The Elephant in the Room

Shownotes: Everybody wants to talk about fintech - apparently it is the new normal. I recently learnt that a staggering 95% of the founders of the FinTech 50 list are male. Not difficult to do the math here - it means women founders make an abysmal 5%.  An International Monetary Fund Report from Dec 2022 - Digital Gender Gap, says that women represent less than 13 percent of leadership - both...

It has not been long since the PR/Comms Industry started to be conscious about the impact of inherent racism, prejudice and discrimination on employees from black, and ethnic minority groups. Moving from talk to taking action for change has been painfully slow. It is important to acknowledge that organisations in the industry are at different stages of the journey. Some have been quicker to authen...

Shownotes 36 %: No of women employees In the Indian tech sector (the biggest employer by far) 51%: Women entry level recruits 🤩🤩🤩 25%: Women in managerial positions 😕☹️ (how bad or unsupportive does the culture need to be to get educated women to leave) 1% : Women in the C-Suite 🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️ (This cannot happen without entrenched and systemic biases) The statistics are so predictable it...

Shownotes:  India was ranked 121 out of 163 countries in the 2022 Global Index of SDGs. It has also been identified as a global hotspot by the IPCC in terms of geographical and socio-economic vulnerabilities. In 2023 India is expected to become the most populous country in the world. As a rapidly growing economy with decades of infrastructure growth ahead of it, India’s energy demand and emis...

Shownotes: According to a report from last year by a leading consulting firm - compared with the other developed countries, the most disadvantaged in the UK are less likely to climb the income ladder and economically advantaged tend to stay at the top. No surprise there… It is no secret that, the on going impact of the pandemic, cost of living crisis, economic recession and global uncertainty has...

Shownotes:  👉🏾 How many of you know that Africa is home to approximately one third of the world’s languages?  👉🏾 That there are at least 75 languages in Africa which have more than one million speakers 👉🏾 That it has a combined landmass of China, US, India, Japan and much of Europe (11.7 million sq mi)?  👉🏾 Considering its size, demographic dividend, economic potential, achi...

WARNING: THE INFORMATION BELOW MAY BE TRIGGERING 1.64 lakhs, a daily average of 450 or 18 per hour….. That is the number of deaths due to suicides in India in 2021 The statistics for death by suicide amongst young people is worse. Not surprising then that this is the third leading cause of death amongst young adults and a significant problem amongst college students in India.  Mental health c...

Shownotes:  What is it like to be brought up in a conservative, small town where girls are groomed from their childhood to just be good daughters, wives and mothers?  For the 85th episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast I spoke with Tehseen Zaidi, Head Communications, Syngenta India. Growing up in a small town in UP, Tehseen was unlike her peers, she was opinionated and spoke her min...

Shownotes:  In the 84th Episode of The Elephant in the Room Podcast, I spoke with Dhruvi Shah, Executive Trustee and CEO of Axis Bank Foundation about her journey as a banker and transitioning to working for the foundation. In the episode we talked about the work being done by Axis Bank Foundation in the ‘sustainable livelihoods’ in rural India, priorities for the Foundation, the state o...

Shownotes:  Racism/casteism comes in various forms across the world, sometimes it is overt and sometimes it is coded. In either form it negatively impacts the life and life chances of millions of people who move to a different country to seek a better or more stable future. Sometimes it can break people and other times it makes them more resilient and more determined.   Did you know that...

At the first PRCA EIAC Conference in September this year, Kantar launched its 2022 Inclusion Index. The Inclusion Index covers 24 industries across 14 countries and 18000 respondents. For Kantar a key purpose of the report, is to enable organisations to understand, measure and track and their own progress in developing an inclusive workplaces. Interestingly, there is data from key markets and geog...

Shownotes: We all know that countries and cultures are not monolithic and homogeneous. That when we speak about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), we are at different points in our journey; sensitivity and awareness levels may wildly differ from country to country within a region or a continent. So, the drivers for DEI will differ from one geography to another. For practitioners to not force f...

