Speaker 1: I have this opportunity with my team to bring together people,
Speaker 1: to give them a platform to connect with one of
Speaker 1: the most influential, powerful cultural industries. It touches people all
Speaker 1: over the place, and as an industry, we have a
Speaker 1: responsibility and an opportunity to really change the world. Hey everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast
Speaker 1: in the world. Thanks to each and every single one
Speaker 1: of you that come back every week to listen, learn
Speaker 1: and grow. Now today I get to host a very
Speaker 1: special episode. I'm seated in Oxford, London at the Soho Farmhouse.
Speaker 1: If you haven't been here before, it's a magical venue,
Speaker 1: and especially what I'm here for is even more incredible.
Speaker 1: I've been invited to speak at the Voices conference for
Speaker 1: the Business of Fashion, and beyond that, I get to
Speaker 1: sit down with the founder, the CEO, and the editor
Speaker 1: in chief of the Business of Fashion, Imran Ahmed himself. Imran,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, first of all for organizing such
Speaker 1: a beautiful event and for being here today on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you. The organization of the event comes down to
Speaker 1: my brilliant team. I'm sure you've been meeting them in
Speaker 1: all of the little nooks and crannies around what we
Speaker 1: call our campus. But we absolutely love putting this event together,
Speaker 1: especially this year because it's been two years since we've
Speaker 1: done Voices, and we think of it as like the
Speaker 1: best way to bring our team together because we face
Speaker 1: so many challenges in making Voices happen. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people to manage, a lot of things
Speaker 1: to manage. In this year, of all years, we have
Speaker 1: something at bof called the Voices Test, which is like
Speaker 1: resilience in the face of adversity and rapid changes. And
Speaker 1: you know, twenty four hours before we were arriving here
Speaker 1: this year, they changed all the COVID restrictions, so we
Speaker 1: had to adapt and be agile, and like, my team
Speaker 1: is just awesome. It's all because of them. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: what's even more special is everyone's really positive too, So
Speaker 1: they're doing all this hard work, but whenever they're with
Speaker 1: you or me, or with an individual at the conference
Speaker 1: and the event, they've all been just so wonderful. So
Speaker 1: congratulations to you and the team. I want to start
Speaker 1: off because we are at Voices and I have been
Speaker 1: absolutely blown away by every speaker on stage since day one.
Speaker 1: The diversity of conversation the depth of storytelling. You know,
Speaker 1: when I was first invited and you hear about the
Speaker 1: business of fashion, you're thinking, oh, well, everyone's going to
Speaker 1: be a fashion speaker, and then you're like, no, we're
Speaker 1: talking about mushrooms. We're talking about roots Studios, which is
Speaker 1: incredibly looking at fashion from a completely different angle. We're
Speaker 1: talking about activism. Tell us about where the idea for
Speaker 1: Voices came from and what you wanted it to be
Speaker 1: when it first started, and how it's evolved. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think like most industries, there were already a series of
Speaker 1: other industry conferences, and you know, at bof whenever we
Speaker 1: do something new, we want to do it differently, we
Speaker 1: want to add something to what's already there. We wanted
Speaker 1: it to be disruptive because my observation was that, you know,
Speaker 1: most of the fashion events that we have are just
Speaker 1: fashion people, and therefore you have fashion people talking to
Speaker 1: fashion people about fashion, which is a bit of an
Speaker 1: echo chamber, right, And those kinds of conversations are absolutely important,
Speaker 1: and they happen at Fashion Week, and they happen in
Speaker 1: all sorts of you know, industry events. But fashion doesn't
Speaker 1: live in a bubble. It doesn't exist outside, you know,
Speaker 1: the intersections of other things that are going on in
Speaker 1: the world, and especially now amid you know once in
Speaker 1: a generation, you know, public health cis, you know, economic dislocation, heightening,
Speaker 1: global inequality, a global reckoning around inclusion, racial equity, diversity.
