HBA Launches in India!

Thank you for your interest in HBA India. I, Dr. Deepa Desai, Country Head, Labcorp, am spearheading a team of accomplished women to bring you a profound experience that can ignite your career.

I believe life is an adventure that offers plenty of opportunities; we just need put ourselves out there. A couple of years ago, I saw joining the HBA as a volunteer as one such opportunity. One thing led to another and today I am excited to announce the launch of HBA India, a professional development platform for Indian women and men in healthcare.

All of us need a mentor at some point in life. I was fortunate to find mentors quite early in my life, as my parents always guided me through every thick and thin. I will never forget how much emphasis they put in modeling possible thinking and developing respect for equality and gender parity. That mentorship helped define my life’s purpose and aided the growth of my confidence and inner strength. As a volunteer with the HBA, I am paying this mentorship forward. I mentor HBA members through various programs, including the HBA Europe Mentoring Program, the HBA Ambassador Program, and the HBA Honoring Opportunities for Partnerships & Equity (HOPE) leadership program.

Being recognized as a 2019 HBA Luminary and one of PharmaVoice’s 100 most inspiring healthcare leaders changed my life. These awards gave me the honour to be amongst accomplished women who had “giving” at their core and the strength to make a difference. It also marked the beginning of my journey to stand up for things that I believed in — such as an equal opportunity for all voices, a deserving seat at any table/in any room, opportunities to work with experts on health equity, and many others — and thus started my long-lasting relationship with the HBA.

Gender parity in India has a really long way to go:

Nearly seven percent of working women dropped out of India’s labour force between 2010 and 2020.1

Only 50 percent of working women take financial decisions on their own.2

And the impact that female empowerment can have in India is astronomical:

India’s GDP over last two decades could have been 43 percent larger if women had the same professional participation rate as men.3

Don’t wait for things to change.
Join HBA India and together, let’s be a United Force for Change!

Since I joined the HBA, I’ve had this continuous urge to bring the organization’s 45 years of success to India. And since then, many powerful, strong, and talented volunteers have joined this journey. And finally, we are launching HBA India and it feels simply amazing!

With HBA India, we want to bring you all the opportunity to grow your network, mentor future professionals, and discover your ideal mentors. As a volunteer, you can also gain leadership opportunities while impacting economic growth by driving fulfilling women’s empowerment initiatives. At least for me, volunteering has expanded my network as I get to meet amazing volunteers who are impactful and unique in their own ways. It gave me an opportunity to see so many possibilities and the courage to reach higher with so many people rooting for me. My favourite part of volunteering for the HBA has been meeting this selfless, fantastic network of accomplished and giving people and making so many lifelong friends.

Join us for the virtual HBA India launch event on Friday, 18 November at 4:30 PM IST (6:00 AM EST) and learn more about how you can get involved. Since the pandemic has created favourable virtual work environments, we have an action-packed, 90-minute Zoom launch event planned; it’s accessible, time-worthy, and content-filled! Registration is now open, here. See you there!