Dr Ashlesha Swaminathan is one of the most recognizable faces on campus. You have most probably learnt about loss aversion from her or asked her to review your CV (and got brutally honest feedback) or benefitted from her priceless career counselling sessions. In a freewheeling chat with Arthniti, Ashlesha Ma’am explains her journey so far, her passion for behavioural and gender economics, and her love for Kahneman’s and Marquez’ works.
Dr Ashlesha Swaminathan has been a member of the Symbiosis family for a long time. The college career counsellor and faculty of Behavioral Economics and International Financial Management, you can find her at her office in the Boy’s Hostel basement providing guidance and comfort to students worried about their futures. Recently Arthniti got the opportunity to interview with her and it went as follows.
On being asked where she spent her childhood and what she misses the most about that time, Ma’am responds by saying that she moved from the United States to Pune when she was in her sixth grade and she especially misses the scant traffic and clean air that characterized Pune at the time. She reminisces about how she used to travel on a cycle from home to school but laments that she no longer feels safe doing so because of the excessive traffic. She further mentions that she did her MBA from the United Kingdom and jokes about how she prefers the UK to the US!
Pictured here: Professor Ashlesha Swaminathan
Source: Ashlesha Ma'am
Teaching had never been on Professor Swaminathan’s radar originally. “I thought that I never had the patience for teaching!’ exclaims Ma’am. Ashlesha Ma’am worked as an investment banker for many years. On taking a break from corporate life, she took up a part-time job at a college as a corporate trainer and then became a full-time instructor for the same. It was around that time that she got an invitation from Dr Jyoti Chandiramani to deliver a lecture at SCLA on finance (Jyoti Ma’am taught Ashlesha Ma’am in college, that’s how they knew each other!). She subsequently started taking a course on Critical Thinking for Liberal Arts and as one thing led to another, she found herself transitioning to academia and teaching full-time.
While Ashlesha Ma’am formally teaches Behavioral Econ, she’s equally passionate about gender and mentors students writing theses on gender-related issues and we were eager to know what had piqued her interest in those emerging fields. Ma’am explains that her stint in investment banking often involved advising companies on hedging strategies which, in turn, gave her an insight into what works with convincing people. It was these intricacies of human interaction, witnessed firsthand, that encouraged Ma’am to study Behavioral Economics.
With regards to gender, Ma’am remarks - “Reading about behavioural economics took me to other fields of economics” and that “I’m not a person who tolerates injustice very well”. She says that she has faced discrimination, not just as a working woman but as a woman in India and thus it perturbs her to see other women facing the same.
“No matter what your space is you always get the short end of the stick because of your gender and it’s very subtle, it’s never in your face. Where I was working, there were very few women. Therefore, we had no guidance as to what was right or wrong and there were no policies regarding the same either.”
- Professor Ashlesha Swaminathan
Ma’am teaches a course on gender, behavioural, and identity economics at Symbiosis Center for Liberal Arts (highly recommended from personal experience) and says that she hopes every year, with this course; she can create an ‘army of gender sensitized students’. On being asked if schools should make students aware of sensitive issues such as gender discrimination, Ashlesha Ma’am says “Yes absolutely! But they (schools) don’t want to even teach sex education and even when they do, it’s very taboo and it’s only the girls who are taught”. Ma’am adds “don’t tolerate it (discrimination and harassment), and if you see it, then don’t shut up”.
When asked about her hobbies, Ma’am states that she loves to read. “I like the weird stuff!” Her personal favourites include Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight's Children’ and the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She especially enjoys books that flow with felicity in language as it’s the evocative vocabulary that conjures a beautiful picture of the story. Her other hobbies include painting with watercolours (Klimt and Matisse are some of her favourite artists). She channels her interest in art by taking lectures on art appreciation during her Critical Thinking class at SCLA. Ashlesha Ma’am adds that she did a lot of extracurriculars in college including getting a diploma in French. She even did eight years of Hindustani vocal training along with painting!
We then asked Ma’am if there is anything specific she likes in the field of Behavioral Economics. “I love the whole thing so it’s hard to pick, but I do think that loss aversion as a concept explains a lot about human behaviour, not just economic behaviour but behaviour in general and my eyes opened after that”. On the topic of favourite economists, “I read everything by Kahneman and Thaler”. Professor Swaminathan adds that she is currently reading up on neuroscience and feels that ‘neuroeconomics’ is the next big thing after behavioural. Her favourite works in this sphere include David Eagleman’s ‘Incognito’ and ‘The Brain’ (Ashlesha Ma’am jovially remarks that instead of economists, she ends up reading the works of psychologists).
Further, Ma’am animatedly explains to us the subliminal power of the human brain which can do a lot more than perceived. She narrates a story she read about how a blind man was able to cross a room of obstacles without bumping into them and how another blind man, with sensors on his tongue, could do rock climbing. “There is more to it than what meets the eyes!” We subsequently bring up the debate about books by economists for popular audiences. Do works such as Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s ‘Nudge’ dilute the formality of academic discourse? Ashlesha Ma’am does not feel so. “They are just trying to popularize the subject. Research in the field is good if you know where to look. These books are written to create interest and there is nothing wrong with that as it explains things to people in an easy way”.
On a parting note, Professor Swaminathan professes that the best part about teaching at SSE is: - “As a faculty, I get creative freedom. I can teach my subjects the way I want. I even get a lot of space with the career counselling.” When asked if she had any message for the students of Symbiosis School of Economics, Ashlesha Ma’am quips “Don’t be stressed. This is just the beginning of your career. You have a long way to go. So just enjoy what you do and chill!”
“Don’t be stressed. This is just the beginning of your career. You have a long way to go. So just enjoy what you do and chill!”
- Professor Ashlesha Swaminathan
We thank Ashlesha Ma’am for taking out time for this interview with Arthniti and for being the outspoken and confident person that she is who has inspired many of her students to be bold, forthright and speak up when faced with issues.