Speaker 1: You know, we are connected to everything that's going on
Speaker 1: in the world. So our idea was, we need to
Speaker 1: bring other voices into the room. And so it is
Speaker 1: a conference about fashion in some ways because we touch
Speaker 1: on all those topics. But we wanted to pierce that
Speaker 1: echo chamber, and we wanted to bring other people inside
Speaker 1: the industry and help them kind of open the eyes
Speaker 1: of the industry and also to help people understand the
Speaker 1: power of fashion. So we have all these other people
Speaker 1: that come inside and and kind of share their time
Speaker 1: and their expertise with us. And one of the things
Speaker 1: they always say to me when they leave is like,
Speaker 1: this is such a powerful industry. It's such a cultural
Speaker 1: force in the world, and fashion has the power to
Speaker 1: change things. So we set up Voices originally with that vision,
Speaker 1: that idea that we wanted to disrupt the existing trade conferences.
Speaker 1: And we don't call it a conference, we call it
Speaker 1: a gathering and we wanted to bring other people in
Speaker 1: and just create the kind of conversations that weren't happening enough.
Speaker 1: And what happens is everyone, the non fashioned people go
Speaker 1: away and they've learned so much about the industry and
Speaker 1: they've met all these people, and the fashion people come
Speaker 1: and they've also met the non fashioned people and it
Speaker 1: just creates this incredible energy. Well, Iran, today, you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're a fashionable gentleman. You're always in the world a
Speaker 1: fashion But I want to go back to what I
Speaker 1: ran was like growing up. I want to hear about
Speaker 1: what your passions were, what your interests were, what you
Speaker 1: were like as a teenager. You know, what is it
Speaker 1: that you thought you were going to go out to do.
Speaker 1: What were your aspirations as a teenager. I think my
Speaker 1: aspirations as a teenager were in a way largely defined
Speaker 1: by what other people expected of me. I grew up
Speaker 1: in Canada, in Calgary. My parents moved from Kenya to
Speaker 1: Calgary in the middle of the cold winter in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four. In December. They were both the first in
Speaker 1: their respective families to go to university, and my mom
Speaker 1: was already pregnant and I guess they made a decision
Speaker 1: that they just wanted me to have the best life.
Speaker 1: And my parents, even before I was born, I think
Speaker 1: they were already thinking about what the future they wanted
Speaker 1: for me, And as immigrants to a new country with
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars and great education, they really believed in
Speaker 1: the power of education. And they came to Canada with
Speaker 1: a view to kind of setting up themselves for a
Speaker 1: new life. And you know, that was a massive risk
Speaker 1: and change for them. Wow. And four months later I
Speaker 1: was born. So they moved from Kenya to Calgary. And
Speaker 1: I think the day I was born or someone told me,
Speaker 1: this kid will go to Harvard one day. And I
Speaker 1: was named Imran, after Imran Khan because my dad was
Speaker 1: a cricket player. And so I think growing up, I
Speaker 1: always felt like these expectations, you know. And I didn't
Speaker 1: turn out to be athletically gifted in any way, but
Speaker 1: I was always driven towards a specific path. You know,
Speaker 1: in many immigrant families when they first moved to the West,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a doctor or a lawyer or engineer.
Speaker 1: And I think when I was a teenager, I felt
Speaker 1: like those were the only options. So at school, I
Speaker 1: was I was really really nerdy. I used to get
Speaker 1: up at four or five in the morning to do
Speaker 1: my homework or to study, or to prepare for tests.
Speaker 1: You know. My mom sometimes used to wake up in
Speaker 1: the morning to quiz me and to work with me.
Speaker 1: She was she was a teach my father was an architect,
Speaker 1: and you know, they really just invested in my education.
Speaker 1: And I guess I felt this like pressure or expectation
Speaker 1: that I had to go down one of these paths.
Speaker 1: In the evenings, however, I was a really creative kid,
Speaker 1: and I started. My first foray into the performing arts
Speaker 1: was as a singer. I was in a boys cut
Speaker 1: choir from the age of eight nine. Yeah, all boys choir,
Speaker 1: and we literally sang like this. And then I got
Speaker 1: into public speaking, into drama, into musical theater, and so
Speaker 1: my days were really really nerdy and academic, and my
Speaker 1: evenings were filled with extracurricular activities that were rich with creativity.
