Some leaders build careers by staying in their lane. Priyanka Mishra built hers by moving through the lanes nobody had driven on before, newly created roles, first-ever appointments, business entities due for course corrections. she has spent eighteen years turning exactly that kind of complexity into sustained, measurable profitability and is currently serving as Executive Director and Country General Manager at Umicore India Pvt Ltd,
Her path began with a B.Sc. in Microbiology and Biochemistry from Mumbai University, followed by an MBA at Symbiosis International University, an academic foundation that gave little hint of the commercial career that would follow. What it did give her was the analytical rigor that has defined every role since. At BASF, she spent years learning the nuances of sales and margin analysis, eventually managing a 14-million-dollar portfolio and earning selection among the Top 100 Salesperson at APAC level. A subsequent move to AkzoNobel brought a Best Rookie award and a role created specifically for her, the business unit`s first marketing manager hire in a male-dominated industry split between organized and unorganized sectors.
She mentions, “Hard work and sincerity kept adding next pieces and my career sort of developed organically. And I am extremely grateful for this and proud beyond words.”
Tripling Turnover in Margin-Sensitive Markets
The real test of Priyanka’s agility came at Solvay and DKSH, where she navigated margin-sensitive markets and volatile global supply chains. Tasked with scaling nascent, import-led businesses, she tripled Solvay’s commodity import turnover and delivered double-digit CAGR at DKSH, working with a dynamic, high-performing pan South Asia team she describes as unique in its diversity: geography, language, gender, experience.
What could have been a difficult experience became one of her most memorable, because despite intense performance pressure, the team functioned as a genuine unit, each member complementing the other while holding the larger goal in view. At DKSH specifically, her leadership produced a 17% CAGR over five years alongside Internal global leadership engagement scores exceeding 98%, evidence that profitability and people-centricity are not competing priorities but mutually reinforcing ones.
She asserts, “Despite the intense performance pressure, we worked as a unit, each one complementing the other, with the larger goal in mind.”
The Turnaround at Umicore India
Currently, as Executive Director and General Manager at Umicore India, Priyanka has earned her reputation as a transformation specialist. In the last three years, she has stabilized the India entity, navigating internal challenges and market shifts to deliver 3X profitability growth while overhauling governance frameworks from the ground up, building toward zero-observation governance standards. Through her leadership, she has nurtured a work culture based on mutual respect, honesty and sincerity, which helps the team to thrive even through adverse business conditions. Her team works with an inclusive culture based on respect and “solution orientation”. Umicore’s products and solutions serve a vast range of industries, which means, as she puts it, there is never a dull day.
Beyond the P&L, she sits on boards including the Indo-Belgian Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, a professional trust earned through years of demonstrated discipline. The Board experience itself, she notes, has been educative, with a learning curve she has found genuinely interesting rather than merely demanding.
She highlights, “In the last three years, I have stabilized the India entity to deliver multi times profitability growth while overhauling governance frameworks from the ground up. The bonus was a thriving growth oriented work culture. I didn’t achieve this by being popular amongst my team, but taking bold decisions and earning the respect and credibility I have today
A Career Built on Being First
At many points across her career, Priyanka has been the first in some capacity: the first occupant of a newly created role, the first woman in a commercial position, the first woman leader at a given level. While challenging at the time, she now views those firsts with a sense of achievement that has only deepened in hindsight.
The values behind that drive were set early. Independence and empowerment were central tenets of how she was raised, and not having a career was never presented as an option. There was no master plan, no cheat code, just a simple mantra: find a good job and do the best you can. After her MBA, the focus was on landing a position with a good company. There, she moved across three roles within BASF before progressing to her next chapters, learning fast and adapting at each stage.
She states, “At no point in my life was ‘not having a career’ ever an option.”
Personal Governance as the Foundation of Balance
Balancing a Country Leadership role with a fulfilling personal life is not, in Priyanka’s framework, about achieving a perfect daily split. It is about intentional integration and simple prioritization, built on three pillars. The first is boundaries through governance: the same discipline she applies to building SOPs for business stability, applied personally to her time, ensuring she is fully present in the boardroom and equally protective of offline windows for family and reflection.
The second is building a support ecosystem. Leadership can be lonely and intimidatingly isolating, but she learned, sometimes the hard way, that she did not have to be the sole lead hero. She invests heavily in empowering talent and has spent considerable effort developing a accountability as a culture at Umicore, rejecting micromanagement as a signal of insecurity. On personal front, a strong support system of immediate family and close friends helped her remain human, through the ups and downs of life. This “little village” of her husband, their parents, her sister and her family, have helped raise her child in a beautiful warm environment. This has helped lessen the guilt of a working mother.
