About
She ran budgetsbefore she rana room.
Most trainers arrive at behaviour from the outside. Sumita arrived at it from inside the business — from the review meetings, the budget defences and the project rooms where the real conversations were, or were not, being had.
Point of view
Soft skills is a poor name for the thing. Nothing about a difficult conversation is soft.
The behaviours that decide whether a team works — how someone raises a problem, holds a boundary, gives feedback, listens when they disagree — are the hardest and most consequential skills in an organisation. They are also the ones most often addressed with a slide deck and a half-day.
Sumita’s work rejects that format. A session is designed as practice: participants rehearse the exchange they have been avoiding, get honest feedback in the room, and revise it while it still costs nothing to get wrong. What people conclude for themselves under that kind of structured pressure is what survives contact with Monday.
The eight years before this matter. Relationship management at HDFC Bank, then budgeting, corporate strategy and PMO at Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance — she has been the person defending a number, managing a project across functions, and sitting in the meeting where nobody said the actual thing. Programmes are built with that memory intact.
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- Professionals in the roomAcross corporate and campus cohorts
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- Organisations servedManufacturing, IT, pharma, finance, education
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- Years inside the businessBanking, insurance, budgeting and PMO
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- Years facilitatingFull-time practice since 2019
Qualifications
- Internationally Certified Soft Skills TrainerImage Consulting & Business Institute, accredited by the Scottish Qualifications Authority
- Certified Facili-Training Practitioner (CFTP)FOLKS School of Facilitation & Learning
- Certified Train the Trainer (TTT)Accredited by NABET
- ISO Certified POSH EnablerPrevention of Sexual Harassment, workplace compliance
- TTT Cornerstone ProgramGlobal Talent Track
- MBA, FinanceICFAI Business School, Hyderabad
- B.Com (Hons)University of Delhi
Track
- 2019 — presentIndependent Facili-Trainer & Behavioural Skills CoachIndependent practice
Corporate and campus programmes across India. Also empanelled with Mohana HR Futuristics.
- 2016 — 2017Freelance WriterIndependent
Academic papers and case studies for London-based institutions.
- 2010 — 2014Assistant Manager, Budgeting & PMOStar Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance
Financial planning, corporate strategy and budgetary control. Trained teams on project and financial management tools.
- 2009 — 2010Finance ExecutiveMV Omni
- 2008 — 2009Relationship ManagerHDFC Bank
Next
Bring the problem,not the brief.
The most useful first conversation is usually a description of what keeps happening — not a training request. Tell me that, and the design follows.