In Chapter 3 of 14, "Suits: A Woman on Wall Street" author Nina Godiwalla volunteers at the Prison Entrepreneurship Program to teach convicted felons business and life skills necessary to successfully re-enter society. Through the process, Godiwalla unexpectedly learns from the prisoners, who share stories of mental transformation.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: What did you learn teaching character building and relationship skills to inmates as part of the Prison Entrepreneur Program?
Nina Godiwalla: I actually wrote an article about that for the Houston Chronicle because I was really moved by the experience. We were brought in with the idea that we were business leaders and we were going to be teaching these inmates about how to run a business and I was really excited about that, I thought these people are going to be coming out very soon and regardless of what they’ve done, it’s not a conversation about what did you do in past, it’s ‘hey you’re going to be out and you’ll be out soon and what can we come in and teach you and how can we help you be successful when you come out?’
That was my impression going in and that was a lot of business people’s impression, I think there was about thirty of us at the time when I went and I was a little bit floored by the experience because it ended up the prisoners taught us, at least me, something much more significant and it was largely about building their own character and… what was amazing is… these people were just so happy, they had really gone through like a significant mind-shift and mental transformation through this program that they were experiencing and they came in and honestly, I’ll be honest they really inspired a bunch of business people and the business people were completely humbled walking in and thinking ‘what can I teach you’ was our attitude and I walked out that day and I thought these were people full of passion full of energy. I never expected to walk into a prison and have people that passionate and that was a transformational experience for me. And you could see that these people, the way they shared their stories and were very open, they had personally, several of the ones that spoke had gone through some very difficult times and really used those difficult experiences to transform in a very positive way.
Erik Michielsen: Can you remember like one of the stories that sticks with you most?
Nina Godiwalla: There’s one story because it’s so close to heart for a lot of business people is that, there was just a guy that, he was a sales guy and he’d gone out drinking and the way he explained it is ‘That’s what we did, I was in sales and we used go out, we were with clients we would drink, came home, I had a couple drinks that night, I was on the freeway and I probably didn’t see it fast enough but there was a parked car on the freeway on the side’ and he ran into the car and killed somebody. And he said ‘You know, I’ve been in sales for forty years’ and… I think for business people we expected… expect someone to just be murdering people just randomly all these, you know, ridiculous thoughts and fears that were going through our head and it was just, a lot of the stories were, you know, some guy put software on his wife’s computer or girlfriend’s computer and was in jail so. What was insightful is that a lot of people were in situations that it wouldn’t be crazy for someone that you, someone in our world to know somebody that might be in that situation and just to give people that opportunity, that second chance.
In Chapter 5 of 14 of her 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, author Nina Godiwalla answers "How have you embraced being a fish out of water in your education, career and travels and what have you enjoyed most about the challenges they present?" Godiwalla shares how she finds herself a fish out of water in New York City upon graduating college. Coming from Texas, public schools, and Parsi education into Wall Street as a female investment banker teaches Godiwalla about outsider status firsthand. Godiwalla makes the most from an oft uncomfortable experience by turning lessons learned into education opportunities for other women considering an investment banking career.
Nina Godiwalla is the author of "Suits: A Woman on Wall Street" and the founder and CEO of Mindworks, a provider of leadership, stress management, and diversity training programs. Before starting her business and writing her book, Godiwalla worked at Johnson & Johnson and Oxygen Media and investment banking at Morgan Stanley. Godiwalla earned an MBA from Wharton, a MA from Dartmouth and a BBA from the University of Texas.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: How have you embraced being a fish out of water in your education, career and travels and what have you enjoyed most about the challenges it presents?
Nina Godiwalla: When I went to New York I felt like I went to a different country and in a lot of ways I did, I mean I was going into a completely, the people I was with were a completely different socioeconomic class, not all of them but a lot of them, a lot of, they were all Ivy League, I was a kid, I was a public school kid coming from UT and there were other public school kids, it was just coming from Texas, it just the everything put together. I didn’t know people perceived Texas as so different in the US, that was probably one of the most startling things for me is that I didn’t know I was supposed to be living on a ranch.
There’s always been a sense of an outsider because I was an immigrant so I know I can be like other people but at the same, I mean I can be like the average American if I need to be, but I know that when I walk into my parents’ house, there’s a completely different environment that I walk into. And so that… going into that investment banking I think it was just startling for me, I didn’t know how different I was, I mean it made my childhood experience of growing up in a suburb as an immigrant look like nothing and then again, like I said, being a woman I didn’t even know that was going to be such a big deal, it’s just all of a sudden all these different aspects of my life that were everyday to me became suddenly they were outsider status and… that was very, to have all those different things happen all at once was, was challenging for me. That’s what I try and do for my book is look back at it and say ‘What can I learn from this?’ and that’s all I can do and I can help share the experience for other people that might be going through the same thing and after that, there it is.
