Ahmedabad: A total of 629 students — 20 from the doctoral programme, 408 from the Postgraduate Programme (PGP), 45 from the Food and Agribusiness Management Programme, and 156 from the PGPX (one-year MBA) — received their degrees at the 61st convocation of IIM Ahmedabad (IIM-A) on Saturday evening. Chandrika Krishnamurthy Tandon, an alumna from the 1975 batch, was the chief guest at the ceremony.Among the first Indian woman partners at McKinsey & Company, Tandon is known today as a philanthropist and Grammy award-winning musician. She and her husband donated Rs 100 crore to IIM-A to set up a school focused on AI applications. In her convocation address, she focused on “four ‘I’s – insight, intention, inner stillness, and impact”.“Insight: getting out of your bubble to see more connections, consequences, people, and yourself. Intention: executing right with clarity and commitment. Inner stillness: where you still the chatter and summon the resilience to lead with humanity. Impact: where you deeply assess your mark on the world every day, in every decision. I call this integrative intelligence. Mastering this has changed my life in dramatic ways,” she said in her address.She narrated her life journey from being a girl from Tamil Nadu to working with some of the biggest names in the world, and what she learned from it. “Think about your own definition of success. Don’t let anybody else define it for you,” she said.“Whether you launch your own venture or lead within an established organisation, carry an entrepreneurial spirit. Be resourceful. Be adaptable. Stop seeing constraints as obstacles,” said Pankaj Patel, chairperson of the Board of Governors (BoG) at IIM-A, in his address.
