Featured Alumni – Archana Kumar, 1995 PE

June 16, 2018 one comment ISMAANA Admin Categories Patrika Q2 2018

Archana Kumar, 1995 Petroleum Engineering (PE) batch, is currently heading the Petroleum Engineering team of Leap Energy, Malaysia. She moved to Malaysia in 2010 and since then have been working as an oil industry consultant petroleum engineer. Prior to that, Archana has worked with ONGC (India) for 12 years. She has worked on projects in various countries like India, Australia, Iran, Oman, Kuwait, Romania, UK and most of the South East Asian countries. While at work, her passion for higher studies and feeling of stagnation at work led her journey to Stanford University, USA during 2008-10. She is a proud Stanford graduate with master’s degree in Petroleum Engineering. She is happily living in Kuala Lumpur with her husband, also ISM 1995 PE batch, and two sons Abhimanyu and Aryaman.

Before admitting to ISM or IIT(ISM) as it called now, Archana wanted to become a mathematician and did not consider engineering as a career option for women those days, let alone one from a mining school. Thankfully, she did not miss mathematics at all while doing Petroleum Engineering. ISM was tough in terms of social and environment life, but all the strength gained those days are still helping her as a bold international expatriate woman engineer in the oil industry and travel all around the world without fear and hesitation. Stanford happened quite late in her life, but she took it as a challenge and completed her masters successfully while her husband took care of their sons in Shell camp Nigeria.

ISM community served Archana with an international immediate family everywhere she travelled and never felt alone. Throughout her career, everyone she met inspired her in some way or the other. Life is good, and the world looks beautiful because of such people. She has been blessed with very good mentors, colleagues and friends throughout her career and hardly faced any issue as a woman engineer in the international oil industry or elsewhere. She has put her heart and soul into the career with her family’s full support. Many women engineers may not be as lucky as she is in having a smooth sail through their career. She shares her wisdom to young women engineers to “Never underestimate your potential, you are the best always, age no bar. Be the person you want to be and not a mere follower”.