Speaker 1: But when it came to making decisions about my education,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe I kind of knew that there wasn't
Speaker 1: really an opportunity for me in the performing arts. You know,
Speaker 1: as a very small brown person like that, there weren't
Speaker 1: roles for me, and there weren't opportunities for me. You know,
Speaker 1: getting cast and things was very, very hard. You know.
Speaker 1: I was always cast as like the impish, mischievous puck
Speaker 1: or mad hatter, you know, in like plays and stuff.
Speaker 1: But like to have a real career in the performing
Speaker 1: arts was like a risk that I couldn't afford to take, honestly.
Speaker 1: So I was really interested in business, an entrepreneurship, and
Speaker 1: so in a conversation with my father, I remember, we said, well,
Speaker 1: what I should study business? So I studied. I moved
Speaker 1: to Montreal when I was eighteen years old, and I
Speaker 1: studied at McGill University and I studied for a Bachelor
Speaker 1: of Commerce. And you know, I loved I loved my
Speaker 1: time at McGill, in part because it was this global university.
Speaker 1: There were people from all over the world. And I'd
Speaker 1: spent my first eighteen years only in Calgary, you know,
Speaker 1: and we didn't travel that much internationally. We did lots
Speaker 1: of road trips in North America. But McGill was my
Speaker 1: first time being really immersed in a truly international, global
Speaker 1: environment and it found it so enriching. And Montreal as
Speaker 1: a city was hugely inspiring to me. It's a bilingual city,
Speaker 1: and I really wanted to learn French. You know, I've
Speaker 1: been learning French and since like elementary school, because in
Speaker 1: Canada you get trained in English and French. But I
Speaker 1: didn't really speak French. So being in Montreal gave me
Speaker 1: this opportunity to immerse myself. And one of the world's
Speaker 1: was like truly bilingual cities where you know, the locals
Speaker 1: can switch from one language to another like this. And
Speaker 1: I remember sitting in a mall one day, the food court,
Speaker 1: and there were these two women sitting next to me,
Speaker 1: and they were going back and forth in a conversation
Speaker 1: and quoting. They were speaking in English and quoting in French,
Speaker 1: and you know, I just I was like, I want
Speaker 1: to be able to do that. So when it came
Speaker 1: time to graduation, I actually decided to stay in Montreal.
Speaker 1: I worked in management consulting in a fully bilingual environment.
Speaker 1: All my friends left. It was great to be still
Speaker 1: in Montreal, but it was obviously not the same when
Speaker 1: all my college friends had left and gone to like
Speaker 1: New York, in Paris and London and Toronto and other places.
Speaker 1: So after a couple of years, my dream was to
Speaker 1: work in Europe and I asked my company for a
Speaker 1: transfer to Europe. So I want to live in Paris
Speaker 1: or London. I want to do that. McKinsey right. This
Speaker 1: was at Deloitte. I worked at a small strategy consulting
Speaker 1: group that they used to own called Braxton Associates. And
Speaker 1: they said, well, you know you're twenty two years old, like,
Speaker 1: we only transfer people if they have unique skills that
Speaker 1: you can't find in London, and you know, you're way
Speaker 1: too young. So at that point I was thinking about
Speaker 1: applying for business school, and you know, I managed to
Speaker 1: get an internship slash fellowship with a micro credit organization
Speaker 1: in Bangladesh, and I started making plans to move to Bangladesh.
Speaker 1: And actually the day I was planning to quit, the
Speaker 1: managing director of the office, Bob Leach was his name,
Speaker 1: he came up to my office, which was very unusual
Speaker 1: because I would usually go down to his office and
Speaker 1: he said, it, Ron, I found a way to move
Speaker 1: you to London. And you know, it turned out that
Speaker 1: there was someone in the London office who wanted to
Speaker 1: move to North America and we were just going to swap.
