Tanvi Girotra: How to have impact and purpose in life

00:00:06:04 – 00:00:34:22
Claudia
It’s the season finale. Hello and welcome to Shift Happens. This is the 16th and last episode of season two, and I am so thrilled and grateful for all my inspiring guests, the encouraging and helpful feedback from you, my listeners from all over the world, which is just so cool and exactly what I had wished for. Not that numbers count or do they?

00:00:35:00 – 00:01:05:23
Claudia
But we are now at way over 2200 individual listeners. It proves that anecdotes matter, that sharing stories connects us, and that a communal experience through listening is impactful. My name is Claudia Mahler I am your host and continue to invite you to celebrate women’s voices. When women have the space and time to share stories. We all connect and feel heard.

00:01:06:01 – 00:01:58:12
Claudia
So of course, season three follow soon. When and where? I will tell you after the conversation with today’s guest, social impact expert and leadership coach Tanvi Girotra lives and works between Delhi and New York City. Tanvi had the guts, audacity and vision to start a foundation in Delhi at the tender age of 19. The now internationally recognized Becoming Eye Foundation engages hundreds of volunteers on the ground, along with a network of more than 15,000 young people across the globe to work towards revolutionizing India’s education system to transform Low-Income and underprivileged communities from within and other areas in need of social impact.

00:01:58:14 – 00:02:44:08
Claudia
For her groundbreaking work, Tanvi has been awarded numerous leave, for example with the Karam Veer Pura Scar National Award for Justice and Citizen Action in India with the Youth Award for Contribution to Humanitarian Development at the United Nations. She received the Bill Clinton Fellowship for service in India and many more. After finishing her studies in India, only went to the US to go to graduate school at Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government, where she’s still engaged at conferences and teaches executive level courses on value based leadership, storytelling, etc..

00:02:44:10 – 00:03:04:22
Claudia
Tanvi is a true, vital voice. Listen in and feel heard and she shares her major turning point in life.

00:03:05:00 – 00:03:27:03
Claudia
Time. We thank you so much for taking the time to be in conversation with me for my podcast. Shift happens. Yeah, I am a very intuitive person. So when I heard you speak in Davos in January in the Equality Lounge at the discussion of the female quotient, I think it was women’s businesses with women’s business owners, it.

00:03:27:03 – 00:03:31:11
Tanvi
Was investing in women and creating resources and opportunities. Yes.

00:03:31:11 – 00:03:54:05
Claudia
Yes. Correct. And I mean it, you know, it was fascinating. Yeah. But for some reason your particularly your style of talking and your assertiveness and your clarity really struck me. So I asked you to share your pivotal moment or a pivotal moment. Yeah. With me today.

00:03:54:09 – 00:03:59:05
Tanvi
Yes. I’m so glad we connected through that, Claudia. And I’m really happy to have this conversation with you today.

00:03:59:06 – 00:04:04:14
Claudia
Thank you so much. So I read that you split your time between New York and Delhi. Where are you.

00:04:04:14 – 00:04:07:04
Tanvi
Now? Yes, I’m based in New York now.

00:04:07:06 – 00:04:08:07
Claudia
Oh, okay.

00:04:08:08 – 00:04:25:15
Tanvi
Okay. Yes. So I keep my my parents in my family back home in Delhi. So I go as often as I can, but I’m also starting to figure out what it’s like to design my life differently so that I can spend more time, back home and work back home and do projects back home. So. So that’s something that’s coming in the future.

00:04:25:17 – 00:04:36:08
Claudia
Okay, cool. So before we listen to you as you share a turning point in your life, I wanted you to introduce yourself through answering a few questions.

00:04:36:09 – 00:04:37:20
Tanvi
Yeah. Okay.

00:04:37:22 – 00:04:43:11
Claudia
What is your idea of perfect happiness?

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Tanvi
I think my idea of perfect happiness is having some kind of, role and identity in the world that feels like I’m changing something. That I’m leaving the world a little bit better than I came into it.

00:04:58:17 – 00:05:02:09
Claudia
What do you most value in your friends?

00:05:02:10 – 00:05:15:22
Tanvi
I value loyalty. I value, a sense of intentionality in how they show up for me and the space that they allow me to show up for them.

00:05:16:00 – 00:05:21:03
Claudia
What is your most treasured possession?

00:05:21:05 – 00:05:42:18
Tanvi
I have a few, I think, my most treasured possession. I’ve been building this home that I’ve been in. for the past two years. And I think other than, you know, just the sense of comfort that it gives me. It also given me safety to be in a country that’s not mine, but have a place that I can call my own.

00:05:42:20 – 00:05:47:10
Tanvi
So I think just this space right now is my most treasured possession.

00:05:47:12 – 00:05:56:21
Claudia
Yeah. Especially in these times it’s particularly important to feel safe I guess. Yeah. Yeah. What is your greatest fear.

00:05:56:23 – 00:06:09:23
Tanvi
My greatest fear is, feeling mediocre or feeling pointless. Like feeling meaningless. in my presence in the world.

00:06:10:01 – 00:06:13:10
Claudia
Have you ever had that?

00:06:13:12 – 00:06:20:19
Tanvi
a few times. Yeah. It comes and goes, and I’ve learned how to, not have it be a feeling of permanence. Yeah.

