A journey from the corporate sector to academia

After having built a successful career working with numerous leading brands in the FMCG industry for over 20 years, Dr Sharad Goel decided to make a bold transition into pursuing academia and eventually finding great success working in the field of business education. His story is one of ambition and perseverance- having overcome several hurdles that stood in his way.

Coming from a Western UP joint family that ran several businesses over time, Dr Goel says that his father’s decision to not work in the family business and work in education influenced him. After studying commerce at the undergraduate level, he obtained his PGDBM from IMT Ghaziabad in 1982 and worked for FMCG Brands like Amul, Dhara, Indana, Gagan, Uncle Chips, Anik, Frooti, Appy-Fizz and Kingfisher . One of the factors he points out as an advantage was his willingness and preparedness to change industries over successive jobs. He started as a Management Trainee and gradually went up the corporate ladder to Senior Vice President and Board Member, before switching to a full-time academic career in 2002. One of the first obstacles he faced was to transition into an English-medium management education and industry, having completed his entire education only in vernacular medium. Despite the criticism that this entailed, Dr Goel emerged as one of the best students in his PGDM and MBA programs. He went on to gain diversified work experience in Sales & Marketing, Projects, Operations, Corporate Strategy, International Business, Corporate Governance and HRM as a Business Head / Profit Centre Head.

But after 20 years in the industry Dr Goel realized that the professional struggle in which people often acted unethically, as well as the rapidly-changing corporate scenario for those from his age group, necessitated an exploration into a new career- and academia was the way to go. With a strong career in the industry behind him, Dr Goel boldly marched into a profession where his salary would be 20% of what he had been drawing in corporate. He also faced the challenge of being relatively underqualified at the time for working full-time in academia, and subsequently equipped himself further by earning the degrees of MA (Economics), MCA, MPhil, and PhD. After having worked as a professor, Dr Goel says that he was inspired to work towards running an institution as an independent director by the time he finished his doctorate in management.

According to him, there were certain constant values that he lived by throughout his corporate career that enabled him to transition well and excel in his second innings- staying honest and being bold. Dr Goel admits that there were times when people higher up in the hierarchy of the organization posed hurdles in the path of his professional growth, but what drove him past these was his honest resolve to deliver what he had committed to and satisfy the requirements of his role- a teaching that he attributes to his father, and his reinforced by his family. He has supported his family since the untimely passing of his father; becoming the top performer and staying there was thus a persistent goal in Dr Goel’s professional life and has remained so as he made the difficult decision of switching not just lanes but taking a turn onto another direction. He was driven to replicate his upwards trajectory in this new professional path that led him to a completely new destination, knowing the fact that this was a start from scratch for him.

Dr Sharad Goel has since held top teaching and administrative positions at multiple B-Schools over the years. His experience of being head of an educational institution matches, if not supersedes, that of working in the corporate sector. He has led colleges to prosperity just as he did for the companies he worked with. On being asked about his message to others intending to make bold changes and excel as he did, Dr Goel says ,

“The essential principles of honesty, hard work paired with a faith in one’s abilities that fuels the will to take confident risks is what one should aspire to have in their professional as well as personal lives. Obstacles appear in the form of competition throughout life, and the young should harbor the spirit of not being defeated by these inevitable battles.”