All about empowerment

An interior designer by profession and now the Chairperson of FICCI FLO, she has set all her agendas for this year to empower women form various fields and is geared up to encourage start-ups.

Sona Chatwani, in an exclusive one on one interview, shares about her profession and the upcoming projects that she would be working on for the year 2019-20.

Speaking about her professional journey and her new beginning with FLO Sona shares, "I am an interior designer by profession, and I have a concept store in Hyderabad.

I have been a chairperson of IIID which is Institute of Indian Interior Design Hyderabad chapter.

I, taking over as a chairperson of FLO is a huge task and responsibility and a lot of people have expectations and I hope to do the job well."

Elaborating on the agenda of the year 2019-20 she says, "The theme for this year is reframing women empowerment and with the special emphasis to reconnect, reinvent and reboot- that means we are looking at the technology phase that we need to catch up with.

Reconnecting is more towards your inner-self in a growth where you are trying to connect with the mind, body and soul and reinventing is about your network and career.

At this time, you need to explore with a lot of verticals within your own profession. Even if you have money you need to explore."

Reframing empowerment means a lot in simpler terms and bearing this in her mind she plans to devise the events in Hyderabad.

She says, "There are a lot of initiatives apart from the events that I am trying to do. I am going to get a lot of speakers, bureaucrats.

I am trying to get Amithab Kant to come and speak and there would be a lot of political leaders, which I would be confirming that after elections are done.

I am trying to get a lot of leadership coaches and trainers. Apart from that we have few initiatives - one is in alignment with the government's national policies.

We also have the agriculture initiatives. Women contribute 84 percent to agriculture, and we are not doing much as women, so we need to focus on that bit, try to create awareness, identify the issues there and see how we can do the hand holding.

On the back end, we are trying to do something that is connected with agriculture, food processing, identifying lands, get people to work on those lands, etc. At the grass root level, we are trying to train women in making pickles, jams and jellies."

Sha also mentioned that they would be launching a new government interface where they will be playing in dominant role in the government policies. "Ours is a council and we need to prove that we have a dominant voice in the national policies," she adds.

Mentioning that start- ups are a welcoming thing in the society, she shares, "we have to except that today it is the era of start –ups and we need to encourage them. I am in touch with IIT.

I am planning an event, which is based on the lines of Shark Tank that comes on the TV where you have both people who are buying the product and the ones who are coming up with the product (to promote start-ups)," she relates..