00:06:20:21 – 00:06:24:19
Claudia
Yeah, it’s a good one. I’m going to think about that.

00:06:24:21 – 00:06:32:14
Claudia
If you were to come back to this planet, as what would you come back?

00:06:32:16 – 00:06:54:16
Tanvi
I would want to come back as one of my parents. No, it’s a very. Yeah. I’m just thinking what why that came to me. But I want to see the world from their perspective. I want to see the world from when, from what it was like to, bring me up and bring my, my brother up in, in times that I know were not always ideal.

00:06:54:18 – 00:07:05:07
Tanvi
and they had to fight a lot of fights and battles and. Yeah, I’m just, I’m curious what the world looks like from that perspective. I try to understand it, but I can’t completely understand it.

00:07:05:09 – 00:07:11:10
Claudia
So yeah. Do you want to share the pivotal moment that you wanted to focus on today.

00:07:11:13 – 00:07:34:23
Tanvi
Yeah, absolutely. When I saw this question from you Claudia, it made me really think about the role that change has played in my life. And I think change has been good in some ways, but it’s also been difficult. And then it’s become good. I think immediately when it happens, you feel that shift and you feel like everything that I know is not in my control anymore and I need to bring it back.

00:07:34:23 – 00:08:08:12
Tanvi
So it’s a loss of agency more than anything else. So thinking about the fact that it’s never immediately good, it’s always a set of questions and confusion and chaos, and then you do the work to make it good. So I think, the pivotal moment that I wanted to share that has been so just groundbreaking for me has been when I started my organization at the age of 19, and this was my first organization back home in Delhi in India, and a lot of my inspiration actually came out of frustration with what I was seeing around me.

00:08:08:12 – 00:08:30:13
Tanvi
So I was this 19 year old growing up in Delhi. I went to a pretty well resourced school. I grew up in a in a good family. So I had, you know, a lot of privilege in that sense. But I couldn’t help but realize and wonder that we were, as young people, almost being put on a conveyor belt of, you know, things that kept happening to us.

00:08:30:13 – 00:08:54:06
Tanvi
So, you know, we would go to school, get good grades, go to university, get good grades, go get a job, and then maybe if you wanted, you know, go abroad and study further or come back and, you know, give money to charity in India. And that would be the change that we make in the world, or that would be how we would contribute to, anything in our country.

00:08:54:08 – 00:09:26:07
Tanvi
And that didn’t sit well with me because I grew up with, a father who was very, has always taught us to, to make sure that we have a role to play. And if we see something that we’re not okay with, we don’t just complain about it, but become an agent to change that. I remember, I think, hearing stories from my dad about how my grandparents came from Pakistan, which is, you know, it used to be India before 1947, but during partition, the a lot of the Hindus that used to live in Pakistan had to come over to India.

00:09:26:08 – 00:09:48:01
Tanvi
And the fact that they had gone through such struggle to essentially create a new home in a city that they didn’t know in a country that was new to them. And my father’s insistence that all of that had to be for something, and all of the learnings from that had to be for something. And we were almost authors of what would be the story of a new India.

00:09:48:03 – 00:10:06:09
Tanvi
So I, I grew up listening to those stories from my dad and from my grandmother, the time that I had with her, and it it just didn’t sit well that I would just graduate from school, go to university, you know, do the things that were being expected. And I wanted to make sure that one, I wasn’t the only one feeling this.

00:10:06:12 – 00:10:28:00
Tanvi
So I had a lot of conversations with young people around me and it sounded like a lot of people were feeling that as well. We had all come out of, you know, doing debating and model UN and public speaking in school, in high school and we were coming from that high of we can change the world and we can have a voice in it, but there was no platform for us to actually do that.

00:10:28:01 – 00:10:56:06
Tanvi
So when I turned 18 and I graduated from high school and I was in my first year of college, it made me realize that while I’m feeling the same kind of that I that I felt in high school. So something needed to change. So I started becoming a foundation, which was really focused on giving young people around me, people like me, a space to think about community impact, think about community development, think about their role in this country and what it was going to become.

00:10:56:08 – 00:11:08:03
Tanvi
Identify projects in their communities that they thought were things that were not okay, things that they wanted to change. And instead of waiting for people to come and change it, become solutions of that change themselves.

00:11:08:05 – 00:11:10:01
Claudia
Wow. So I think 19.

00:11:10:03 – 00:11:11:04
Tanvi
Yeah, yeah.

00:11:11:04 – 00:11:12:10
Claudia
And power.

00:11:12:10 – 00:11:31:05
Tanvi
When I think back to the that it was a combination of a lot of factors. I think there’s fearlessness with which young people see the world that I definitely had in me to say everything that I do will be perfect and nothing can go wrong. And even if it will, I’ll figure it out. Which sometimes I’m like, I need, I need to go back to that.

00:11:31:05 – 00:11:32:22
Tanvi
That fearlessness needs to come back.

00:11:33:01 – 00:11:34:14
Claudia
Oh yeah, it’s priceless.

00:11:34:16 – 00:11:40:18
Tanvi
It really is. And I think it’s also a bit of a naivete, like a naive way of seeing the world. And I mean that in a good way.

