Remya Velayudhan Neela
Remya started her career as a banker. She worked as an operations manager in retail banking in the largest private bank in India. Later, She moved to Hong Kong to pursue a career in academia. She worked at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology as a research assistant on various projects in Corporate Finance. During her stint at HKUST, she also assisted researchers from Queens University in Canada on their corporate bankruptcy project. For both these projects, she significantly used her data gathering, cleaning, and analytical skills.
Later she moved to The Netherlands where she assisted researchers at the University of Groningen. During her stint there, the entrepreneurship bug caught her. The lack of healthy fast food options in the western world led her to start a venture in that space in Groningen. But before she ventured into it, she used her research and analysis skills to study the food market in Groningen and came up with a business plan for a healthy fast food business. Her business plan won the first prize of 20,000 Euros in a contest organized by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and McKinsey.
She then moved to Vancouver in 2012 to pursue her MBA at Simon Fraser University. In Vancouver, she was able to showcase her musical talent to the Indian diaspora. She was invited to sing Indian classical music in cultural events organized by the Indian Diaspora in Vancouver. This lead to several inquiries from the enthusiastic learners among the Indian diaspora to learn Indian classical music. She obliged without hesitation as music is one of her passions. It certainly helped her support her studies.
She soon realized a growing need among the Indian diaspora to teach their children Indian classical music as a means to stay connected to their roots. To cater to this demand, she started Sanskruti Music School in May 2016. They have conducted 2 full concerts at Surrey City Hall and Surrey Arts Center for which the tickets were sold out. Today, the school has various students in North America with faculties working for the school under remote learning. Apart from her school, she has also worked as a research associate to the Dean at the Beedie School of Business and she was a finance associate at TD Canada Trust.
Over these years her interest in teaching has given her opportunities in academia. Last year, she was visiting lecturer at Simon Fraser University where she taught an International Business course.