Mamta Saha has earned her stellar track record as inhouse L&D lead and independent consultant with over 15 years of immersion in multiple global matrix commercially-focused businesses and bespoke consultancies, where she gained her wealth of experience leading cutting-edge learning and development strategy and company-wide implementation.
Mamta is a Business and media psychologist with regular contributions on the BBC and Sky News for her views on life stories, the Asian community, diversity, including gender roles equality, the invisible barriers that stop people from getting ahead, professional development, and politics. She is a British Indian, is based in London and Dubai, and has three children.
Mamta offers a passionate, committed, professional style and confidently provides excellent facilitation, coaching skills, and dynamic training design in all behavioral areas for all levels of business from board to frontline.
Other clients include: City Bridge Trust, KPMG, PWC, Lucozade Ribena Suntory, Santander, Logicor, VFS Global, Young Variety, Tesco China, Tesco Hong Kong, Tesco Malaysia, Tesco India, Tesco Korea, City Hindu Network, City Sikh Network, UCL, Manchester Business School, The Landmark Group, Inseec Universities, Royal Oprah House, HCA Group, Freedman, Deutche Bank, MerckSorono, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, E&Y, Barouge, MajidAlFuttaim, Abbvie, Abbot, ATIC, Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council, Dubai Ladies Club, Siemens, ATIC (Advanced Technology Investment Company), Hacker Kitchens, Department of International Trade
The projects she has worked on have always been customized to the company culture, industry sector, and local, national, and international geographies. The ultimate goal for each business has been to raise awareness, attract, retain, and develop the best talent and leverage the benefits of diversity and inclusion for the benefit of the business.
Her Diversity and Inclusion projects for the above have centered on creating a fair and inclusive workplace, including gender, ethnicity and race, BAME programs, nationality, cross-culture, age, disabilities, sexual orientation, transgender, religion, and belief, and micro-inequities.
One example of her diversity consultancy work is supporting L’Oreal HQ in Paris to co-design its core company diversity program and overseeing its rollout across L’Oreal’s Middle East presence. This included train-the-trainer programs and bespoke interventions from C-suite to frontline employees. This resulted in measurably increased staff morale in terms of perceived fairness of workplace, working relationships strengthened, teams becoming even more multicultural and cohesive, able to work together more effectively, and truly leverage from a place of diversity.
Raising their self-awareness of their own limiting filters helped them to better understand the company culture and how they fit in, They were able to use the combination of the corporate cultures and their own cultures to operate from their strengths, but also to embrace people who are different from them. The former insularity of their corporate culture was shaken up for good and positive interpersonal habits thus established for the employees involved that was truly sustainable.
At Tesco where Mamta was International Leadership and Development Senior Manager responsible for EU and Asia, she was sent across Asia and Europe to instill the Tesco values and culture on a project with CIEBS Business School - to bridge the East and the West. She was also sponsored by Sir Terry Leahy and she founded the British Asian Network among other pioneering initiatives. This resulted in significantly increasing diversity across shop floors and offices, innovative new ways to encourage those from different backgrounds to find ways to flourish in an environment previously closed to them, new developmental opportunities for black and Asian minorities in Tesco that opened the doors to many others joining the business, and equipping them with the tools they needed to develop their potential.
Another success was her initiation of invite-only TED-style evenings, where board-level leaders could share their journeys and dialogue informally with handpicked rising stars identified as having the potential to positively impact the future of the business. As a result of these evenings, senior leadership realized they too can take ownership and drive developmental efforts, that these were not merely the responsibility of HR or line managers but that they themselves have a critical role to play in helping others grow and in the embracing of diversity within the organization.
The emerging talent stepped up their productivity and operational effectiveness within the organization as a result of these interactions, which gave them the sense of being recognised, valued, and invested in. Getting exposure and opportunities to network with senior leaders encouraged them in turn to set higher goals for themselves and take the initiative to extend their own networking and community-building efforts within their peer groups and across the organization. This organic effort reaped widespread benefits in terms of enhancing organisational cohesiveness and collaboration.
