Saundarya Rajesh, one of the earliest voices to speak on Diversity & Inclusion in India, is a winner of the Standard Chartered SCOPE Woman Exemplar Award 2006, the Yuvashakthi Entrepreneur of the Year award 2007 and the Swadeshi Jagran Manch’s Award 2008. The CavinKare Innovation award for creating India’s first flexi-career service for women was presented to her for the year 2011. In September 2011, in an All India search for excellence in women entrepreneurship, Saundarya won the highly prestigious TiE Stree Shakti Entrepreneur of the year award for her work in building and creating India’s first women’s careers service. On the 8th of November 2011, she was awarded the India Today’s Business Wizards of Tamilnadu award and features in a coffee table book on women entrepreneurs by the same publication. Very recently, she was declared Honorary Mrs. Chennai, in appreciation of the work she has done in enabling and empowering women professionals.

Saundarya did her MBA from Central University Pondicherry, INDIA and is a gold medalist in English Literature from Madras University, INDIA.

Mother of 2 teenagers and wife to a busy professional, Saundarya identified with the thousands of Indian women who had to give up their careers mid-way in response to a work-life balancing need. She set up AVTAR Career Creators in 2000 as a talent strategy consulting firm which worked with marginalized pools of talent. A unique service started off by Saundarya in 2005 – AVTAR I-WIN– Interim Women manager’s Interface Network, works exclusively with women managers who have taken a break in career. This is an India-first and an innovation that corporates find highly relevant and creative.

Having spun off AVTAR I-WIN into a social enterprise – FLEXI Careers India, Saundarya works with over 23,000 women managers who are part of the AVTAR I-WIN network. AVTAR I-WIN’s vision is to engage with the larger population of over 1.5 million Indian women who have dropped off the career track over the past 2 decades and who can be the real answer to India’s talent/skill shortage.

Saundarya firmly believes that for both men and women of all ages, work has to be a part of life and not life itself. This has led to cutting-edge work done by AVTAR in the space of creating flexi-careers. Companies which believe in providing a flexible work environment to their people have used AVTAR’s consulting services in ‘Flexidizing and Unbundling’ jobs – concepts which are the brainchild of Saundarya.

Pursuing her PhD in Flexible working methods, Saundarya enjoys Tamil poetry and is a raving fan of the Tamil poet Mahakavi Bharathiyar’s works.