The third pillar is keeping her moral compass pointed to true north. Maintaining a value system requires constant effort, because life consistently presents impossible temptations and decisions. This has to be an intentional exercise, as one`s standards of ethics and points of compromise are visible to most around us. The reputation and personality she carries today are shaped directly by that value system.
She reflects, “I don’t have to be the sole lead hero. It can be a multi-star cast movie.”
The Passion That Shifted with Life’s Stages
Asked what passion drives her, Priyanka offers an unusually honest answer. The question is the hardest one she faces, because the answer has changed several times across her career, shifting alongside the stages of her life, and that fluidity is precisely what helped her maintain balance and perspective.
As a working mother, she chased the myth of work-life balance for years before giving up on it entirely. She realized that at any given point, she could do genuine justice to either family or work, never fully to both simultaneously. Trying to give 100% to both sides of life was disastrous, and her mental and physical health declined as a result. She was, in her own words, not pleasant to be around, while chasing this myth. What followed was a shift toward conscious prioritization: choosing what mattered most at a given time and accepting that choice as the best possible decision available in that moment.
She affirms, “My passion is to enjoy and have fun doing whatever I am doing.”
The Pandemic and the Humanity Behind the Numbers
The COVID-19 pandemic arrived during Priyanka’s tenure leading the Pharmaceutical Ingredients business at DKSH, a period she describes as profound recalibration. The entire sector faced immense pressure, yet her business unit performed exceptionally, achieving record results.
To convert the crisis into advantage, she adopted hyper-agility and portfolio diversification, pivoting quickly to address surging demand for critical chemical ingredients for pharmaceutical industry and ensuring supply chain continuity. But the most enduring lessons emerged from human behavior. She moved beyond traditional management to build deeper, more humane relationships with her team, navigating fear and uncertainty together, and reinforcing a culture of empathy and psychological safety that allowed everyone to thrive under pressure.
On a personal level, the period brought deep reflection. She realized her professional resilience is inextricably linked to the strength of her family, and her health – both mental and physical. The consequences of poor health are often a shared burden on those around us – usually family and immediate team. This is just not fair. She emerged with a sharpened sense of self-awareness, accountability for her health, noting that is the strength of human connection, at home and at work, that truly allows people to survive and excel.
She reflects, “It is the strength of our human connections, both at home and at work, that truly allows us to survive and excel.”
Strengths Built Without Frills
Priyanka’s strengths include quick learning, adaptability, high self-respect without ego, the courage to acknowledge what she does not know, and consistent high standards across behavior, ethics, and work output. With these, she has navigated varying organizations, industries, roles, and ever-changing stakeholder expectations, successfully.
She has worked hard, without frills or shortcuts, giving every task her full effort. One of her early managers told her, “Looking at things, I should know whether this has passed through Priyanka’s desk or not. That is the quality hallmark you need to build.” The comment has stayed with her ever since. She is equally candid about her weaknesses, naming a long list, but life experiences, mostly good and some genuinely difficult, that taught her to keep improving and moving on. The one she is currently working on is her natural instinct to trust the goodness in everyone she meets, a trait that recently led to a traumatic experience and remains, in her words, work in progress.
She states, “I have a very long list of weaknesses, but experiences taught me to get better and move on.”
What She Tells the Next Generation
To aspiring leaders, particularly young women, Priyanka’s advice draws directly from her own journey. Prioritize hard work before smart work, because there is no shortcut to expertise, and the granular discipline she built since early on, is what eventually earned her the confidence to lead large-scale transformations. Lead with respect and honesty always, because leadership is built on trust rather than title, and an ethics-driven career is a long-term investment that pays dividends in institutional stability and personal reputation. Remember that there will be failures, bad days, people who do not like you etc and this will happen a lot. All this is part of professional success. But is crucial to remember the success, the good times and your champions even more! Helps to keep perspectives.
Stay secure and kind to yourself, because the climb to the boardroom is rarely a straight line, and being a secure leader means having the confidence to hire people smarter than yourself and the humility to learn from them. Be fluid and accept change as the only constant. When you lead a secure sense of self and an honest heart, you do not just achieve targets. You build a legacy that others are proud to follow.
She reminds, “Strong, unshakeable values and ethics become your hallmark in your workspace. With this in place, you already become noticeable.”
Priyanka Mishra’s journey from a microbiology lab to the boardroom reflects a persistent drive to bridge an ambitious strategy with ethical execution. She has been humbled by consistent recognition as a top-rated leader for her commitment to culture and accountability, and she remains, by her own description, a shameless cheerleader for her team and especially the deserving women in her network.