Shownotes For the 80th episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast, I met with the amazing Sheeraz Gulsher, one of the co-Founders of People Like Us. People Like Us is an award winning not-for-profit that celebrates and supports media, marketing and communications professionals from Black, Asian, Mixed Race and minorities ethnic backgrounds.  According to the website they are also working tow...

Shownotes In several episodes of The Elephant in the Room podcast I have spoken with CEOs, academics, influencers on what leadership means. This is a part of my own quest to understand leaders and leadership by listening to others and to redefine it through the lens of my own experience.  In this episode of the podcast I speak with @Dave Guerra the author of best seller ‘Super Performance’, a...

Shownotes “ I would say that this report presents a contradictory picture, which is probably a feature of this report. And this contradiction is about rich Adivasi and poor Adivasi. Rich Adivasi in terms of their world view and cultural practices, but poor Adivasi in terms of the deprivation”  The 78th episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast, is a follow up episode, on the first ‘Sta...

Shownotes My guest on The Elephant in the Room podcast this week took the path less trodden. After a BA in History from Yale and an MBA from Judge Business School - she didn’t follow the path of her peers to investment banking but decided to pursue a career in the social sector in spite of the disapproval of family and friends.  Rachita Vora is co-founder of India Development Review. India De...

“ And it is really hard, I think, especially when imposter syndrome sort of plays on your mind saying, do I deserve to be so audacious with my dreams. And actually, for some time, I think I used to say the right thing, so I used to say that I'm playing a go big strategy, but when it came to actually making decisions, I would take a slightly safer route. And in fact an investor actually called me o...

Shownotes: For the 6th episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast in partnership with India Justice Report - we focused on the overburdened Indian prisons. For a very long time India’s prison system has been known for overcrowding, unhygienic conditions and the disproportionate number of under trials in the prison population.  The covid-19 pandemic led the Indian Supreme Court to issue...

Shownotes:  My guest on The Elephant in the Room podcast this week is Liz Sweigart, PhD Chief Product & Strategy Officer, Safe Kids AI. Liz serves on several boards, is a frequent author and speaker on mental wellness and mental health.  In the episode we explore leaders, leadership, conscious, moral, ethical, moral leadership. We also spoke about her journey to discovering who...

Shownotes:  What do people think of as they are coming to the end of their college/University degree? The future, a new life, new job, new friends, travel, and new adventures. And most people step into this beautiful but messy world full of hopes and dreams.   My guest this week on The Elephant in the Room podcast Ruchika Singh, had to press pause on the life she was looking forward to w...

Shownotes: The core purpose of the partnership between The Purpose Room and The India Justice Report is about helping raise awareness and understanding of the Indian justice system and also getting ordinary citizens to understand, be aware and curious about the justice system. The aim of course is to discuss how the delivery of quality justice must be seen as a priority and become real in the live...

Shownotes The language we use often reflects the widely accepted socio-cultural values, norms, and beliefs that society holds, including roles men/women and non binary people play. For as long as we know language has been used to undermine people making them seem less competent, confident and places an expectations on what people can aspire too. The constant use of such language reinforc...

Shownotes:  It is phenomenal to meet with women who refuse to conform to stereotypes, are not averse to risks and are very confident of the space they occupy (or seek to occupy). As a Black, Arab, female founder of an ESG Consultancy  Communique.   Gihan A.M Hyde جيهان هايد  wants to use her skills to work on what she is passionate about, challenging stereotypes is no...

Shownotes “ Policing is a service to the citizen, when citizen needs the policemen, the policemen should be there at the police station. This is the responsibility of a democratically elected government, this is a guarantee given under the constitution to protect the life and property of every citizen.” Maintaining law and order is a state subject in India. This means that each of India’s 28 state...

Shownotes What makes a good leader? Who is a good leader? Are women better leaders? What or who shapes our leadership styles? Why do women continue to be underrepresented at the C-Suite level across the world? These are some of the questions I have been asking my guests on The Elephant in the Room podcast - in an attempt to demystify leadership and what it means because it means different things t...