00:11:40:18 – 00:11:42:04
Claudia
Not so bad, actually.

00:11:42:04 – 00:12:05:19
Tanvi
Yeah, yeah. Like just trusting that, you know, this is a world that can be, that I can have a place and I can have an identity. And so for me personally, it became such a pivotal moment because I wanted to have it. It changed me as a woman, and it changed me as a leader because I was now being thrust into leadership, not really knowing what it looks like.

00:12:05:19 – 00:12:25:09
Tanvi
I remember my dad took me to open my first bank account. We had the first few meetings on the third floor of our house, and it was this new, just paradigm for me to think of my role differently. and I think that really just paved the way for my career now, and who I am now and how I feel inside my body now.

00:12:25:11 – 00:12:28:04
Tanvi
which is why I think of that as such a pivotal moment.

00:12:28:06 – 00:12:34:14
Claudia
Wow. And this foundation is still around and has now continued. Yeah.

00:12:34:16 – 00:12:54:00
Tanvi
Yes, it has continued. So I moved out of India in 2016. I’d run the organization for about six years, and I knew for a fact that the next person who takes it on has to be a young person, because a lot of, you know, the things that I saw and felt at 19 were not the things that I saw and felt at 25.

00:12:54:02 – 00:13:18:19
Tanvi
so from the beginning, we created a structure where more and more young people could find that they could kind of rise up in the organization, play new roles, give it more time. So through that, we were able to find people that could lead it. After I left, and it was a hard decision. I think that was probably another pivotal moment for me to leave my country and also leave this organization and the safety that I had built for myself.

00:13:18:21 – 00:13:38:20
Tanvi
So it was hard. I think I spent one full year trying to still stick on to it. and I made a lot of people’s lives very difficult by, by trying to do that. but yeah, it’s still going. It’s still running. I think the pandemic made us pause a little bit because we couldn’t enter a lot of the communities that we were working in.

00:13:38:22 – 00:13:44:14
Tanvi
but they’re really rethinking, what the role of these organizations in today’s India looks like.

00:13:44:16 – 00:13:55:17
Claudia
What was one of your inaugural projects that you launched or that you contributed and helped, like hands on in the beginning of yeah, I Foundation?

00:13:55:17 – 00:14:39:06
Tanvi
Yes. So our model of thinking, which was very simple, which is why so many young people could take it on, was essentially based on this idea that you identify something that’s around you, that’s not okay. You ask lots of questions about why that might not be okay. You test your assumptions by getting a sense of the community talking to people in the community to understand why you check your own privilege about how you might be seeing this issue differently than the people that are facing it, and then you come together with them and you create your solutions, and you create projects, and you try and if it fails, you try again and you iterate on

00:14:39:06 – 00:15:04:07
Tanvi
it and you make it better, you try again. So I think one of our projects that started pretty early on, that is probably like the most successful project so far has been Project Leap. That was really focused on bringing what we now know as social emotional learning into education. So we worked with a lot of schools, especially schools that didn’t have a lot of resources or needed a lot of kind of teacher support and training.

00:15:04:07 – 00:15:24:22
Tanvi
So we engaged with the young people in these schools, you know, mostly like primary and secondary, school age young people. And we said, we’re going to create programs with your academic calendar that align with the lessons that you want to do, but we’re going to make it fun, and we’re going to add an element of, to social emotional learning.

00:15:25:02 – 00:15:48:19
Tanvi
So for example, if you’re learning, you know, English literature, we want you to do it through theater. If you’re learning math, we want you to do it through sports. If you are learning or doing something in Hindi, we want you to do it through music and song. So I think adding those elements in to the kind of resources or the kind of thinking that our schools even didn’t have, we wanted to now say, let’s change that.

00:15:49:00 – 00:15:57:02
Tanvi
We never got it or we got it. In some ways, let’s now design a program that can do this and change this for the young people that are in schools right now.

00:15:57:04 – 00:16:10:17
Claudia
So you went to a school in your nearby district or in a district of maybe, just a different social structure. Yeah. And you got into a discussion with the schools to be able to implement this.

00:16:10:19 – 00:16:16:14
Tanvi
Yeah. So we did both. We looked at schools because, you know, class is a big thing in, in India and especially.

00:16:16:14 – 00:16:17:21
Claudia
When you’re thinking.

00:16:18:01 – 00:16:33:15
Tanvi
Yeah. So I think we did both. We looked at the schools that we were a part of where a lot of these young volunteers would come from because, well, they had the time and the privilege to be able to volunteer and give back. So we talked to those schools, and we also talked to schools that were maybe not as well resourced as us.

00:16:33:17 – 00:16:53:09
Tanvi
And we also drew some comparisons to see, like what’s different and what do resources allow and what do they not allow. And also let’s test our assumptions about how we’ve been thinking about these not so well resourced schools. There’s actually a lot of great things happening, and we need to learn from that. And our schools need to learn from that.

00:16:53:11 – 00:17:20:10
Tanvi
So project lead was something that was implemented in these not so well resourced school because we said we could add support and we could add resources by bringing volunteers in in schools that we went to, we implemented something called Project Enable, where at the time there was this rule where, a section of that school and the seats in the school needed to be reserved for children coming in from lower income backgrounds.

