Vivian Gomes is an exceptionally skilled and street-smart Marketer having an experience of two decades in the IT industry. His success speaks of his knowledge, talent, patience, and excellence.

Vivian is the Chief Marketing Officer at CSS Corp, a Global Customer Services & IT Experience Company with eighteen global locations. Vivian has a total experience of nineteen years in the IT industry. He has formerly worked with companies such as NIIT, Infosys, Genpact, and Bay-area based Fin-tech startups.

Vivian was born and brought up in Delhi and spent the first eighteen of his life in the North. Then, for a few years, he went to the USA, and currently, he is settled in Bangalore. Therefore, It has been a good mix of cultures that has given him a learning perspective and understanding of different people.

Vivian did his schooling at St. Columbus in New Delhi and made lots of friends there. He did his Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology and MBA from the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. He was exposed to many learnings in his academic journey that he successfully applied in his professional life.

Vivian states that Covid was a big calamity for the entire humanity. His family was impacted by the virus and got hospitalised too. Many of his near and dear ones were also impacted. It was a challenging time. Fortunately, the IT services work could be done from home and that’s how he continued to work even during the pandemic.

Vivian has been in the IT sector since the start of his career. He got his first job in his dream company, Infosys. Vivian started his journey as a Software Engineer and progressed onto higher roles. Then at a point, he realised that he was more inclined towards the business aspects of things rather than technology. So, he did an MBA in Marketing and started in the Sales realm. Later, he switched to Marketing and has been loving his work.

Talking about challenges, Vivian says that during his early years as a fresher he used to hustle for eighteen hours a day without much rest. He took various suggestions and advice from others and tried to change his thinking and work ethic. However, he realised that to succeed, he must put his heart and soul into his work. He realised the importance of building a strong foundation. Vivian feels that challenges are in everyone’s life, what matters is how you fight them.

Vivian follows the Expectation and Empowerment model to practice leadership. He believes that as a leader, one needs to set some achievable expectations and then empower the team members as a guide. Secondly, he believes in the Pursuit of Excellence by setting personal goals and giving an honest shot at them.

According to Vivian, Education creates awareness but it cannot take you beyond a certain point. However, Experience is how you utilise your education. Education opens up the doors to navigate and build yourself. Vivian believes that education is an ongoing process but the experience will take you to the next level.

Vivian feels that your role models are a mix of people from the professional sphere and others who inspire you due to their human qualities. Some of his ex-bosses have been his mentors and taught him leadership without being critical. He values them and moves forward with the learnings. He thinks that one should self-analyse and pick up what appeals to your value system.

During his free time, Vivian likes to read reports and articles, listen to podcasts and stock market revelations, learn about cryptocurrencies, watch cricket, and do cooking- a skill that he learned during the pandemic.

Vivian has zero regrets in his life. He feels sad, bad, happy, and joyful, all the moments had their lessons. Therefore, he does not want to go back in time even if he gets a Time Machine.

Vivian feels proud of his journey and counts it as an achievement. He loves to interact and collaborate with budding leaders of tomorrow and work passionately with them. He feels proud to have achieved immensely in the last four years as compared to the company’s growth in the last twenty years. He feels elated that the company’s social media engagement rate has been the best among the competitors. He has generated ten times more pipeline and revenues in the company. It gives him satisfaction to achieve such accomplishments with a strong, passionate, and lovely team of youngsters. He thrives for such moments and looks forward to more such moments.

Vivian’s only advice to the youngsters is to build a strong base in the first half of their careers with immense effort and time investment.