Speaker 1: It was the first time in my life I faced
Speaker 1: a real professional dilemma. I had kind of convinced myself
Speaker 1: that going to work in Bangladesh was going to be
Speaker 1: really enriching. It was going to be great for my
Speaker 1: business school application because it would show a different, you know,
Speaker 1: professional experience. But I'd always wanted to live in London.
Speaker 1: And by this point my family, my parents had moved
Speaker 1: back to Kenya, and so I'd been traveling through London
Speaker 1: to visit them in Nairobi. And you know, I'd spend
Speaker 1: like three or four days in London, you know, stop
Speaker 1: office on the way, and there was something about the
Speaker 1: city that I just I remember the first time I
Speaker 1: was like driving down Pall Mall in London. I was
Speaker 1: in the back of the cab and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Yeah, you know, it's like one of
Speaker 1: these things you only see on TV. And I called
Speaker 1: one of my professors, Professor and Hale, and I told her,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do, like, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's you know, I could go to Bangladesh or I
Speaker 1: could go to London. And she said, Amon, go where
Speaker 1: your heart is telling you to go. You have the
Speaker 1: rest of your career to give back. Because I really
Speaker 1: wanted to go you know, and do this service in Bangladesh, said,
Speaker 1: you have the rest of your life to do that.
Speaker 1: If your instinct, if your heart is telling you to
Speaker 1: go to London, just go to London. And so I
Speaker 1: slept on it and I was like agonizing over this decision.
Speaker 1: And I woke up one morning and Professor Hale was right.
Speaker 1: She said, you know, I just my heart was saying
Speaker 1: go to London. So that's that's how I ended up.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. And you've you just told me before we
Speaker 1: went live, you've been living in Lone for twenty years now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I first moved here in nineteen ninety nine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I ended up staying here for a year with Deloitte,
Speaker 1: and it was amazing because I got to work in
Speaker 1: Switzerland and Norway and Holland and all over the place,
Speaker 1: all these countries I'd never been to. But I was
Speaker 1: also applying for business school and I managed to get
Speaker 1: into business school about six or seven months after I
Speaker 1: moved to London. And I've been traveling so much that
Speaker 1: I actually didn't end up spending much time in London.
Speaker 1: And at that point I quit my job and started
Speaker 1: planning to go to business school. So Yeah, that was here,
Speaker 1: and then after business school I moved back. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: do you think were the biggest skills or gifts you
Speaker 1: took away from business school? I think that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of conversation today about education, higher education, graduations, postgraduate,
Speaker 1: but as someone who actually went to business school, what
Speaker 1: were the things that you felt you really took away
Speaker 1: in terms of skills that you wouldn't have got anywhere else.
Speaker 1: You know, honestly, it really wasn't about the skills. I
Speaker 1: had studied business in undergrad and you know, um, HBS
Speaker 1: has a really different way of teaching. They have a
Speaker 1: case study method, you know, So I'd studied from textbooks
Speaker 1: in undergrad and you know, HBS was offering me a
Speaker 1: different way to study business. And it was great, you know,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong. You know, there were elements of
Speaker 1: it that were you know, different, and I learned stuff,
Speaker 1: But honestly, business school is not for me. It wasn't
Speaker 1: about the classroom. It was about again the people, you know,
Speaker 1: and I found it really hard there at first. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a really intense place and if you do the
Speaker 1: Myers Briggs test, familiar with it, yes, And you know,
Speaker 1: I think like seventy percent of the you know, incoming
Speaker 1: class the year I started were EMTG, the so called
Speaker 1: natural born leaders. So you have a lot of like
Speaker 1: really similar driven people sitting in a classroom every day.