00:17:20:12 – 00:17:36:11
Tanvi
And, you know, while I’m not going to go into the intention of that policy from the city and from the state, but, the implementation of it was not going well because the schools didn’t know where to start. And these schools made so many assumptions about saying, you know, we’re just going to open the seats and that’s it.

00:17:36:11 – 00:18:05:01
Tanvi
And that would be enough. But when we interacted with the students and we interacted with students that, you know, were going to these schools, we said, what’s the gap? What might make it difficult for a student coming from a low income background to assimilate and be a part of the school? And what might that look like? So then, you know, young people in in these schools and relatively more well resourced schools essentially questioned their schools and said, well, are you sure this this is this is the way to do things.

00:18:05:02 – 00:18:30:12
Tanvi
And if you are going to do it, let us help you implement it. So they created different kinds of programs within the school to say, you know, let’s make sure that all students now have food vouchers so that the students coming from a different income background don’t have to feel embarrassed when they’re buying food, when everyone else is going to be buying food at the at the canteen or, you know, at the other cafe.

00:18:30:12 – 00:18:54:00
Tanvi
So those kinds of things were implemented, and we wrote it all in a book to say, these are the ways in which private schools or the equivalent of private schools in Delhi are broken and need to be fixed. And here’s our solution to do that. So we we made sure that we were at both points not coming in, as you know, people with resources and saying, here you go, here’s charity, please take it.

00:18:54:02 – 00:19:07:08
Tanvi
But we were thinking particularly about these issues because our aim was to try and change them from the ground up. So we were looking at a as this is justice and not as charity. And I think there’s a there’s a big difference between the two.

00:19:07:08 – 00:19:40:04
Claudia
Yeah. Yeah. Clearly you also shared with me in the intake form that the reason why this moment is so significant because you, you experience that there is there are two different levels of experience seeing this kind of activity, emotional and intellectual. Yeah. And maybe you can talk a little bit more about how this felt for you when you were younger, but also how you took what you’ve learned intellectually and emotionally with you into where you are today.

00:19:40:06 – 00:20:04:08
Tanvi
I’ll start with the emotional one. So one of the circumstances that also I think propelled me to create this organization was because I had just gone through a breakup as, as, as a young woman, and it had left me feeling very small. it had left me feeling voiceless. It had left me feeling like I have no control in agency.

00:20:04:10 – 00:20:22:11
Tanvi
And there was something wrong with me. And, you know, I have the benefit of retrospect. So I can think back and tell my younger self I should have been thinking about that differently. But also in that that age you can’t, you know, that’s those are the immediate. Of course you can’t. That’s right. Those the immediate thoughts that go into your head.

00:20:22:11 – 00:20:49:10
Tanvi
So I think honestly emotionally, for me to be able to create something like that really built my confidence as, as a woman, like I felt like I had nothing and I had suddenly gone to being someone who was responsible for a lot of people. And I think that instilled a sense of confidence, a sense of audacity to say that, you know, I can be more than how that person made me feel, and I can be beyond that.

00:20:49:10 – 00:21:18:07
Tanvi
So I think emotionally, for me, it started this journey of me experiencing my own femininity and my womanhood and my relationship with my country and my identity in it, and my relationship with leadership, which is a lot of the work that I do know is I help a lot of leaders think about their values and think about their identity in their leadership, so that the spaces that they create can be ones where everyone feels like they belong.

00:21:18:08 – 00:21:39:03
Tanvi
So I think emotionally, that’s what it created for me. And I think intellectually it was, you know, at the time and I think in some ways still this kind of work, which is, you know, social impact focused or organizing focused is seen as selfless, where people say, oh, you know, like you have you’re giving up so much to do it.

00:21:39:05 – 00:22:10:14
Tanvi
And I often kind of respond to that. And I say, well, it isn’t actually because I cannot imagine a better use of my life and my brain than to try and solve these kind of complex and truly existential challenges. I think the study of economics, the study of development economics, the study of my country, the study of class and caste and gender in this context is probably to me, the most fascinating kind of problems that you can try and solve.

00:22:10:16 – 00:22:34:04
Tanvi
So I think it also started my journey into thinking about these things differently. And one of the big reasons I left India is because I thought I needed to learn more. I had created something great, but I created it in a silo and everything that I knew was inside the organization, which is, you know, like when you create things in 19, that tends to happen when you’re like, okay, I don’t I need to learn more.

00:22:34:04 – 00:22:35:19
Tanvi
I need to make people. Yeah.

00:22:35:20 – 00:22:37:11
Claudia
Good. I mean, it’s a good drive.

00:22:37:11 – 00:22:57:03
Tanvi
Yeah. That’s right. So that’s one of the reasons why I said, well, I need to apply to graduate school and I need to learn more about how to do this better, how to do this for others, and how to enable more organizations to think this way and take my learnings, take a gap, take a bit of a like zoom out moment and look at what I’ve built.

00:22:57:05 – 00:23:14:00
Tanvi
Look at what people around me have built and make sense of it and make meaning of it and intellectualize it in the context of where the world has been and where the world is going. So I think, yeah, that’s where like the intellectual and emotional really came together. Like I wouldn’t be the thinker I am today if it wasn’t for it.

