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Rina Khanna: crunching numbers
at Chase Card Services
Her latest project is overseeing the roadmap
for developing a business intelligence center
of excellence at the Chase Card Services warehouse
 Rina Khanna’s job and her joy is “transforming data into information” that a business can use to improve its performance. She works for Chase Card Services, the credit card division of JPMorgan Chase, in Wilmington, DE. She’s an application development manager in the division’s data warehouse.
Her biggest challenge is helping everyday users adapt to today’s tools, so incredibly fast at crunching the needed information. “Delivering technology is easy, but people have to really know how to use it,” she says.
A team of four
Khanna oversees a team of four that implements technical business solutions. The team specializes in business intelligence, data management and data warehousing.
Her latest project is overseeing the roadmap for developing a business intelligence center of excellence at the Card Services warehouse. It was up to her to define the plan for the initiative, and now her team is implementing it.
“We started from scratch,” she explains. “We went through tool selection, hiring a team, procuring resources, setting up infrastructure, defining optimal responses, understanding the clients, and implementing solutions and the user adaptation.”
The center employs a self-service model. Users within the organization are accustomed to handling data in their own special ways, and this streamlines the processes.
It takes patience
Of course, probably the biggest hurdle is getting people to change their habits. “It takes patience,” Khanna says. “You can’t expect them to change overnight, and you have to support them as they adapt. You have to stay involved with them.
“My job is not only about technology, but about people,” she explains.
The other major challenge is that companies may use a variety of software tools to derive their business analytics. Khanna says, “My applications gather data from all the tools, load it back into a database and offer a single source of information. It gives a lot of information and helps us find things quicker, and everyone gets the answers for themselves.”
As a manager, Khanna tries to be open and direct, giving feedback “then and there, as needed.” When there’s a problem, she’s sure to get involved so the team can solve it together.
As it happens, she’s the only woman on the team, but “I have good people working with me, and I enjoy coaching and mentoring them,” she says. “Our work is the place we spend most of our time, and I try to assure that there is positive energy here.”
Growing up professional
Khanna grew up in Ranchi, India, in a community where “every household had a doctor or an engineer,” and the same was expected of her. Her father is a ChE and she picked engineering, too, “because I thought medicine would be harder work,” she says with a laugh. Computers were her natural interest.
She received a bachelor of technology in electronics and communication engineering in 1993 from the Birla Institute of Technology in Ranchi. Then she got a job at Tata Technologies Ltd, a leading industrial company in India. She was a senior consultant for Oracle, Unix and C projects.
She moved to PriceWaterhouse-Coopers in 1998 as a project lead for data warehousing projects. She and her husband, who is also in software, began to think about coming to the U.S. with their young daughter.
They arrived in 2000, and Khanna found a job as a consultant with JPMorgan Chase. It was not a management position, but she saw that as a plus.
“It helped me understand how projects go in the U.S.,” she says. “And it helped me get ahead in the long run. Working hard, knowledge, networking and having the right attitude pay off in the long run.”
Understanding motivation
“People are the same everywhere,” she says. “Basically, you have to lead by example. My motivation is to try to understand different people and what motivates them and have honest discussions.”
She has moved up quickly at Chase. In 2001 she became a senior developer for Bank One heritage; in 2004 it was application development lead for the same group, and in 2006 she moved into her current job.
Khanna also networks as a member of Women in Computer Technology in Philadelphia, an organization sponsored by Chase. She’s a member of a network for women at Chase, and heads up a mentorship circle of six women. She also mentors two people individually.
Family needs
Outside work, Khanna volunteers with Junior Achievement. Her family now includes a nearly-teenage daughter and a toddler boy. Her husband helps balance the load between work and family, and her daughter is also “a great help with the baby,” she says.
At home the family speaks Hindi and some Punjabi, but the children’s first language is English.
She’s pleased that her employer is flexible with family needs. “They give us options to work remotely, and that has helped me,” she says.
D/C
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