Tiki Bar with Aparna Muralidharan | RevOps, Creativity, and Helping Teams Work Better

5 Key Takeaways

• Aparna Muralidharan jokes that RevOps is a little like a zoo, which is fitting because she originally wanted to be a zookeeper and later spent time seriously pursuing dentistry before her career pivoted again.
• Her early professional life included Merrill Lynch during the 2008 financial crisis, where six managers cycled through in a short period and gave her a front-row seat to instability very early in her career.
• She explains how publishing, analytics coursework, and later operating roles helped her build the quantitative toolkit that eventually made the move into tech and revenue operations possible.
• At companies like Metadata and in seller-support roles, Aparna learned to pivot quickly when things were not working and to stay close to the actual needs of the field teams she supported.
• As a leader, she is most energized by mentoring and lifting people into bigger careers, describing team development not as an abstract ideal but as one of the most rewarding parts of the job.

Episode Summary

Kevin Davis talks with Aparna Muralidharan about a career that did not move in a straight line from school to title. Aparna shares how she went from wanting to work with animals, to pursuing dentistry, to landing in finance during the 2008 crisis, and eventually building a skill set strong enough to thrive in analytics-heavy operating roles.

The second half of the episode focuses on her evolution into revenue operations leadership. Aparna reflects on learning through fast pivots, investing in her own analytical training while working, and finding that one of the most meaningful parts of leadership is helping other people grow faster than they could on their own.