Shabana grew up thinking every “no” had to be turned into a “yes”. She thrives on challenges and gets her fuel from being told she ‘can’t. The first MBA from a family and a community, which both challenged and egged her on, she came to the US twenty years ago, with sales and marketing experience from TCS. By then, she had already started and sold two companies and garnered business experience coupled with unshakeable confidence, to take on a different challenge. She joined Alphasoft and learnt the ropes. After seven years of sales, recruiting, project management and account management, she moved to HCL, where after a brief one year period, she was laid off.

Seek: Oh yeah? If I can’t join ‘em, I’ll make ‘em. And so Trident was born.

Instead of knocking on doors to find another job, Shabana decided to strike it on her own.

The hurdles and frustrations Shabana faced during her days as an employee with Tata, Alphasoft, and HCL, inspired her to make her own rules: foremost being transparency. She has made it the foundation of Trident, stressing transparency: client, consultant, and the agency.

Strive: Shabana works hard and plays equally hard. Whether it is that elusive niche position she has to fill or the blue skies she wants to touch in the two-seater Cessna, Shabana doesn’t put much stock in luck or chance. What she believes in is hard work, and that it will get her everywhere. And instills that into every last member of her team. Learning to fly or getting the RFP out the door, with the team she worked hard to build, she is a woman on a mission: just keep movin’!

Succeed: Shabana defines her own brand of success. Bottomline aside (of course, it matters), she sees success through every increment her team members achieve. Success is when a rookie makes the first submission. And the team lead takes pride in it.

Success for Shabana is, when she not only crosses her corporate revenue goals, but surpasses her fund-raising goals for the various charities she’s involved with. Each marathon she runs towards creating awareness and inducting like-minded folks to stand up for children’s education, is a leap towards success. After ten half marathons (including the gorgeous Big Sur 21 miler), the sights are now set on a triathlon. To swim/bike/run… or to just run… that is the question.

Shabana’s motto: “Half the fun in succeeding is racing towards it.”

She’ll ride whatever it takes to success: a solid client base, a robust team, a Kawasaki Ninja 300, an SL550 or, a Cessna 172R.