How Parsi Immigrant Community Builds Support Network - Nina Godiwalla

In Chapter 6 of 14 in her 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, author Nina Godiwalla answers "What does it mean to be Persian-Indian-American living in the United States today?" Godiwalla connects her ancient Persian-Indian, or Parsi, culture to modern times through experiencing the benefits of immigrant community support across the United States.  Descended from 10th century Iranian Zoroastrians who immigrated to India and, the United States based Parsi culture is small and extremely close-knit. The culture values achievement and organizes a network to promote successful community members.  Godiwalla experiences this first hand as she relocates to Philadelphia to enter MBA studies at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business.  Unexpected support provides Godiwalla firm footing to successfully transition into a new home and school.

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: What does it mean to be a Persian-Indian-American living in the United States today?

Nina: Persian-Indian is kind of an easier way of explaining it to people what it is; it’s actually called, it’s called Parsi is the name of the community and it’s really based off of a religious background, it’s Zoroastrianism, which is, what I -- the way I describe it is some people remember the word cause you remember you learned it in your seventh grade history class, it was literally a vocabulary word as I remember it and it’s a very, very ancient religion that was based out of ancient Persia and it was a very prominent religion thousands of years ago. There’s a group of people, some of them stayed but some of them fled and moved to India and those people are called Parsis, they’re originally Persians and they fled to India but this was a very long time ago, like maybe a thousand years ago or so.

So that group has a mixed culture, because their ancestry is Persian, their culture is Indian and my parents, they grew up in India and then we were born and raised -- their kids were born and raised in America so I was born here and it’s a very small community, there’s only about a hundred -- the numbers are all crazy but about two hundred thousand in the world today. When they moved to the US, you tend to move to the cities where the other ones live because everybody helps each other out and so they’re in the largest cities, Houston, my parents came to Houston because it’s one of the places where there is this very tight Parsi community. And one of the things I’ve found from my experience is that they’re very focused on achievement and people being successful and just as immigrants, I think the combination of my parents being immigrants and going through such difficult times, and growing up in a community where, it’s also a community that is very tight and wants, I’ve found, people to be successful, their community members to be very successful.

The combination has been this incredible support system for me and every moment, like when I got an internship in New York City and we’d never -- I’d never been to New York City, we didn’t know anything about it, it was scary when you’re coming out of this tiny little suburb in Houston. I had a whole ‘nother community over there that was going to support me, somebody gave a place, one of our what we call “aunties” gave me a place to live and for free, she was just like ‘Absolutely we want you, you got a job here, this is fantastic come live with me for free, I want you to succeed, I want things to go well for you’. People would throw me birthday parties, I mean I’d never met these people. It’s just, you know, it’s just that kind of environment of, and my husband is in Mauritius right and he, somebody learned that he, he met a Parsi person and he mentioned ‘Oh my wife is Parsi’ and she was like ‘Well come on over! Come to our house!’ and it’s that kind of environment wherever you are in the world somebody’s going to invite you to their house if they know what you are and I actually, I was very insistent about keeping my last name because it actually, people find you, like the Parsis find you.

When I went to business school and I was Wharton I got an email within my first two weeks of being there and there’s so few Parsi but like one woman from some side of the Penn side emailed me and said ‘I found the two or three Parsis that were, like, enrolled this year’ and it was just this fascinating thing and then of course she had like little events for us and she kind of hosted us and it’s just this really fascinating, like, very unusual for modern day to grow up in that kind of a community.

How Second Generation Immigrant Opens Dialogue with Parents - Nina Godiwalla

In Chapter 7 of 14 of her 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, "Suits: A Woman on Wall Street" author Nina Godiwalla shares the difficulty expressing her experiences as a second-generation Parsi immigrant to her parents. Godiwalla turns to writing, where she is able to share her side of the story and, specifically, go into detail on the challenges of being both an American girl and an outsider from an immigrant family. The difficult process teaches Godiwalla about her parents own experiences and difficulties, ultimately creating an openness allowing both sides to understand the other.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What have your experiences as a second-generation immigrant taught your parents about what it means to be American?

