Introduction:
The Department of Soft Skills at SVKM’s NMIMS Deemed-to-be University was conceptualized under the inspirational leadership of Honourable President SVKM and Chancellor, SVKM’s NMIMS Deemed-to-be University, Shri Amrishbhai Patel. The department has been into existence for over a decade and it was born out of the SVKM’s initiative to include Soft Skills in all the program curriculum at all the colleges and schools under the SVKM Trust. With a strong emphasis on student’s overall and all-round social, personal, professional and psychological development. Soft skills at NMIMS religiously follows the Trust’s vision and mission of equipping students with the knowledge, skills, and values required to shape our students into future leaders, entrepreneurs, and responsible global citizens. Under the guidance and direction of the leadership team at NMIMS, and with institutional patronage of honourable Vice Chancellor office, we at The Department of Soft Skills attempt to bring the SVKM’s vision and mission live by designing customised interventions that include behavioural skills development training, and employability skills-related training such as career initiation skills and corporate readiness skills training.
Aim:
For students, to be a primary support and resource on soft skills development, which includes building & honing inter-personal and intra-personal relationship skills, personality enhancement and enrichment, and up-to-date business/corporate readiness training.
Objectives:
- To provide opportunity to students to develop essential soft skills required to thrive and flourish in personal and professional life
- To build managerial and leadership competencies that are required in the AI-dominated workplace of today.
Our Department:
We host a unique and a one-of-a-kind program initiated, established and guided by the top management and leadership team at SVKM’s NMIMS Deemed-to-be University, Mumbai Campus, across 14 plus schools and to impart an essential and crucial segment to develop life skills.
Soft Skills as a term encapsulates all the skills that are behavioural, and distinct from Hard Skills. Hard Skills are skills such as ones’ qualification and certificates of achievements. Soft Skills is an integral part of any life-long learning for any individual at any stage of their life. At NMIMS, we focus on getting our students prepared for the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world and the Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible (BANI) world through training them on essential life skills required for the contemporary business world.
The Life Skills and Citizenship Education (LSCE) Framework of United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF, 2017) sets out 12 core life skills: creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, cooperation, negotiation, decision making, self-management, resilience, communication, respect for diversity, empathy and participation. These skills have been selected as those most needed for the life outcomes of learning, employability, personal empowerment, and active citizenship. The world of academia imparts much-needed skill-sets in various domains that equip our students to play effective roles in the corporate world or in the sphere of entrepreneurship. What prepares them thoroughly for the rigors of life as a responsible citizen both of the nation and corporate is the intervention in Soft Skills which attempts to address the 12 life skills outlined above. There is an ever-increasing need to reach out to every student on a deeper level to ingrain in them the tools to develop essential life skills, the resilience in times of hardships and the confidence to cope with daily stressors of life.
Alignment of NMIMS with NEP 2020:
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 emphasizes a holistic, multidisciplinary, and outcome-driven approach to higher education, with a strong focus on employability, value-based learning, and life skills integration. It calls for embedding communication, problem-solving, teamwork, and resilience into mainstream curricula, moving beyond traditional knowledge transmission toward preparing students for dynamic careers and responsible citizenship. In direct alignment, NMIMS guided by its legacy of academic quality and innovation has institutionalized these principles through the Department of Soft Skills. By serving as a central resource for employability and personal development, the department enables the University to meet NEP’s call for experiential, skill-based, and student-centric education while strengthening its distinctiveness in the Indian and global higher education ecosystem.
Advancing NMIMS’s Vision and Mission through Soft Skills:
Anchored in its vision “to be a globally admired University” and mission to emerge as a Centre of Excellence by 2030, NMIMS has uniquely positioned soft skills education as a strategic differentiator. The Department of Soft Skills supports this mission by promoting faculty scholarship, integrating global benchmarks of employability, and fostering internationally relevant competencies that enhance student success. Through innovations such as counselling-informed interventions, industry-academia engagements, and globally benchmarked training, the department strengthens NMIMS’s pursuit of innovation, diversity, and leadership development. This integration not only enhances graduate employability but also reflects NMIMS’s long-standing value system of nurturing changemakers graduates who embody character, courage, and competence, and who are prepared to make a meaningful impact on society and industry worldwide.
