Jyoti Munsiff, showing the opportunities of gender balance
When Jyoti Munsiff joined Shell back in 1969, she was told there was no vacancy, they didn’t recruit employees under 30, and everyone in the department was male, and either English or Dutch. Jyoti wanted a job, was a woman, 22, and Indian – yet still made her first step on a distinguished career.
“I was the only woman among 21 lawyers, all 20 years my senior,” she recalls. “It was difficult to get them to accept advice from someone young… and in a skirt.” But the equivalent of the Corporate Syndicate proved the best training ground for an in-house lawyer, and she admits to “learning a lot about how Shell operated.”
Born in Mumbai to Indian parents, Ms.Munsiff just recently retired from her position as general counsel and the company secretary of Shell Transport. She was one of the most senior women in Shell world-wide.
On becoming a project lawyer, Jyoti travelled overseas extensively for 17 years, but often met resistance to her gender, age or both. The businessmen she encountered weren’t accustomed to negotiating with a woman, let alone a 26-year-old one in a sari, yet on a brief secondment in Oman, Jyoti was “pleasantly surprised to find that women were readily accepted.” Being welcomed back enthusiastically on subsequent visits to all the two-dozen countries she’s worked in has been intensely gratifying.
Jyoti has had many other profound experiences at Shell – being the lead lawyer when Burmah-Shell was nationalised in the mid-1970s, and learning Spanish in six weeks for a trip to Argentina, for example, when she freely admits that “negotiating in a foreign language on my own was emotionally and professionally terrifying”.
In the mid-1980s, she became the Secretary to the CMD. “There had been some debate on giving the job to a woman for the first time,” she recalls. “I was reluctant to take the job, but I felt it would send the right message through the organisation. I was anxious not to let down the other women in Shell. Fortunately, it worked out,“ she adds, humbly.
Jyoti has headed every syndicate bar Corporate in The Hague and E&P, and 11 years ago.
In May of 2005, Jyoti Munsiff was named "Business woman of the Year" at the Asian Women of Achievement Awards ceremony, held in London, attended by Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, and his wife, Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.
Among the VIPs attending the award ceremony were the eminent British lawyer and a patron of the awards, Cherie Booth, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Kamalesh Sharma, the High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom.
The Asian Women of Achievement Awards were established to celebrate the commitment, dedication, and determination of Asian women within commercial, professional, artistic, and humanitarian sectors.
Ms. Munsiff joined the legal department of petroleum giant Shell in 1969 and became a project lawyer in most Shell businesses. She then led groups of lawyers that provided advice to Shell's businesses globally.
In her last 18 months Jyoti was appointed by Shell to a new position of Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer during which time she implemented a global ethics and compliance programme for over 100,000 employees.
Presenting her with the award, Member of Parliament Theresa May said that Ms. Munsiff had "marked herself out in a male dominated arena, which says a lot about her strength of character and charisma.
"She has not been vocal about her achievements, preferring to be out there and doing what she does best."
Ms. Munsiff is also director of and honorary legal counsel to the Prince of Wales' International Business Leaders' Forum. She is president of the Commonwealth Association for Corporate Governance and also is a governor of the College of Law, a trustee of the Imperial War Museum and chair of the IMW Trading Company.
In her acceptance speech, Ms. Munsiff said she attributed her career achievements to the confidence given to her by her parents who brought her up with the Baha'i principle that men and women are equal in the sight of God.
During her limited free time, Jyoti tries “to give something back to a profession that has given me so much”. She’s chaired committees, joined working parties and been a governor of the College of Law, and is a trustee of the Imperial War Museum and of a leprosy charity. However, her guiding light is her religion, the Baha’i faith, which, she admits, “has inspired me during the best and the worst of times at Shell”.
Following her distinguished career, Jyoti has now decided to take some time off and is currently enjoying South Africa.
We wish her next phase of life to be as successful, interesting and inspiring as the rest of her career.
