Perhaps the most dreaded word to young people job hunting is “work experience”.

Educated or not, young people in general looking for jobs often find themselves in the catch 22 position. They can’t get a job without experience, and they can’t get experience without a job.

As much as many companies offer internship training today, many of them are not willing to hire, train and build a team from scratch.

Young people are underlooked because they lack the experience even though they have knowledge.

But imagine a young continent like Africa.

Of Africa’s nearly 420 million youth aged 15–35, 65%…

Almost a year on from the George Floyd protests that swept the world and resulted in a collective (re)awakening to racial injustice and inequality; how much has changed since?

It’s a question I’m asking myself now while reflecting on where we were last year: witnessing the outpouring of corporate and organizational solidarity statements, the race to fill feeds with black squares, buy all the books listed on every anti-racist reading list, and hire Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) consultants for anti-discrimination and bias trainings. How many of those books have been left unopened or bookmarked only a couple of pages…

Nestled in the corner of a cafe somewhere in Bangkok, I had my nose buried in a coffee-table book that I had no intention of reading. It was called, “If I Could Tell You Just One thing,” by Richard Reed. The rain had trapped me inside and eventually my aimless flipping through the pages turned into undivided attention.

Reed spent a few years gathering pieces of life advice from people he labeled as “remarkable.” In Reed’s life these were mainly politicians and celebrities and nobel peace prize winners — people that he deemed to be at the top of their…

A few years ago, I was in Paris’s metro with a friend and, as we were counting the remaining stops before our destination, she told me about a horrible experience she had on the line. She was going to a bar and was supposed to meet friends at the station nearby. She arrived early and decided to wait for the others on the platform — mainly to avoid waiting outside alone at night. At the time, she thought this was the safest solution given that there was CCTV in the station and that trains were arriving with passengers on a…

In 2019, like most MBA students, I found myself in a management consulting info session. I was shiny and suited up, but on the inside I felt as if I had just downed a bottle of sriracha.

Was it the first time I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there? Not really. I spent four years at undergraduate business school thinking they had admitted me by accident. The next four years I spent worrying my wealth fund colleagues would figure out I wasn’t an excel whiz.

In 2020 I moved to the UK to co-found Freedom Row, a SaaS…

Many companies are attempting to strike a gender balance at a managerial level, in their C-Suite, and on their boards. They are pulling up chairs to the proverbial table and asking women to have a seat and a voice. Lean In stated that while the overall outlook from the 590 companies and 22,000 employees they reviewed and reported on is promising, women remain significantly underrepresented.

I am all for bringing women into the room. I am excited to see and hear about women in roles previously slated for a man in the boys’ club (finance roles, anyone?), and I welcome…

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt

- Left out?

- Unheard?

- Dissatisfied with seemingly unfair outcomes/decisions?

We tend to talk a lot about experiencing FOMO (fear of missing out) — but fearing you are missing out and knowing you’ve been left out, or not included, are two different emotions altogether

In a recent study* researchers at the University of Ottawa found that feeling left out or not included does greater harm to employees’ happiness than outright harassment. Startling but borne out by research!

So, what does feeling “included” or “inclusion” at work mean? …

Diversity, and How is it Rooted in a “Glocal” context?

In a world in which the only thing we can predict is the existence of change and uncertainty, we must evolve ourselves, our workplaces, and our communities to the needs of the moment. While the past few decades have boasted global interconnectedness through innovations such as transportation and digital technologies, Covid-19 has demanded an increasing focus on localization due to a lack of international travel and an emphasis on empowering local contexts. Thus, we derive the term “glocal.” Carrying a world vision and broad perspective, while bringing our attention back…