Nina Godiwalla: Wow, what have I taught my parents? It’s funny, we just, my, I feel like every day can be a culture clash in our household, I was just with my family this weekend and it was funny, my mom was like ‘I’m not going to do it that way! That way’s American! You’re trying to force me to do it that way!’ and I was like ‘I don’t want to do it that way! This is the way we do it!’ And after I’ve written my book, which is, I have to say a lot of things have aired out because largely the book is -- what the book covers, part of what it covers, is how I kind of grew up in this American Culture, my parents grew up in a different country and had no idea what we were going through, I mean they just couldn’t have even, I still remember my mom like saw something on TV, she was like ‘There aren’t drugs in your school are there?’

I mean we never had anything like that, it was just always this constant, you know we’re operating on two different planes and for them, it’s been a learning experience on both sides, it’s been such an extreme learning experience and my book allows me to tell my side of ‘Hey dad, when you were telling me to do this the whole time this is what I was going through’ and it hasn’t allowed my parents to ever say their side, it’s very much my perspective and that’s all I know and what just dumbfounds me about my parents is I’d always expected like a guilt trip like ‘Do you understand I did this and this and this? And do you understand…’ and you get it a little bit from them but it’s just so rare, to know how different their experience was and what I’m getting after writing my book and having -- I had to have my parents read it and say ‘Look this is what’s going out, you can be mad at me, we can talk about it, whatever’ I’ve had them read it and you know they’ve had to, it’s not their perspective, it’s my perspective and what is beautiful for me though is it’s opened up this conversation and I wanted the book to open up a dialogue for a broader audience, I never expected it would open up a dialogue for my family.

And what’s great to me is my dad just doesn’t complain about life, it’s just this is what it is, everyday is this is what it is, it’s just, its very rare that he complains and he, just to hear his perspective on some stuff for the first time in my life to hear him say -- and I’m not even necessarily getting it from him, his brother was actually helping me understand, he said ‘Do you understand that we did this and this and this?’ and just thought ‘No, my dad’s never said that to me, he’s never said how difficult it was for them when they came from America, I don’t understand’.

And I don’t know their perspective and it’s been, it’s -- and I think that’s why it can be very difficult when you’re having completely experiences and I honestly, they can’t understand and we want to understand each other but, wow, I just have to say it’s so completely different. And I’m excited that my family’s moving towards that, we’re trying. It’s not easy and I think it’ll take a very long time but we’re trying to open up that dialogue and I hope to learn their perspective and all we can do right now is just learn from each other as much as we can.

How Meditation Program Helps MBAs Overcome Fear Culture - Nina Godiwalla

In Chapter 11 of 14 of her 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, Wharton MBA graduate and "Suits: A Woman on Wall Street" author Nina Godiwalla answers "What prompted you to create Leadership at Lunch and expose MBA students to the benefits of meditation?" Godiwalla shares how she overcame the business school fear culture and peer pressure by using meditation. Godiwalla goes on to create a six-week "Leadership at Lunch" meditation program to help classmates find clarity in their ambitions and actions while earning their respective MBA degrees.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: What prompted you to create Leadership at Lunch and expose MBA students to the benefits of meditation?

Nina Godiwalla: So before I went to business school, I had been exposed to meditation probably maybe it was about five years before I went to business school and my exposure to meditation was really crazy. I was visiting my parents and I always like to try new things and they were going away for the weekend and I had my sister drop me off at a meditation retreat not realizing it was a very, very intensive retreat for advanced people which means you couldn’t talk to anyone, you couldn’t do anything for the entire weekend, you couldn’t look at a word, you couldn’t make eye contact, I literally took my contacts off and just walked around in like this blur. And I found it very frustrating because I’m a go, go, go person, let’s get something done.