In Chapter 9 of 14 of her 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, "Suits: A Woman on Wall Street" author Nina Godiwalla answers "Why did you decide to leave business temporarily to study liberal arts and pursue a master’s degree at Dartmouth?" After spending two years working in investment banking, Godiwalla decides to attend a Masters of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) at Dartmouth University to explore her creative side. Godiwalla makes this decision after taking a Myers-Briggs personality test to identify undeveloped interests. There she learns about relationships, people and understanding before deciding to move on to her MBA at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: Why did you decide to leave business temporarily to study liberal arts and pursue a master’s degree at Dartmouth?
Nina Godiwalla: As an undergrad I studied finance, I went straight into investment banking, I worked in finance after that for a while and there was something about the business world that wasn’t completely fulfilling me and I couldn’t put my finger on it and, this is so hokey, but I actually, I did a personality test and I love the Myers-Briggs and I did a personality test and I was trying to figure out -- all my friends were going to business school a few years out of you work in -- you do investment banking especially and it’s like a two year program, it’s a feeder into business school. And I was, you know I could’ve just filled out the application and I could’ve just gone but I felt like something was missing.
And so I was doing all these personality tests and trying to figure what is it that’s missing and oddly enough the personality tests were – I found what really resonated for me and a lot of the people their careers were completely different, they were psychologists, they were writers, they were -- there was something creative about what they were doing or it was something based off of people and a lot of the finance I was doing didn’t have that whole element of people and relationships and understanding and I knew that had to be integrated into my business world. I had a sense that I was going to business school afterwards but I wanted the option to say ‘Let me explore what I’m doing, let me explore this liberal arts that I looked into and if it ends up that I go to business school afterwards, great. If it ends up I have this completely different career and I find this dream, you know that’s great too.’
In Chapter 14 of 14 in her 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, ex-Morgan Stanley investment banker and author Nina Godiwalla answers "How have female role models and mentors given you strength and support on your journey to date?" Godiwalla shares why female role models are so critical in building a corporate finance career. Godiwalla faces challenges and seeks counsel in mid-to-senior level female bankers who make themselves available to support more junior peers. Godiwalla goes on to found a Morgan Stanley Women's Committee to help those needing guidance and support.
Nina Godiwalla is the author of "Suits: A Woman on Wall Street" and the founder and CEO of Mindworks, a provider of leadership, stress management, and diversity training programs. Before starting her business and writing her book, Godiwalla worked at Johnson & Johnson and Oxygen Media and investment banking at Morgan Stanley. Godiwalla earned an MBA from Wharton, a MA from Dartmouth and a BBA from the University of Texas.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: How have female role models and mentors given you strength and support on your journey to date?
Nina Godiwalla: I’ve lived in different cities, I’ve been in different countries… there are moments in my life where I am very, very aware that I am a woman and one of the most striking examples is when I was in investment banking and I didn’t have this awareness of being, usually it’s like, there’s different things that stand out depending on what environment you’re in and for me I was in a group, I was the only woman in my group for a while while I was in investment banking and it’s just a completely different culture that I wasn’t very familiar with. That was one of the times in life I realized I really need -- I need somebody that’s done this, I need a woman around me to help me kind of navigate the system. And I would say before that in life I hadn’t necessarily, I was not seeking out woman mentors and when I was at college getting a finance degree at UT, I wasn’t -- there wasn’t an attitude of ‘Here, let me find other women’.
But being thrown into that environment that was so different suddenly I really desperately, quite desperately sought, really sought other women and what was interesting to me about the investment banking world is there were definitely -- the women that had been there, there were so few that had been there for a very, very long time but I found that there was very different perspectives with women, some people were ‘Yes, let me help you, let me… let me help you, how can we do this, what is it that you -- how can we work, how can I be your mentor’ and then there were other people of ‘You’ve got to rough it out, this is what it is and we don’t need to talk about the things that are happening and if this isn’t working for you just keep pushing through, put your head down, keep pushing through’ and I obviously I gravitated towards people that is actually something that I want to discuss and talk about different things and I couldn’t have made it through in a lot of ways without those mentors.
The experience I had was in corporate finance which was a kind of experience where it’s a little notorious for keeping you working all the time and you don’t really necessarily have that time to reflect and think about things. I started a Morgan Stanley women’s committee because I found people were looking for some guidance and they just had no idea where to go. Because they would look to the people about a year ahead of them and those people, there was an analyst program and those people were so busy and then the senior women were just, they were so senior that and there were so few of them that you just wouldn’t go call one of them up and say ‘Hey I had a bad day today can I talk to you?’ So it was really kind of bringing a group of women together is what I started because I found that was the way people were going to help get through, cause a lot of women would start coming to me with their issues and this was happening and this kind of stuff was happening and so I thought why don’t we bring this group together.
Since 2009, Capture Your Flag has interviewed a cohort of rising leaders who share lessons from their journeys to help others plan, pursue and achieve life and career aspirations. The resulting 3000+ Near Peer Video Library can be licensed for commercial use.
