Five Question Friday: Archie Mathura

Meet Archie, December’s Question Friday participant! Archie is GreenLight’s corporate controller, where she supports the company’s accounting, financial reporting, taxes and payroll programs.

Archie’s favorite things about working at GreenLight are the company’s team, culture, and fun fast paced environment. Read more below about Archie’s first day at GreenLight, go-to karaoke song, and more.

1. Do you have a funny memory of your first day at GreenLight?
Not truly a first day incident, but it happened within the first few weeks of me being at GreenLight…I was in Susan’s office for a call and as I was beginning to wrap for the day when I realized I had lost my badge and keys. It felt very delicate as I was hesitant to go tell anyone in the facilities department that I had lost my badge within my first few weeks. I almost flipped out and searched around my desk and Susan’s office multiple times (I looked and pulled out anything that looked green) and was thinking of the best way I could explain this to Susan the next morning. I got a text early the next morning from Susan (you could tell my heart raced when I saw a text from her) saying she had grabbed my card and keys along with hers from when I was in her office. I felt a huge relief and when I walked in the office that morning, my card and keys were on my desk with a note from Susan. Coincidentally, this happened to me previously once in one of my earlier roles that I was very passionate about, now looking back I see it as a good sign and can laugh but it did result in a sleepless night.

2. What do you miss most about being in the office?
I miss the conversations with members outside of my team, especially new hires when grabbing a coffee, a snack or lunch. I also miss attending meetings together to share thoughts, ideas and opinions in a casual manner, rather than via zoom / team meeting calls.

3. What’s the biggest perk of working from home?
My family and I have gotten in the habit of having dinner together and we share how our day went. I love this new routine. It has become easier to do this while working from home, as we don’t lose any travel or traffic time. We also try and do some fun games or tricks, it has now become a really enjoyable routine that I hope to continue even once we are back to our usual routines of work and school.

4. What’s your go-to karaoke song, and when was the last time you sang it?
I am a huge music fan. Predominantly Indian movie songs – I have a lot of favorites and at least 100 songs that I could always sing. The song that has kind of stayed with me more recently is the title song for a mythological show. I watched this show again during COVID with my kids and I have been trying to teach them both (my 9 yr and 6 yr old) this song, the song is titled “Hai Katha Sangram Ki”. We do a karaoke night on weekends with my kids where each of us try and sing a song or two and this song is always sung by either of us.

5. Do you speak another language? How/why/when did you learn that language?
It is not uncommon to speak more than one language when growing up in India, a country that speaks over 20 different languages. I can fluently speak, read and write Tamil (one of the oldest languages), Hindi and can understand other South Indian Languages namely Malayalam and Telugu, to an extent. Tamil is my mother tongue and I grew up speaking this language, Hindi I learned in school but became proficient when I started working in North India. The other languages, I learned after primarily due to work, my initial job required a lot of travel to remote towns and I always found it useful to know the basics as this made connecting to people a lot easier.