Life was never a bed of roses for Mariazeena Johnson, despite being the daughter of the famous politicianturned-educationist Jeppiaar. Instead, there was this constant pressure to meet expectations as she took over one of the largest privately-owned universities in South India. All the pressure has wilted away today, as she is one among the‘#100 Women Initiative’, by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) and Facebook.
It all started in 2001, when she took the reins of Satyabhama University as a director, under her father’s watchful eye, “He has been an inspiration for me. He respected women and we were brought up with those values,” she exclaims. On being asked what the challenges were, she says, “Meeting this generation’s expectation is the biggest challenge. The spotlight is huge because the platform is really big. We cannot satisfy everybody but the impact of my father’s generation has been huge and people expect the same of us. That is basically where we struggle a lot.” So, what was it that the Jeppiaar twins did not like about their politico dad? “We did not have the option of not liking my dad’s advise. We learnt how to make a point to match his liking,” she laughs.
Turning to the growing impact of digitisation, she says, “Children now are exposed to social and digital media which we did not have during our school days. So now if you ask a child a question, he has twelve answers off the net, where we used to read a book and find references. This trend is not good when you want to become a benchmark for the younger generation. We keep making references to leaders who had lived but no references to leaders who are living among us.”
In a parallel universe, if her dad hadn’t asked her to take over as director of Satyabhama, what would she have been, we wondered. With an instant spark in her eyes, she says, ‘English professor’ “My passion was to become an English professor. I have two daughters. I am waiting for them to follow my passion. Because teaching is the only profession where you can live always and learn always,” she says.
She also finds it easy to juggle her roles of director and mother. “When work has to be done, I do work, but have to find time for family because without their support we are not going to be anything. The time spent with children is important because they don’t care about our bank balance. For me, success is finding the balance between family and professional life,” she admits.
Reach out: directors@sathyabamauniversity.ac.in