Faculty:
We are a team of teachers cum trainers who have at least a decade long professional corporate work experience in the area of Soft Skills. Besides, conducting full-time student training and teaching engagement, we frequently stay in touch with the current needs of the industry and bring those best practices in the class. Here are the trainers currently empanelled with the department.
- Prof. Gabrielle Heart – In Charge, Dept. of Soft Skills
- Ms. Hemangi Kambli, Coordinator, Dept. of Soft Skills
- Prof. Mohammed Naveed Shaikh, Assistant Professor, Communication & Soft Skills
- Prof. Krishna Chande, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Soft Skills
- Prof. Karishma Ahuja, Visiting Professor, Soft Skills
- Prof. Anuj Kothari, Visiting Professor, Communication & Soft Skills
- Prof. Roli Gupta, Visiting Professor, English Language Teaching & Soft Skills
Point of Contact:
- Prof. Gabrielle Heart: gabrielle.heart@sbm.nmims.edu Extn. 115858
- Ms Hemangi Kambli: hemangi.kambli@nmims.edu Extn. 115713
Our Training Programs:
The interventions we undertake follow two routes: behavioural skills related training, and employability skills related training.
Behavioural Skills Training include the following:
- Intra-personal relationship training such as developing confidence, personality, and assertiveness skills
- Inter-personal relationship training such as learning to build stronger, lasting, healthier relationship with each other
- Training on active listening and questioning skills that allow critical and analytical thinking
- Psychometric profiling including tests, assessments and activities around identification of strengths and area or opportunities for development
- Business communication skills, especially tailored in the age of AI-driven world, like presentation skills, group discussion, business writing, etc.
Employability Skill - these are also called career initiation skills and corporate readiness skills:
- Conducting oneself as a socially responsible corporate citizen of the 21st century
- Hand-holding students on interviewing skills like Personal Interview, Group Discussions and Case-Study Analysis.
- Preparing our students for the future of work in the age of AI
- Coaching and constantly supporting students who require help transitioning from campus to corporate
Our Offerings:
- Classroom sessions – conducted school-wise basis the requirements and need identification
- Open-workshops – Sessions conducted in an open-invitation form as requested by the schools; e.g., Topics on The Leadership Skill – Sharing Feedback, Expectations Management, The Art of Persuasion (especially for Digital Marketing, Social Media, Global-MBA courses), Listening & Empathy, Creating Positive First Impression, The Art of Story-Telling, etc.
- Individual attention to students on case-to-case basis
- Leading and managing student Initiatives such as Debates, Public Speaking Club, etc.
Our Uniqueness:
The faculty members in the department are industry experts who bring to class the contemporary definition of soft skills and its real-time use in the corporate setting of today. Our faculty members are selected after rigorous interview process conducted by the leadership at SVKM's NMIMS.
The courses are designed keeping in mind the following:
- The student feedback and requirement
- The school’s area of focus
- The skill-sets required in today’s AI-driven business environment
- Latest research in the area of soft skills across the corporate domain and management institutes
The courses we offer are at its core a ‘threshold free’ structure thereby giving the students added opportunity to dive deeper into their experiences and explore new levels of knowledge application.
What Our Student Say -
“I got the opportunity to learn from the Department of Soft Skills during my final year at B.Sc Economics, NMIMS, during which I gained crucial learnings on topics ranging from business etiquette to the do's and don'ts of an interview process. Sir has gone above and beyond to help us personalize our CV's, nudged us towards identifying our strengths and made us build confidence in our abilities. He imparted knowledge on the combination of behavioural and technical competencies that recruiters look for in a candidate and encouraged us to pursue our dreams! I can't give enough credit to Sir for helping us through the interview process, his confidence in our ability pushed us to have faith in ourselves. It was a pleasure to get to learn from someone like him.”
