This week, I spoke to Dr Vimaleswari Ramasamy or better known as Dr Vimi who is the CEO and founder of STRAVIK based in Penang, Malaysia.
STRAVIK is a business consulting provider, offering business startup consulting to foreign or multinational companies keen to establish a strong presence and foothold in Malaysia.
It also offers business optimisation consulting to organisations and Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) looking to increase revenue by ensuring people, processes and systems are working effectively and efficiently.
Together with her team, she provides strategy and operational expertise.
But she wasn’t always an entrepreneur.
She graduated as an engineer and she loved challenges and problem-solving. Her late father even gave her a challenge – to repair the washing machine! To her credit, she managed to not just repair the washing machine but went on to excel in her career as a female engineer and was at one point, working in the US.
She kept climbing the career ladder in the multinational corporations that she worked in and later chose to expand her perspective by entering the human resources field. From being an engineer, she became a HR professional within the corporation. In this field, she learnt about managing people and helping them reach their career goals.
Before she left to start STRAVIK, she was the managing director for a UK-based multinational company for five years, growing the company to a 600-strong workforce. She was also its first Malaysian female managing director.
She is also a mother and wife and in this interview, she talks about why she left the corporate world, a world she has known since the day she started working some 20+ years ago.
We discuss the fears of leaving the corporate world as well as the value and importance of a good support system when you’re making tough decisions and what drives her to after her dreams.