Speaker 1: It creates, you know, it creates in some ways a
Speaker 1: very interesting positive energy to drive you to be the
Speaker 1: best you can be. But it's also in some ways
Speaker 1: it's very limiting, and um, you know, I found at
Speaker 1: times it was really hard. And you know, while I
Speaker 1: was there, nine to eleven happen, and as a as
Speaker 1: a Muslim, you know, it was a really eye opening
Speaker 1: experience because you know, you know, HBS is like a community,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a community of people, and you know,
Speaker 1: happened in September obviously, and I was in my second year,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking about all of the first years
Speaker 1: I had just arrived from Algeria or Egypt or Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: you know, Muslims from all over the world, and they
Speaker 1: were in the US, you know, for the first three
Speaker 1: or four weeks of their business school career, and this
Speaker 1: like horrible tragedy has happened. And so a bunch of
Speaker 1: us gathered all the Muslims on campus together to just
Speaker 1: say you know, like this is a really supportive community,
Speaker 1: and by that point there had already been some instances
Speaker 1: of extreme Islamophobia and campus. You know, people were saying
Speaker 1: really misjudged, ill informed, ignorant, hateful things, and you know,
Speaker 1: you have to remember it was a really it's a
Speaker 1: really charged environment, was really emotional time, and so of course,
Speaker 1: like everyone was feeling, you know, there were it was
Speaker 1: h Harvard Business School. There were so many connections of
Speaker 1: people in the those classrooms, professors teaching in those classrooms,
Speaker 1: and that in the trade World Trade Center, and so like.
Speaker 1: Of course, it was a very emotional situation. But for
Speaker 1: those of us who were Muslim, was also really really
Speaker 1: difficult because there was some really really unfortunate things that
Speaker 1: were said. And you know, I realized and we said
Speaker 1: to the incoming class that our responsibility is to educate people,
Speaker 1: you know, And you know, there's one moment I was
Speaker 1: in a classroom and we were taking this class called
Speaker 1: the Moral Leader, and every week we would have a
Speaker 1: conversation about a significant moral dilemma faced by a protagonist
Speaker 1: in a fictional book or a situation that happened in
Speaker 1: the world, and the professor on this particular Monday, you know,
Speaker 1: a week or so after the terrorist attacks, decided to
Speaker 1: turn the focus into the current situation. And what that
Speaker 1: unleashed in the classroom was, you know, really hateful things,
Speaker 1: you know. And one person in the classroom said, you know,
Speaker 1: my friend who's in my section, you know, I'm worried
Speaker 1: he's going to blow up the school. Another person down
Speaker 1: the road from me was said, you know, Islam is
Speaker 1: a religion that teaches every teaches people to kill Jews.
Speaker 1: And I could, like, I could feel myself really shaking
Speaker 1: because my instinct. I got up and I just left,
Speaker 1: you know, and I remembered that conversation I had without
Speaker 1: incoming class. I was in the hallway and I left it.
Speaker 1: I was like shaking. So I went back into the
Speaker 1: classroom and everyone's hands were up, and I realized I
Speaker 1: was the only Muslim person in that whole class. So
Speaker 1: I raised my hand and I just, you know, I
Speaker 1: just spoke really from the heart. I can't remember exactly
Speaker 1: what I said, but you know, I just felt like
Speaker 1: it was my responsibility to talk. And so I came
Speaker 1: to this whole story just to say that, you know,
Speaker 1: even at a place like Harvard Business School, you have
Speaker 1: these like highly educated people, really well traveled, worldly you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately the experience is about the community of people were
Speaker 1: with And after I spoke, the whole class erupted into applause,
Speaker 1: you know, and for the rest of the day, you know,
Speaker 1: people were just showing up at my house that I
Speaker 1: share with my class thought me, it's just to come
Speaker 1: and like it was very supportive in the end. But
Speaker 1: you know this, you know, business school was just really hard.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not you know, it's not easy. I
Speaker 1: treasure the people that were there, that were you know,
Speaker 1: there to support me. And to this day, you know,
Speaker 1: my friends from university and my friends from HBS, they're
Speaker 1: my community that you know, that hold me out up,
Speaker 1: that pushed me. And so it's really not about the classroom.