My first few days was just quite miserable to be honest and by the third day I just found -- I didn’t find like peace and happiness in the whole world but there was something I just felt like there’s something to this. I found a sense, a little bit more sense of clarity, a sense of clarity and then from that experience when I went into business school I felt like it was the exact, there was a bit of craziness to it, there was like I said people put on their resume ‘this is what I’m going to do’, not on their resume their application, it’s almost like the first day we got there people were moving towards that goal, I mean it was a very, very fast pace and I felt I was losing my sense of clarity while I was in business school.

I wanted to just step back and just say ‘Are we clear about this? Are we clear about what we’re all so anxiously trying to go towards?’ and what amazed me is and it’s not just me, research has shown that there’s a lot of fear culture in that world, in business school, at times. And a lot of it is, you know, that person coming up to you is like ‘did you go to that meeting? Did you catch? Did you see that company that was here? Cause if you missed that meeting they’re not going to invite you to the next interview.’ And I feel like there was just a lot of that going on constantly, you know, ‘Did you get this on the exam, did you see the previews?’ and that mentality started to -- I got sucked into it and I was coming from a place where, I was coming from a liberal arts masters degree where it wasn’t necessarily that way.

And for me, I just thought ‘Can I expose people to something that I’ve found valuable’ and I created a program, it was a six week program where we lead a meditation and we brought in some experts from the area as well and a lot of people had never tried it, they didn’t know what it was but people, some people had that curiosity of ‘Huh, I wonder what it is’ and that’s exactly how I started when I got exposed to it and if someone got something out of it, beautiful, that’s all I could ask for.

Why MBA Students Should Consider Meditation - Nina Godiwalla

In Chapter 12 of 14, Wharton MBA graduate and "Suits: A Woman on Wall Street" author Nina Godiwalla highlights how MBA students can benefit from meditation. Godiwalla notes how external factors, including family and job, motivate our career ambitions. She shares how external factors, including television, movies, and sports, also relieve us of stress from our external ambitions. By teaching meditation, Godiwalla has found the internal awareness to be especially comforting to MBA students who are in high peer pressure environments where unnecessary urgency is often associated with decison making. The internal focus alleviates stress and provides a calming awareness and clarity to longer term focused decisions.

Transcript:

Erik Michielsen: Why should an MBA student consider meditation?

Nina Godiwalla: I think there’s just this universal feature within us that we have a way within ourselves to ground ourselves. I think often we look to external sources to find happiness, our spouse, children, our family, jobs, careers what ever it is, we look, that’s what we look through too often and then we find things that constantly distract us when we’re not – when those things aren’t working for us, TV, movies just, you know, what ever it is we find our own little distractions and instead of doing that there’s something inside that you can actually change the way you feel, the way you think and even understand, it’s just that initial awareness of what it is. So for me for MBA students there were people there who were very grounded and knew exactly what they wanted to do and I don’t know if they necessarily, if they probably had a way that they were doing that themselves, I think MBA students should consider it because it gives them a sense to feel comfortable with what they’re doing and step back and maybe operate in a way that in the long term is really going to pay them off and not necessarily just right now this looks like the right thing to be doing because everyone else is doing it.

How Meditation Improves Memoir Writing - Nina Godiwalla

In Chapter 13 of 14 in her 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, author Nina Godiwalla answers "How has meditating helped you be more self-aware and introspective in your writing?" Godiwalla notes how meditation has helped her be more present in every moment, choose where to put her attention, and apply this process in her memoir writing.  Her book "Suits: a Woman on Wall Street" covers some buried and even dark experiences.  The meditation helps Godiwalla get depth in understanding what happened and putting it down on paper.  As a result, she is able to take the reader to a different level in the storytelling experience. 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 in corporate development 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 has meditating helped you be more self aware and introspective in your writing?

Nina Godiwalla: For me meditation is a general term and it is for a lot of people as well, of being present in every moment so while we’re speaking actually really listening to what you’re saying and not having my mind think about ‘Oh wow, I’m really nervous, does this make sense? It’s a lifestyle in that I can choose where I’m putting my attention, meditation is choosing where you put your attention at every single moment of your life.