00:23:14:00 – 00:23:19:08
Tanvi
But I also wouldn’t have been the woman and the person that I am today if it wasn’t for it.

00:23:19:10 – 00:23:50:20
Claudia
You also talk about and we will now look a little bit into your business what you’re doing now, but you speak a lot that you that you discuss with leaders and other groups that you are in connection with and you support the heart and the brain, so to speak. And we know that something fundamental needs to change in this world, in how we move about as societies, as organizations where did competition lead us?

00:23:50:20 – 00:24:08:12
Claudia
Where did capitalism lead us? You know, where did a very still patriarchal world order bring us? Yeah. So I find it very, interesting and distinct that you really clearly differentiate between those two levels.

00:24:08:14 – 00:24:35:11
Tanvi
Yeah. So the way that started for me, Claudia, is when I was running my organization, it was clear to me that there’s a lot of roles that I could hire for that could be other people, that those were skills that I didn’t I didn’t have, or skills that I wanted to, you know, build myself. But one of the most crucial roles that I had to do myself was the role of moving people.

00:24:35:13 – 00:25:00:09
Tanvi
And I think that’s my biggest lesson from building an organization like becoming I, which eventually became a young people’s movement to see there’s so much when you look at social movements that we can learn. And one of the biggest things is that there was one leader who somehow, through their words, through their actions, through their strategy, was able to bring a lot of other people along.

00:25:00:11 – 00:25:21:06
Tanvi
And the way they could do it is because they moved them to action each and every day. When I think about my organization and the fact that we had thousands of volunteers coming in giving their time for no money and truly like treating this like a job and even more than a job, sometimes I think about like how, how, why?

00:25:21:08 – 00:25:49:12
Tanvi
What about what I created and what we created enabled that to happen. So once I moved to the US and I went to grad school here, I started looking at social movements and I started looking at organizing as a practice. And when people think of social movements, you often think, oh, you know, like there was some great person happened and then suddenly they just moved to the streets and then things got solved, which is, you know, like, those are the moves and those are the photos.

00:25:49:12 – 00:26:10:22
Tanvi
But what we don’t realize is there was deep strategic them. There was deep intentionality there. When we look at, the civil rights movement, when we look at the farm workers movement, when we look at the women’s movement, a lot of that comes from a group of people very intentionally thinking about both how to move people to action, but also to create sustainable change.

00:26:10:23 – 00:26:33:05
Tanvi
It’s not a one and done thing. So I think what I do now is I take a lot of those lessons from my own experiences, from my study of social movements, organizing, storytelling to help leaders in a way to say your most important job is to keep your people motivated. Your most important job is to get them to keep coming back.

00:26:33:10 – 00:26:53:02
Tanvi
The most important job is to create spaces that are often in structures that were not designed for most of the people that live inside of it, but to create spaces where no matter where they come from, they feel like they belong, they feel like they can thrive here, and that those lessons apply to people in the nonprofit space.

00:26:53:07 – 00:27:07:02
Tanvi
They apply to people trying to build new companies. To me, they apply to how we should be thinking about leadership in the next ten years, in the next 20 years, because after the pandemic, our lives have not been the same and leadership doesn’t look like the same. Yeah, I was.

00:27:07:02 – 00:27:07:21
Claudia
Just going to say.

00:27:08:03 – 00:27:26:04
Tanvi
Right. And the young people that are coming behind me, I don’t think of myself as a young person anymore. But the young people that are coming and entering the workforce behind me have a different set of expectations from their leaders. They no longer want to just do a 9 to 5 and then go back and forget about work.

00:27:26:06 – 00:27:46:08
Tanvi
They no longer stay at jobs for ten years. 15 years. Pensions is not a thing anymore, which means that the motivation for them to continue coming needs to be attached to a purpose. It can’t just be attached to a bottom line. So that’s the work that I do with leaders and organizations is to say you need to lead differently.

00:27:46:10 – 00:27:58:19
Tanvi
You need to think about your values and put them at the forefront of how you communicate with with people around you. And you need to build different kinds of organizations and different kinds of companies.

00:27:58:21 – 00:28:05:06
Claudia
Do you work mostly with male leaders, female leaders? Is it equal? Is it more male, male, female?

00:28:05:08 – 00:28:23:09
Tanvi
I think it’s a mix. I will say, because of the person that I am, I end up working with a lot of women, and a lot of like leaders that are, that are female. And I think the challenges that we face in leadership are probably also different. I think the rules of the game are different, and sometimes nobody’s even bothered to tell us the rules of the game.

00:28:23:11 – 00:28:46:11
Tanvi
Yeah. So I think the kind of experiences that women have in leadership are different. So it’s just what I’m attracted to more. It’s the kind of work that I take on more. It’s also, I think female friendships feel different to me now. but yes, I work with men as well because I think they need to create spaces where a lot of women leaders and gender diverse leaders can thrive.

00:28:46:15 – 00:28:47:14
Tanvi

00:28:47:16 – 00:29:13:11
Claudia
So you have started your own advisory, and able. And so how do you do it? I mean, do you do more one on one or are you really taking on a whole organization since you are so experienced in moving like giant, projects and groups of people? So how is your favorite way to work in what you do?