BSc Economics (2022), SAMSOE
“Hi! I am an angry young man looking for life's purpose. It was second year of engineering. I was mentally and emotionally a complete mess, and was just trying to get through the daily drag. Trying to fit in. Trying to ignore the constant "amazing words" of people in my college just because I was the way I was. That was when I met you. A mentor in the truest sense, you changed my life's trajectory and you inspired to be a better version of myself, and most importantly, in this world of chimpanzees, you inspired me to be a gorilla and be myself. This is not your stereotypical feedback mail, but then again, this is not your stereotypical engineering student ;)
To sum it up, thank you so much for always being there and teaching me important life lessons. Looking forward to learning more from you!”
BTI Mechanical (2022), 3rd year MPSTME
“The best thing about the soft skills department is the approachable faculty who go out of their way to help you not only with your academics but also with your skills. From facing interviews to other real-life professional situations, they ensure we always stay on the top. They've helped us refine ourselves by bringing us closer to what actual corporates would be like. With a full-fledged training on skills we must ace at, as freshers, to have a great kick-start of our professional journey, they are playing a vital role to make us employable.”
BPharm + MBA (2021), 5th Year, SPPSPTM
Excellent professor. I had an interest in psychology, but she generated more of it as the days passed by and made me more aware of the human mind, thinking process, human behaviour, tactics to live a better and satisfied life, and much more. The teacher as well as the course generated more curiosity for the so called boring subject "psychology". Thanks to mam...
MCA: Semester I (2019), MPSTME
All the activities during our soft skills training Programme by Krishna Ma’am were very engaging and interesting. It was an effortless and natural consumption of understanding the purpose of any activity. Even being present online, never felt that we were missing out on the fun. I loved how every soft skill was trained through new and exciting ways. It used to be relaxing, refreshing and an organic learning
MBA – General Management (2022), NMIMS Indore
Thank You so much ma’am! We had excellent sessions with you! And we are really grateful to have learnt from you about various aspects of being in corporates. Also, not to forget, you have been extremely kind and patient with solving our doubts. Thanks a lot for being so co-operative and imparting the knowledge that would not be easily forgotten
Niyati Mudliar, Assistant Professor (Biological Science) and Course Coordinator, SVKM’s Shri C. B. Patel Research Centre
Our Faculty Profiles
Our Team
Gabrielle Heart
Department Head
Assistant Professor, In-Charge – Soft Skills, School of Business Management
Ms. Hemangi Kambli
Coordinator
Train the Trainer
The Life-skills department of NMIMS deemed-to-be University in collaboration with our in-house counsellors conducted a "Train the Trainer” program on 7th November (second half) and 8th November as a part of its content development and sharing of best practices objectives.
The sessions were conducted by the core team of the department as indicated below:
- Emotional Intelligence by Professor Krishna Chande
- Motivation and Resilience by Meeta Shah (Senior Counsellor) and Assistant Counsellors Joel Gibbs and Nazneen Raimawalla.
- Neuro-linguistic Programming by Professor Ritesh Haldankar
- Creative Group Discussions by Dr Madhavi Gokhale
- Team-building by Professor Ocean Gonsalves.
The program also included a theatre workshop by Shreyas Desai of Myriad Arts with the objective of linking elements of the theatre with soft skills.
There were 15 participants in all including the core team. The sessions were well-received and all the participants were deeply satisfied with the learnings and takeaways.
Ms Hemangi Kambli rendered excellent support as the coordinator of the program.
Standing from L to R: Dr Ambrish Bhatt, Professor Mahendra Tayde, Dr Madhavi Gokhale, Professor Krishna Chande, Professor Karishma Ahuja, Meeta Shah, Professor Ocean Gonsalves.
Seated from L to R: Professor Ritesh Haldankar, Joel Gibbs, Umangi Mehta, Professor Poojaa Jadhav, Professor Neville Mehta
Dr Sharad Mhaiskar (Pro Vice-Chancellor, NMIMS University) with the participants and Hemangi Kambli (standing next to Professor Neville Mehta)