My guest today is Chaitra Partha Rao, Vice President at Daimler Truck Innovation Center India – Manufacturing , Sales & Aftersales.

Chaitra shares how her childhood aspirations to become a neurosurgeon shifted to commerce due to cost constraints, eventually leading her into IT through an internship at a medical diagnostics firm automating stores processes.

She describes observing early requirement-gathering and MVP-style delivery, learning the importance of user empathy, and contrasts it with a later failure where a $15M trading interface was rejected because designers didn’t listen to analysts.

Her career spans core banking, Fidelity-style investing, equity trading transformation (including crypto/digital assets focus in 2015–2017), and automotive/trucking, emphasizing designing for human touchpoints even amid AI trends.

She discusses patience versus outcome-chasing, staying focused via “recalculating” and timeboxing, scaling systems using “day in the life” simulations, cross-cultural user commonalities, cautious optimism about synthetic data, guidance for women returning from career breaks, and grounding routines like yoga, reflection, cooking, and music.

The timestamps are approximate and do not include the time for the intro. Add about 90 seconds to locate the section

00:00 Welcome and Setup

00:42 From Medicine to Commerce

02:37 First IT Breakthrough

05:41 Curiosity Meets Automation

10:56 User Empathy in Practice

16:33 Human Touch vs AI

18:39 Patience and Ambition

22:04 Staying Focused Timeboxing

26:07 Commute Predictability Hacks

26:37 Banking vs Trading Reality

28:10 Learning Traders Language

31:27 Designing for Scale Patterns

36:38 Cross Culture User Insights

40:12 AI Synthetic Personas Limits

44:27 Returning After Career Break

49:12 Staying Grounded Daily Routine

51:13 Closing Reflections Thanks

Chaitra is a seasoned leader with 26 years of experience in IT traversing through Fintech & Automotive domains. Her formative leadership experience stems from working for Fidelity Investments , a company that shaped who she is while putting it to practice and being able to coach and nurture A teams is an opportunity that she experiences with her current organization.

She has played various roles that have taken her through learning paths that have been challenging as well as fulfilling in the areas of technology, process and team building.

She calls herself as ‘still a work-in-progress’, curious learner who takes one day at a time , enjoying it to the maximum and helping coach leaders and teams to bring their best.

She may be reached on: chaitrasreesha@gmail.com