00:29:13:13 – 00:29:45:02
Tanvi
Yeah, I think the answer to that is two different things. I think my favorite way to do things is to talk to a large group of people. And this comes from my love for the stage and my love for theater. But I think over time I’ve been able to build a skill, like I said, to move people. And I think what comes from creating experiences where people can come for a short period of time and feel like they learn the skill or they learn to look at the world differently, is probably my favorite way of doing things.

00:29:45:02 – 00:29:52:03
Tanvi
I think it gives me a rush and gives me a high the prep that I do for it, the outfits that I select to be on stage, I think that’s that’s important.

00:29:52:08 – 00:29:53:19
Claudia
Me it’s fun.

00:29:53:19 – 00:30:16:01
Tanvi
So so those are, I think one set of things that I think about, and I’ve been thinking about what doing more teaching can look like so that I can kind of include that in my, in my portfolio. I think the thing though, that has the most impact ends up being the one on ones. So a lot of the work that I do starts with one on ones with the leader, because to me, I think that’s where change needs to start.

00:30:16:02 – 00:30:38:00
Tanvi
you know, a lot of people talk about Dei and people talk about anti-racist and anti oppressive practices. And the sad part is that those kind of trainings end up being compulsory for like middle management or for young for younger people and entering the workforce when you’re like, well, actually the people who need to think differently are the people who are creating these structures that are not working for us.

00:30:38:02 – 00:30:57:12
Tanvi
So a lot of my work ends up being one on one with leaders, and then that leads into talking to the senior leadership team or creating experiences for a large group of people in the organization. But I think one thing I’ve learned is that if it is not my organization, I cannot be the person leading the change. It has to come from them.

00:30:57:14 – 00:31:20:14
Tanvi
And my job is then to create the right conditions and give them the skillset and mindset to do that work, because I don’t want to be like in my in my ideal client relationship, I am in it for say, six months to a year and they all need me afterwards. And that’s that’s what I want to build so that they’re not reliant on this one person coming in.

00:31:20:14 – 00:31:37:06
Tanvi
And that’s why I like when people call me a consultant. I’m like, I am, because that is the way that we know this look. But also I don’t want to be seen as bad because often with consultants you’re like, let’s bring them back. And it’s outsourced. This work, I want to build that capacity within the organization so that you don’t need that anymore.

00:31:37:08 – 00:31:47:20
Claudia
Yeah, yeah. Is there like a particular sector that you focus on is more governmental work or social impact work, or is it across industries that you work or.

00:31:47:22 – 00:32:21:14
Tanvi
Yeah, I think at the moment I’m agnostic to industry. I will say like there are industries that I might not know anything about or might not connect with my values that I don’t work with. But I typically select who I work with based on my conversations with the leader. And if the leader is someone that is mission oriented, and for me, that means that they are leading in their values in some way, or are creating something that’s bigger than themselves and is about a larger ecosystem, then that’s the work that I do with them.

00:32:21:16 – 00:32:51:01
Tanvi
More often than not, this happens to be people in the nonprofit or social impact or community organizing space. And it’s the space that I come from. So I feel like I have more insight there as well. But a lot of the work that I’m doing now is actually with startup founders. And that’s, I think to me, the prime time to actually catch them to say you’re doing such great work and you have such great ideas, but the skill that it needs to come up with an idea versus the skill that it needs to build a company are two very different things.

00:32:51:03 – 00:33:09:20
Tanvi
And most of the time, they’re very receptive to thinking this way because they’re almost finding the leadership for the first time. so it’s been really exciting to work with more and more kind of startup founders to see what if we had the opportunity to just build all companies differently from the get go, and these are going to be the companies that lead the way in ten years.

00:33:09:22 – 00:33:15:17
Tanvi
So kind of getting to be in the just yeah, front seat of that has been really fascinating.

00:33:15:19 – 00:33:32:05
Claudia
Oh I can’t imagine. So since we are sharing women’s stories here of course I’m asking you to share a few, secrets on how to thrive as female leaders or as a female startup founder.

00:33:32:07 – 00:33:32:19
Tanvi
Yeah.

00:33:32:19 – 00:33:37:19
Claudia
How do we attract investments? How do we take on agency?

00:33:37:21 – 00:34:02:11
Tanvi
I mean, I’ll say that there’s things that women are able to do, sadly, because of the gender roles that we were forced into for many, you know, generations and how we see our mothers and how we see our grandmothers. I think it comes from a negative place. But I think because of that, the kind of leaders that we end up becoming is more relational than men.

00:34:02:13 – 00:34:25:18
Tanvi
It means that we have less transactional relationships with people. We have more relational relationships with people. And I think my secret to success in many ways has been that, that I rarely ever have conversations with people that are meaningless. I rarely ever will enter a room trying to look for that. Like, you know, that one thing or that one person that can do something for me.

00:34:25:18 – 00:34:59:16
Tanvi
Rather, I’ll enter a room thinking, who can I’m going to relationship with today, and how can I make sure that that, that, that last. So even Claudia, for example, with you, like when we were at Davos, Davos is it’s like the, I don’t know Mecca for networking. And even in that space, I wanted to make sure that I was ending my day having had at least two transformative conversations with two people that then can end up becoming relationships in the future versus trying to get into all the rooms and trying to show up and go to the parties and get on the lists.

