Dr. Sushma
Vishnani
Director, Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow Professor — Finance & Accounting
What did you want to be growing up?
A Chartered Accountant who could read a balance sheet like a story — and somewhere along the way, I also became the person who teaches that story.
A leader that inspires you?
Indra Nooyi — for proving that rigour, empathy, and an Indian middle-class upbringing can run a Fortune 50 company.
Your go-to comfort food?
Khichdi with a spoon of ghee. Nothing else negotiates with a long accreditation week quite as well.
Describe your current role
I'm Director at Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow, and Professor of Finance & Accounting. So my days move between three rooms — the classroom, where I still teach Corporate Finance and Valuation; the research room, where I work on financial reporting quality, ESG, and accounting conservatism in Indian markets; and the leadership room, where we steer the campus through AACSB-level quality assurance and accreditation work. After 20+ years in this space, I've stopped pretending those rooms are separate.
What role does institute culture play in your work?
Finance students arrive thinking the subject is about being right. Jaipuria's culture quietly retrains them — it's about being rigorous, transparent, and accountable to people who will never read your spreadsheet. The same thing applies to how we run the institution. Accreditation isn't a once-a-year scramble for us; it's a daily habit of asking 'would I be comfortable if a regulator, an alumnus, and a student all saw this decision?'
From Struggles to Smiles
Highs and lows of the journey
The highs are seeing my research land in journals like Business Strategy and the Environment and Internet Research, and watching students I taught early in my career return as CFOs and partners. The lows? Every academic knows them — the paper rejection that arrives the same week as a teaching schedule from hell, the policy change that lands mid-semester. You learn to keep the long view and trust that good work eventually meets the right reader.
What do you love beyond the classroom?
Reading — slowly, and not always about finance. I've also enjoyed years of training programs at BIRD, ICICI Prudential, and World Bank-aided projects, where you meet practitioners who keep you honest about what theory can and can't do. On a quiet evening, it's classical music, a cup of tea, and a notebook that still uses ink.
Selected Talks
"In finance, the numbers are the easy part. Earning the trust of the people behind the numbers is the work of a lifetime."
