My name is Gayatri Sharma. I work with HSBC Singapore as their NRI Market Head at the Premier International Center.

The reason why I chose the Global Banking program at Columbia Business School was I wanted to ensure that the time and effort that I was putting into this program, I would get enough benefit from it, and there are very few programs that can actually give you that combination of banking knowledge with changes in technology. After coming here, I realized that yes, this was what I was looking for. I have been able to focus on those things that I didn't know much about and now I'm better equipped to handle the changes in the industry.

There is this concept called in conscious incompetence. I realized that there is so much out there that I really didn't know about and this is one place where you get a strong foundation into the changing trends. You learn a lot from industry specialists as well as people in academia, so the good combination of that gives you a lot of practical insight and you have access to a great set of peers, a great set of teachers.

I really have been wowed by the depth of knowledge by the people who are teaching us, their dedication to their subjects, the efforts that they make do, help us understand a very complex subject in a period of as short as three hours. It's really nice, and it's something like a circle of elders who then when you go back to your day to day job, you can always connect back and bounce your ideas off them, so that's the reason why I chose Columbia.

Gayatri sharma Kaul