00:34:59:16 – 00:35:24:21
Tanvi
And like that. It’s not me. It’s not how I know to lead. It’s not how I’ve met my biggest supporters or biggest advisors or biggest mentors. So I think that’s one thing I would say is lean into this relational peace that comes from, you know, the gender roles that we had to be in, but gives us a superpower around truly diving into relational leadership and not transactional leadership.

00:35:24:21 – 00:35:53:16
Tanvi
And I think that’s to me is very, very different. Yeah, I think when it comes to accessing resources, I’ll just say I had mentioned this before, but I think there’s a lot of the boys club is still alive and well. And the sad part about it is that a lot of the rules around investment, a lot of the rules around philanthropy and fundraising sets sit still sits with them, which means that they are designing it.

00:35:53:18 – 00:36:24:15
Tanvi
But it also means that there’s a lot of unsaid rules that we were never told that we don’t know. so, so often I see leaders and especially female leaders kind of trying to fundraise and trying to gather investment while sitting in their offices and, you know, writing grants and spending hours and hours like writing, investment pitches when, like a lot of people know and a lot of men know that these things happen outside of the rooms.

00:36:24:20 – 00:36:44:22
Tanvi
They happen at places like the World Economic Forum. they happen at conferences. They happen at, you know, secret tables where we are not invited into it. So I think gathering that information and having those conversations to try and get in is, to me, a really important piece of it, because I think that’s that’s where we get resources from.

00:36:45:00 – 00:37:11:11
Tanvi
And I think on the other end, I’ve seen a lot of women, once they reach that level of leadership, they want to hold those secrets tight to themselves and not give them out. And I’ve experienced sometimes that with women as well, because it’s a natural tendency when the pool is smaller, you want to keep it to yourself. And I will say, while it’s a human thing to do, so no judgment around it.

00:37:11:12 – 00:37:13:12
Tanvi
You don’t grow the ecosystem that way.

00:37:13:15 – 00:37:14:11
Claudia

00:37:14:13 – 00:37:27:11
Tanvi
Don’t enlarge in the table like we keep saying. We want to sit on the table. Once you have it, either dismantle the table and build it differently or at the least you know bring in more people that that need to be there.

00:37:27:13 – 00:37:53:21
Claudia
Yeah absolutely. And that’s for example also a reason why I’m focusing on conversations and have been for a number of years doing my salons in New York and Zurich and Berlin to bring women together just to also to practice. Yeah, to share and to be with each other and to enlarge and this network. So it becomes natural to, to just have a conversation about one selected topic.

00:37:53:21 – 00:38:05:15
Claudia
It is not necessarily about, you know, the obvious networking. Of course, it’s also not networking, but it’s more connecting, than networking. And, and it, it does move the needle.

00:38:05:20 – 00:38:06:11
Tanvi
Yeah.

00:38:06:13 – 00:38:15:19
Claudia
Not maybe in ways that we are used to it, but it does and it is sustainable. And I find it it’s a different way and a new, exciting way.

00:38:15:21 – 00:38:40:03
Tanvi
I think it really is. And I think, you know, like, it’s like not all women are the same. And like, intersectionality is real. And the different roles and identities that people bring into these spaces are also often. I know it’s been such a hard time for me to be an immigrant in this country. And so not only am I a woman, I’m now a brown woman, which is or a woman of color, which in India is not even terms that we use for ourselves.

00:38:40:05 – 00:39:02:19
Tanvi
And I remember when I was applying for grad school, I saw those kind of checkboxes, and that was a first. I was like, oh, interesting. I guess this is me now. I guess I am a woman of color now, and that means something different. And at the same time, I still come in with the privileges of being South Asian versus, you know, there’s a lot of other kinds of women with different identities, especially in the US, that show up differently.

00:39:02:19 – 00:39:33:22
Tanvi
So I think what these spaces do is also allow for that and allow for the intersectionality to exist and for us to even celebrate it. And I think it’s the responsibility of people like you and people like me to create those spaces, to be truly inclusive and to be ones that recognize people’s power within it, and also recognize the power dynamics that might exist of based on how people show up, but truly become spaces where people are safe and people can be vulnerable.

00:39:34:00 – 00:39:52:08
Tanvi
Yeah. I think that’s that’s the thing about these conversations, Claudia, is I think exactly even when you say like shift happens, I think it comes from this idea that we have gone through struggles and we have gone through discomfort and it is okay to talk about it in a public platform. And it is okay to learn from it.

00:39:52:08 – 00:40:10:17
Tanvi
Rather, you should be giving those lessons out for people to to both resonate with you and and to learn from you. And I think this to me, that’s the kind of thing that I try to help my clients with as well, and, and change in their leadership that nobody learns things from perfect people. No. And nobody resonates with perfect people.

00:40:10:19 – 00:40:22:19
Tanvi
So I think sharing those stories of struggles and vulnerability and change is, is only making space for more women to realize that. Yeah, I go through the same thing. And if she made it, I could make it as well.

00:40:22:21 – 00:40:28:11
Claudia
Yeah absolutely I agree. So what does next for you.

