The Conscious Newsletter

"Please don't tell me you're also a feminist." That's the comment I got from an old university professor (male) when I shared the interview that accompanied a magazine cover I was on a few years ago. I won't lie. It felt a bit like a slap. And he didn't even see the cover. I hadn't posted it. For a moment, I thought: Why is a group of women in leadership positions talking about our experiences so threatening to some people? Why is "feminist" still used as an insult? Are women

I was traveling back from Sri Lanka to Canada earlier this year when I witnessed something that's stuck with me since. A woman, maybe in her 50s, wearing a beautiful saree, was trying to board through the priority lane at the gate. The gate agent sees her in line and loudly said, "Ma'am, this lane is for business class passengers." Nothing about her affect changed. She just responded, "I am a business class passenger." But he comes down and insists on checking her boarding pa

I've had two very different kinds of leadership moments in my career. One was at a big corporate event with some of the most influential figures in banking and business in Sri Lanka. Polished. High-stakes. The kind of room where every conversation matters. The other was a couple of days later, sitting in a thatched roof hut with a handful of women from one of our farms, talking about sexual harassment awareness. Both mattered. Both were leadership. But thinking about the cont

As kids, we are taught a few safe "nos." Don't get into a stranger's car. Don't take candy from strangers. Those are easy because you don't care about burning those bridges. But in adulthood? Saying 'no' gets quite messy. Because now a boundary can be mistaken for rejection. And with an insecure boss (or colleague or in-law), you might get passive-aggressively punished if you make them feel rejected. You can be called "difficult." Labeled "stubborn." Branded "not a team playe

The photograph below was taken of me at an event and created an unexpected problem at work the very next day. And I was debating posting this at all but here we are. That day I was dealing with a conflict between two very senior people. I was listening to both sides, trying to sort through what was being said, and I could tell one of them wasn't getting at the full story. So I asked this person, "I feel like I'm missing something here. Can you fill me in?" He looks at me and

I didn't learn this lesson the hard way. I learned it the expensive way. We once hired a finance executive with flawless credentials. He had all the right boxes checked on paper and he was a great fit. But within weeks, complaints started rolling in. His bluntness. His dismissiveness. His unwillingness to hear out people (he once stopped a team from presenting an hour-long presentation because he thought he knew where it was going after the first 5 minutes). He had a remarkab

We all know no one got their big break as an island onto themselves. And most of us never forget the ones who fight for us when we can't fight for ourselves. It only happened because someone, somewhere, spoke their name in a place they weren't there yet. That's one of the most underrated aspects of leadership: advocacy. When your voice carries weight, you can use it for those who aren't yet in the room. And that requires something rarer than skill or strategy. It requires gen

The girl in this picture doesn't know it yet but she's a day away from making a decision that will change her life forever. See the next day, I decided I couldn't be a CEO anymore. It was one of the hardest decisions of our lives. I'd worked my way up to that role with a lot of sacrifice. And just two years in, I was already realizing I couldn't keep up. The ascent was too rapid and I burnt too much fuel. My health had taken a massive hit (you might not be able to tell but my