Managing Director, Ram Bajekal

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Ram Bajekal is our Managing Director, leading a team of enthusiastic "FMFers" determined to make the company "the most admired in the region".
Ram is a Chartered Accountant from India and a Fulbright Fellow in Management Studies from the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA. He has spent most of his working life in India with diverse organizations such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Hindusthan Photo Films, Unilever Group and the Murugappa Group; in Fiji he has worked previously with the Carpenters Group. After 25 years of what he calls corporate sector 'rat race', Ram took a three-year sabbatical to work in rural India with Traidcraft Exchange, a UK based NGO imparting business skills to low-income communities engaged in micro-enterprise. A large part of his work involved capacity building among farmer groups to help them get a fair deal in the value chain. He says he thoroughly enjoyed the stint for its positive impact on people - "and the fact that I didn’t have to wear a business suit !". He says it was only his fondness for Fiji and the life-work balance it provides that allowed him to return to the corporate world.
His goal is to progressively make hierarchy irrelevant at FMF, insisting it is people that are important, not their official positions. The greatest challenge of his job he says, is taking decisions that may adversely affect some people but are necessary for the greater good.
Job stress seldom troubles him because he gives it "only as much seriousness as it deserves in the wheel of life”. It also helps that he plays sports (hockey, cricket, golf & badminton), listens to traditional jazz and Indian classical music and reads non-fiction books.
He speaks eight languages – and now knows most, nay, all Fijian swear words.
He hopes to succeed in his dream of building an institution where every single individual feels a sense of worth, a sense of belonging and a sense of achievement.
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