Rayman Mathoda on the Twists and Turns of a Career Journey

Rayman Mathoda is currently CEO of MedGenome USA and a Partner at Emerge Life Sciences, but her career took a long, winding journey to get there. In her talk for the Women in Leadership program, she walked the audience through her history in real estate, health care, and beyond, detailing the lessons her many roles taught her as a businesswoman.

“I came to the US,” she began, “having grown up in a family of, like, forty-plus doctors, and with a great passion for my country. My vision and goal was that I would go back to India, into my traditional Sikh community — have an arranged marriage, by the way! — get rich, learn how to run a business, and then go run for office. I wanted to try to create social change because of the nature of my upbringing.

“And so we’ll talk about how all that changed.”

After graduating Princeton, Ms. Mathoda sought out a job at McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm. “I thought, this is a great way to learn business, almost like a professional school, because you do a bunch of work across a variety of industries.” Her career was proceeding as planned, until it was rocked by a surprise in her personal life.

“I had sort of grown up thinking I was straight, and not really realizing there was any other option, candidly — but feeling attracted to, you know, the Bollywood actresses. But around when I came to work at McKinsey as a business analyst, I met somebody here in Los Angeles, and I started to realize that I had found my soul mate, and the soul mate was in a different body than I had expected. And so that basically eradicated all India options, because I was promptly frozen out of my relatively traditional Sikh family.

“My long, twenty-thirty year life vision was destroyed; all of that had to be sort of rethought, and it set me on a path to then build a career and life in the US.”

Ms. Mathoda spent a few years climbing the ranks at McKinsey, but that too hit an unexpected inflection point.

“One of my dearest friends died when I was trying to make associate partner. And I had this big meeting with the CEO of the second largest hospital chain in America. I was faced with the decision of whether to go to the meeting with the CEO or whether to go to my friend’s funeral. I went to the meeting after consulting my senior partner on the project. But then I came home and decided that I want to leave McKinsey if McKinsey makes me the kind of person that now chooses career or money over the people that I love.”

Ms. Mathoda found a new position at the bank IndyMac, recruited by a McKinsey partner who was familiar with her work. There she met someone who would become her mentor: IndyMac’s CEO Mike Perry.

She recalled a crucial piece of advice he shared with her. “‘If you want to be successful, Ray, two rules: One, you gotta know the job of everybody who works for you, better than [they do]. And secondly, you’ve gotta make sure that you know how to communicate and impress your boss. Because they are going to have a much bigger impact on your success than what you actually do.’

“He was very much pro-women,” Ms. Mathoda remarked, “and promoted several women into the C suite. But he told me, ‘You got to ask for compensation to get it. You’re never going to get anything that you don’t ask for.’ And he would always point out how the women would never ask for money.”

During that time, Ms. Mathoda rose through the ranks quickly. “But it was only because I was in the right place,” she said. “The market was growing; the company was growing. If the company is not growing, no matter how well you do and how great you are with your boss, you’re not going to see that career and compensation growth.”

IndyMac, however, would ultimately run into disaster and collapse in 2008. Seeking her next role, Ms. Mathoda decided she had a duty to give back to her country. To do so, she founded HausAngeles Management Consulting, a private firm that worked with industry leaders as well as the White House. But after four years, she realized consulting wasn’t meeting her needs — neither in supporting her family, nor in pursuing social change.

“I sort of have this philosophy of truth telling,” Ms. Mathoda explained, “you know, saying what I think is right. And that wasn’t appreciated by people. I found myself attacked even by my lefty progressives if I came up with contrarian ideas! And so I realized I should keep my mouth shut and learn how to monetize my ideas in a different way than speaking. I came to this realization that I’m going to try to make my social impact through capitalism.”

During the next decade, Ms. Mathoda got involved with several struggling companies and used her expertise to bring them to prosperity. Now, she said, she’s playing the long game: after securing her family’s financial safety, she has become a life sciences entrepreneur focused on helping people gain access to novel and affordable diagnostics, medicines, and seeds.

For more information on the program, please visit Women in Leadership Program, CBE.