So in terms of being able to take that self awareness and understand and quietly be with myself and be comfortable, it’s completely affected my writing specifically the book I’ve written because it’s a memoir and it’s about my life. One of the things is I think we go through experiences and if they don’t work the way we want them to work we kind of can bury them someplace else. And to be honest some of the stuff I wrote about were definitely things that I buried, I didn’t want to go back, I didn’t want to think about them and meditation allows me -- gives me the safety and comfort with myself to go back and visit those experiences and not just visit them but try and understand why I put myself in that situation, why that happened and get that depth and in all honesty when you’re writing you want to take people to that different level, you don’t want to – it doesn’t need to just be ‘Hey this is what happened’ its kind of like, ‘I’m trying to understand what happened’ and when you’re meditating you’re actually getting comfortable enough with yourself to where you’re not denying things, you’re not -- you’re saying ‘I accept the way I acted, I accept what happened and let me take it to a different level’ and I think that way you’re able to take the reader to a different level.

What Defines a Personal Sense of Fulfillment - Audrey Parker

In Chapter 8 of 15, energy efficiency consultant Audrey Parker defines her personal sense of fulfillment by gathering feedback and assessing her state based on a series of metrics. Parker defines a standard for success and measures herself against it. She reviews whether she is creating value and developing talents both personally and through service to others. She looks to the future, gathers inspiration, and pushes through fears using courage and commitment.

How to Cultivate Passion for Singing A Cappella - Audrey Parker

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How to Overcome Fear of Public Speaking Using NLP - Audrey Parker

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How Neuro-Linguistic Programming Builds Confidence - Audrey Parker

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How to Create a Healthy Work-Life Balance - Audrey Parker

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How to Overcome Fear of Failure and Live More Fully - Dan Street

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How Entrepreneur Battles Adversity and Finds Happiness - Dan Street

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How Small Town Culture Promotes Self-Discovery - Dan Street

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How to Evolve Local Communication for the 21st Century - Dan Street

In Chapter 8 of 20 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, hyperlocal entrepreneur Dan Street shares how two-way communication, including mobile phones and social media, have redefined how we interact. One consequence of this technology reliance is that local and neighborhood connections have dissipated. Two-way communication has eliminated much local communication. He embraces this two-way communication and applies it to neighborhood settings via his startup, Loku.  Street is the founder and CEO of Austin, Texas based Loku (previously Borrowed Sugar) which develops Internet software to strengthen local communities.  Previously, Street worked in private equity at Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts (KKR) and management consulting at Bain & Co.  He earned a BA in music and business from Rice University. 

How to Develop a Participatory Community Culture - Dan Street

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Street is the founder and CEO of Austin, Texas based Loku (previously Borrowed Sugar) which develops Internet software to strengthen local communities.  Previously, Street worked in private equity at Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts (KKR) and management consulting at Bain & Co.  He earned a BA in music and business from Rice University. 

How to Create Meaningful Hyperlocal Relationships - Dan Street

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Street is the founder and CEO of Austin, Texas based Loku (previously Borrowed Sugar) which develops Internet software to strengthen local communities.  Previously, Street worked in private equity at Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts (KKR) and management consulting at Bain & Co.  He earned a BA in music and business from Rice University. 

Where are Local Communities Hurting Most Today - Dan Street

In Chapter 2 of 20 of his 2010 Capture Your Flag interview, hyperlocal entrepreneur Dan Street details multiple macro factors driving community isolation. He notes three specific challenges: First, the existing lack of engagement within communities and the causes of this isolated lifestyle; Second, the overwhelming nature of community engagement choice, or where to start making a contribution; Third, the competitive neighbor mindset that limits collaboration and camaraderie.

Street is the founder and CEO of Austin, Texas based Loku (previously Borrowed Sugar) which develops Internet software to strengthen local communities.  Previously, Street worked in private equity at Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts (KKR) and management consulting at Bain & Co.  He earned a BA in music and business from Rice University. 

How to Understand Religion - Bijoy Goswami

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