00:40:28:13 – 00:40:54:10
Tanvi
Yeah I think it’s a great time to be having this conversation with you because I think I’m I’m probably coming into another pivotal change moment for myself where I think because I moved to the US in 2015, since then, because of being an immigrant here, I think I’ve still kind of been a little bit in the shell, a little bit in my own shadow to be like, who am I?

00:40:54:10 – 00:41:20:08
Tanvi
People here, what do I stand for here? you know, what is my voice look like in this, in this new paradigm? And the past few years has been focused on figuring that out. But I think finally and this a lot of this happened last year where I’m finding more peace in just being myself and finding partners and finding advisors and finding friends in New York and in the US that I can truly be myself with.

00:41:20:10 – 00:41:50:10
Tanvi
So what that’s going to look like now for me is potentially paving the way for more visibility. And by that I mean putting my thoughts out there and putting my opinions out there and not being as afraid to share them. So potentially, a book that talks about, you know, leadership of the future, potentially more podcasts and conversations with people like you, so that I can bring more and more folks in to this way of thinking, of thinking about that leadership differently.

00:41:50:11 – 00:42:10:16
Tanvi
So we’ll see. We’ll see where it goes. But I think putting enable my company on the map, but also putting my views and my voice and bringing that 19 year old fearless can be back and learning. and yeah, taking some of the fear and the timminus away, I guess.

00:42:10:22 – 00:42:32:11
Claudia
Well, that sounds intriguing. Yeah. But doable. I mean, you mentioned earlier your appreciation for the stage so that should happen. And what I usually also us towards the end of our conversations is just a practical insight of how you relax.

00:42:32:13 – 00:42:58:18
Tanvi
I think when I was growing up, I was often told that my creative side is something that doesn’t always go with my intellectual side. So all the things that I wanted to do creatively were seen as a hobby, and not something that I could do seriously. And the thing the past couple of years, I’m trying to break that stigma for myself, that I could be both creative and intelligent.

00:42:58:20 – 00:43:25:12
Tanvi
And as a woman, I could be. I could be going into those passions a little bit more. And I find that those things truly relax me. So like last year, I took a pottery class and just the ability to do something with my hands and molding it and building it and kneading it and letting slowly letting go of this idea that my world is in an office, and just in an office, I think really helped with that.

00:43:25:14 – 00:43:43:16
Tanvi
I’ve always been artistically inclined. So I’d like as a young person to do a lot of art, but again, it was seen as the side thing. So now I’m thinking about, well, if I have the freedom to design my life, what might it look like, to take on some of these pursuits again? and so I bought an easel.

00:43:43:16 – 00:44:13:12
Tanvi
I bought a lot of canvases. I want to potentially take a oil painting class. So I think it relaxes me to do things with my hands that can be creative pursuits and it relaxes me to let go of some of those stigmas attached to what? You know, the work of a woman should be, so both of those things together, and I know my mom is listening to this and laughing at some point, but I to say this, but, yeah, I think both of those things right now are.

00:44:13:14 – 00:44:23:07
Claudia
no, I think it’s fantastic because I do believe that we are really, almost socialized that that we all need a desk and an office and a computer.

00:44:23:11 – 00:44:24:18
Tanvi
Yeah, exactly.

00:44:24:23 – 00:44:42:21
Claudia
Well, it’s been really, fantastic to speak with you and I’m still in Switzerland, but I will be in New York soon, so I hope we can catch up again in person. And yeah, I thank you for being here. And for our time and for our conversation.

00:44:42:23 – 00:44:52:01
Tanvi
Thank you so much, Giardia, for having me. And I would love to see you in New York and maybe take a painting or a pottery class together. That would be wonderful. Oh, pottery. Yes, we should do it.

00:44:52:05 – 00:44:53:07
Claudia
All right. Super.

00:44:53:11 – 00:44:54:02
Tanvi
Thank you sir.

00:44:54:03 – 00:44:55:23
Claudia
Thank you. All the best to you, Tammy.

00:44:55:23 – 00:45:09:06
Tanvi
You. You too.

00:45:09:08 – 00:45:39:06
Claudia
I so enjoyed this profound and very sincere conversation. Plus, if meeting town V leads me into starting to make pottery even better. It was striking and truly touching to me how she thought about coming back as one of her parents to see the world through their eyes. They must be so utterly proud of her. Tanui clearly is a woman to watch and a necessary force in our deeply unstable time.

00:45:39:08 – 00:46:09:01
Claudia
So, and as I said, shift happens will continue to bring stories of women from across the globe to you. Mark your calendar season three is here to come. Shift happens will be back on Wednesday, September 4th, and from then on, as usual, every second Wednesday. I am signing off now, wishing you a splendid summer. Let your soul hang loose.

00:46:09:03 – 00:46:17:22
Claudia
Catch up on missed shift happens episodes and be safe when you travel.

00:46:18:00 – 00:46:22:08
Claudia
For.

00:46:22:10 – 00:46:47:02
Claudia
Shift happens has been created and is hosted by me. Claudia Mahler. Editing Andy Boroson. Social media Magda Reckendrees. I hope you felt connected and heard by listening to Shift Happens and please leave a review and a rating wherever you listen to podcasts.