Unilever’s Rashmi Sharma has decided to join Coca-Cola as the global leadership and learning director for the Company’s Bottling Investment Group, confirms Sharma to HRKatha. Officially, December 22 will be her date of joining, that is, her first day at Coca-Cola.
In this new role, Sharma shares that she “will be focused on accelerating the leadership & learning journey for the group, and ensuring that we continue to create best in class leaders, who are ready for the future of work.”
Prior to this appointment, Sharma was the global wellbeing and learning partner at Unilever for South East Asia, global beauty and personal care division, and Unilever International Business Unit.
At Unilever, Sharma had delivered excellent results in terms of developing a learning and wellbeing culture at the Company. As a global leader for learning and wellbeing at Unilever, Sharma played a crucial role in leading the digital transformation at the Company introducing digital first solutions. She was also leading the launch of global wellbeing and flagship programmes. She conceptualised leadership-assessment programmes across Thailand and Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), identifying potential managers.
Sharma joined Unilever in 2016 as a leadership and talent head for Unilever Vietnam. Having spent more than five years at Unilever, she expressed her gratitude to the Unilever team and her colleagues in a post shared on social media. “The brilliant complexity and diversity of South East Asia at Unilever, combined with cutting-edge work makes me grateful that I worked with Unilever. I take the tag of ‘ex-Unilever’ with great responsibility and continue to cheer for its’ goals and remain grateful for the learning, the connections and the growth,” shares Sharma in her post.
An alumna of the Xavier Institute of Management, she holds an MBA in HR. In the initial phase of her career, Sharma honed her skills in leadership development and talent management working with companies such as IBM and AON. She joined IBM as a leadership development manager, coaching and advising over 100 leaders at the company as part of a major leadership-development project. Within two years, she was promoted as a talent-management consultant at IBM.
After spending a little more than four years at IBM, Sharma moved to AON Hewitt as a senior consultant for talent and organisation. At AON, she led medium, large and integrated projects as a project manager in talent and performance areas, including career management, succession management, competency modelling, leadership development, employee engagement, employer branding and manpower planning.
After spending more than five years at AON, Sharma moved to Idea Cellular (now Vodafone Idea) as deputy general manager, and head of talent management and organisational development. At Idea, she was responsible for employment branding, HRBP and graduate hiring to optimise employee performance and ensure the Company’s competitiveness in the talent market.
Backed by more than 16 years of experience, Sharma is also a TEDx speaker.