Speaker 1: It's about you know, the community. Yeah, and Maron, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for opening up about that and sharing that,
Speaker 1: because as you were saying it, I can only imagine
Speaker 1: how hard that is to reconcile internally, not just the
Speaker 1: classroom or not just the conversations or the moral leader discussion,
Speaker 1: but to deal with it internally while you're in a
Speaker 1: place like that. Yeah, I've never I've never told that
Speaker 1: story before, because I think one of the things that
Speaker 1: happens in our career so looking I went off to
Speaker 1: after business school, you enjoined McKinsey in London. I went
Speaker 1: back and I think one of the things that I've
Speaker 1: realized over these last eighteen months or so since we
Speaker 1: were all locked down, is that I've just internalized a
Speaker 1: lot of this. I've never really understood how it has,
Speaker 1: you know, impacted me. And one of the commitments I
Speaker 1: made to myself over these last months is that, you know,
Speaker 1: I just need to be more open about it because
Speaker 1: these these moments, like when you look back in your life,
Speaker 1: there's these certain defining moments that you're you're changed, And
Speaker 1: that moment that I just talked to you about, like
Speaker 1: that was the moment that really shifted me, you know,
Speaker 1: but I never talked about it. What do you think
Speaker 1: changed about you behavior wise or attitude of wise or
Speaker 1: approach wise from that day? What did you do internally? Now?
Speaker 1: As as you're saying you held onto it, it it feels
Speaker 1: like something you didn't share, But how did you process
Speaker 1: it or did you not process it at aol until
Speaker 1: more recently? I mean, I think it wasn't a moment
Speaker 1: of processing. It's been years, but really I think a
Speaker 1: lot of that processing has happened in the most recent
Speaker 1: period because you know, I was sitting at home and
Speaker 1: like everybody, I was reflecting on my purpose. You know,
Speaker 1: why am I here, what am I doing? Why am
Speaker 1: I working so hard? And what am I working towards?
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's really happened in my
Speaker 1: role here at the Business of Fashion is I've found
Speaker 1: myself in a position of influence. I found myself in
Speaker 1: a public position, and I've realized that as a gay person,
Speaker 1: as a Muslim person, as a brown person, as a
Speaker 1: Canadian with East African roots and Indian heritage, there's actually
Speaker 1: a lot of people who see themselves a part of
Speaker 1: themselves in me, and there's not that many of us
Speaker 1: in the fashion industry, certainly not, you know, in a
Speaker 1: position that I'm so privileged to have now. So I've
Speaker 1: just been thinking a lot more about well, what am
Speaker 1: I going to do with this position? That's really a
Speaker 1: lot about what Voices is for. You know, That's why
Speaker 1: we're here, because I have this opportunity with my team
Speaker 1: to bring together people, to give them a platform to
Speaker 1: connect with one of the most influential, powerful cultural industries
Speaker 1: that touches people all over the place, and as an industry,
Speaker 1: we have a responsibility and an opportunity to really change
Speaker 1: the world. Fashion imagery spreads everywhere now with social media,
Speaker 1: your fashion needs to be this like really secretive little world.
Speaker 1: All of everything was kind of contained. And as an outsider,
Speaker 1: you know, management consulting background to come into this industry
Speaker 1: and be able to learn from everybody, you know, through
Speaker 1: all the interviews I've done all over the over the years,
Speaker 1: like every person I've met has taught me something, and
Speaker 1: now I have an ability to use all of that
Speaker 1: and connect that with my curiosity and my interest in that,
Speaker 1: you know, being part of a global community, you know,
Speaker 1: the one that I hadn't been guild, the one I
Speaker 1: had at HBS, and the one that we've built here
Speaker 1: at bof Like all of these things are threads through
Speaker 1: my life. And so the processing has happened over a
Speaker 1: very long period of time, but I think in the
Speaker 1: last twelve months or so, it's really become much more sharpened.
Speaker 1: And that's the session that you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: have this this afternoon with you is like everyone's going
Speaker 1: to be talking about how their purpose has been either
Speaker 1: shifted or sharpened or focused because of this period that
Speaker 1: we've lived through. Absolutely, thank you again for sharing that.
Speaker 1: It's It's truly beautiful being drawn into your personal experience.
