You become resilient by dealing with small-scale stress’s that you’re able to learn from. Women have many more opportunities to do that in their lives than men do, in part because they have more exposure to the stresses that come from being excluded from the privileges that come automatically to little boys and that continues throughout women’s lives as they carry different burdens and expectations from men. Women still carry more child rearing responsibilities. They carry more of the emotional load in families. The gender biases that exist either beat you down, or you develop a sense of yourself and others as being okay.

Chanda Kochhar is the managing director and chief executive officer of ICICI Bank. She is widely recognized for her role in shaping retail banking in India.

Kochhar joined ICICI as a management trainee. In 1993, she was appointed as one of the core team members who were assigned the responsibility of setting up the bank. She was promoted to assistant general manager and then to deputy general manager. In 1998, she was promoted as the General Manager and headed ICICI Bank’s major client group, which handled relationships with ICICI’s top 200 clients. From 2007 to 2009, she was the bank’s chief financial officer & joint managing director.

This journey was no easy task. In her career which extends to over three decades of experience, she remained strong willed and alert. Her determination to make it to the top only grew from year to year. Kochhar’s career growth can be traced along with the expansion of the bank over the past several years. In 2009 she was appointed the Managing Director and the Chief Operating Officer of ICICI bank and in 2011 she was awarded the Padma Vibhushan.