For the previous few months, e-VentExe has been spotlighting one “Super-Career” woman every month, allowing her to tell her story about how she entered the corporate work world. Readers were able to read about the struggles, sacrifices, highlights, and rewards these women faced 
while climbing the ladder towards success. This month, we end our series with Madvi Raya, who is currently the Chief Financial Officer and Co-founder of ScImage, a privately-held company headquartered in Los Altos, CA that provides state-of-the-art enterprise imaging solutions to the healthcare industry.
The Super-Career woman had to balance her personal life with her work life—at the workplace, dresses were replaced with slacks, femininity replaced with sternness all in order to strive to the top. The strenuous struggle to climb the corporate ladder may have seemed daunting, but to these “Super-Career” women, who lived double lives, it was the norm. Now, as young females are entering the workplace, what advice can these “Super-Career” women give to the younger generation?
In 1993, Madvi and her husband, Sai started and ran ScImage Inc. (A Medical Imaging Company) out of their spare room and garage for the first few years. Now, 20 years and two teenagers later, ScImage currently has offices in Los Altos, CA and 11 out-of-state offices and has grown organically into a mid-sized company.
Obtaining a Bachelors degree in Science and a Masters in Molecular Biology, Madvi was a Research Associate while simultaneously working to help start ScImage on the weekends. Madvi, who has always been ambitious, was raised by her parents to be independent allowing her to pursue her endeavors with full force; she always has a vision plan and believes a female is able to accomplish anything a male can.
As such, Madvi left her position as a Research Associate and solely devoted her time to ScImage. She recalls the hard work and dedication she put into the business. She had to self-educate herself in multiple business areas where she had had no previous formal education on how to run a business because she had to wear many hats in the beginning stages of ScImage. Madvi and her husband hired their first employee three years after ScImage’s creation.
Balancing her personal life with her work life was challenging, especially with young children and a household to run. Luckily, Madvi had a strong support system consisting of working and non-working mothers, friends, and family. She constantly evaluates her options, deciding which challenge needed more attention depending on the circumstances.
Looking back on her career, Madvi would take the same path again and believes everything she went through was a learning experience; she has met and worked with some wonderful and talented people.
Madvi enjoys her time at work and is also equally involved in her teenagers’ lives – volunteering some of her time at her sons’ school. Despite her busy schedule, Madvi made time and continues to make time to give back to her community by volunteering her time to several nonprofits. Madvi served/serves on the boards of: Community Awareness Treatment Services (CATS) which serves the homeless in the San Francisco Area, Gunn Foundation which provides scholarships to college bound students from her sons’ school and American Women for International Understanding (AWIU), a nationwide women’s organization that promotes understanding and provides grants to help support various women’s issues.
Madvi believes females who are currently entering, or who are new to the workforce should display hard work and perseverance, stating that there will be tough and unglamorous parts in any job, but pushing through all of that is vital to success in business regardless of gender. Madvi, who is a strong advocate on giving back to society, also believes that young women (sometime in their life) should give back to their community by getting involved in non-profit organizations that support causes that they are passionate about.
*e-VentExe, a full service human resource consulting firm, began as a start-up and specializes in outsourcing & compliance, recruitment & retention, training & development, and assessment tools.
The Human Balance 