and Provisions) Law for the Emirate of Dubai in 2007.
• Owner's Committee Member, Park Gate Residences, Tower A, approved by the Dubai Real Estate Regulatory Authority to represent 300+ homeowners and decide on budgets, facilities and strategies for a great community living experience. One of the only four approved from 26 nationalities.
• Course Committee Member, University of West London, RAK Campus - Contributing to curriculum design and development as well as a great learning experience.
• XLRI Scholar's Committee Member - Representing 600+ PhD scholars and contributing to critical policy, financial, facility and academic matters.

In your opinion, what are Toastmasters International’s major objectives and how would you work to achieve them?

Enhancing and maintaining club excellence, promoting and facilitating member achievement, creating greater awareness and engagement and well as ensuring operational effectiveness are among the main objectives of TI. In my view as a millennial and as someone who believes in the potential of digital, I believe we will need to focus on customized learning deliverables for our members as Pathways gets adopted and matures over the next few years. Furthermore, we will have to work on a member recruitment strategy for a younger demographic including early career professionals. These are the members, if they become lifelong members, that will have long lasting impacts on the organization's future. Being someone who has seen both pre-Pathways and the post-Pathways era in Toastmasters and with my extensive experience of working with young people and mid-career professionals, I believe the right tools, a digital push and effective cross-organizational pollination and collaboration, as has been started with the Rotary alliance, will point Toastmasters towards its envisioned future.

Additional information about candidate:

I have been a Toastmaster for the last 16 years, and have been a Gavelier for 3 years prior to that. Over the years Toastmasters has transformed me from a shy, reticent individual to a management consultant, entrepreneur and university professor. Today I am a person who spends 90% of his day with people from diverse walks of life. I am a “third-culture-kid”, having been born and raised in the UAE, though my roots are in India.

Professionally, after being in the corporate domain in the UAE for over a decade in various HR management and people and culture roles, in 2016, I took a leap into the world of entrepreneurship and have been continuously running my own firm called Optimus Management Consultants. I also teach Strategic Management at the University of West London and am currently pursuing my PhD in Strategic Management from the Xavier School of Management (XLRI) in India.

I am also an avid YouTuber, Podcaster and content creator, with an audience of 12,000 across all platforms. Personally, I have a family of three comprising of my mom, wife and daughter and we live in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

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