Speaker 1: And I love that you described it as a thread
Speaker 1: because it just shows how interconnected you feel it. Early
Speaker 1: is often people feel their life is like a series
Speaker 1: of pivots, and You've had a lot of pivots in
Speaker 1: your life, but you don't see them as pivots. You're
Speaker 1: seeing them as a thread. I wonder when you do
Speaker 1: make the transition from successful McKinsey consultant to starting the
Speaker 1: business of fashion being the authoritative voice in the industry,
Speaker 1: tell us about what gave you the courage Again, I
Speaker 1: feel like you're just one of these people that's constantly
Speaker 1: had and I have a lot of these questions from
Speaker 1: my community, my audience. I have questions like this from
Speaker 1: private clients I work with and people that I've coached
Speaker 1: in the past. A lot of people struggle with transition.
Speaker 1: So whether it was your transition to McGill, your transition
Speaker 1: to London instead of Bangladesh, then London to HBS, then
Speaker 1: HBS to McKinsey, then McKinsey. You know, there's many transitions
Speaker 1: here and then you take the biggest one, which seems
Speaker 1: to be where you're feeling your purpose is being fulfilled.
Speaker 1: Tell us about what gave you the courage to make
Speaker 1: that transition from a phenomenal career which most people would
Speaker 1: dream to have at a place like McKinsey, but then
Speaker 1: to be able to make that I find that really fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to use the word courage because I didn't
Speaker 1: feel courageous. I felt I just I was really unhappy.
Speaker 1: And without denigrating McKinsey, because McKinsey is an incredible institution
Speaker 1: with deeply held values. It's flawed like every organization, but
Speaker 1: walking into those doors every day, I felt like I
Speaker 1: was leaving a lot of myself at home. And you know,
Speaker 1: it goes without saying I was leaving all my creative
Speaker 1: side at home. You know, my power point slides, they
Speaker 1: were very pretty. That was my outlet. But there was
Speaker 1: some professional feedback. You know, McKinsey loves feedback. You get
Speaker 1: feedback after every meeting, you get feedback after every project.
Speaker 1: To get feedback every six months, and in some ways
Speaker 1: that's really helpful. But some of the feedback I was getting.
Speaker 1: It's basically like they said, I didn't have gravitas. I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about this a lot recently. They said, well,
Speaker 1: you don't have gray hair, so you need to be
Speaker 1: less expressive. I use my hands a lot. I'm a
Speaker 1: very expressive person. I'm an ant. That's my theater side.
Speaker 1: And then one day someone said to me, what did
Speaker 1: you feel more comfortable if you were a tie and
Speaker 1: a blue shirt? And there was one meeting I was
Speaker 1: in and everyone was was all men who had gone
Speaker 1: to Oxford or Cambridge, and they were all wearing checked shirts.
Speaker 1: And they realized that the checks on their shirts were
Speaker 1: the same, were kind of the size of the checks
Speaker 1: on their shirt were commensurate with their tenure at McKinsey.
Speaker 1: And they all got up in a row and they
Speaker 1: lined themselves up, and I was sitting down at the table,
Speaker 1: and I've been thinking about that moment and if that's
Speaker 1: not a moment of uthering because I was wearing an
Speaker 1: orange shirt. I was a brown, gay Muslim guy at McKinsey,
Speaker 1: and these were all like straight white man And basically
Speaker 1: what I've learned over the last few months when I
Speaker 1: realized that it was a very coded language that was
Speaker 1: being given to me to tell me to not be myself.
Speaker 1: And I know that now, but back then, all I
Speaker 1: was feeling was pain. And so I wrote them a
Speaker 1: EMO and I asked for a sabbatical. And someone came
Speaker 1: up to me in the New Delhi airport and he
Speaker 1: came up to me, and I was on my way
Speaker 1: to Bangladesh actually to go visit a friend of mine
Speaker 1: who was on that same program that I was thinking
Speaker 1: about doing many years back. And he came up to
Speaker 1: me and he said, I've been observing you. I have
Speaker 1: some things to tell you about your life. And I
Speaker 1: thought it was one of those quacks, right. I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't have any money. I'm leaving. My rupees are gone.
Speaker 1: He said, no, I don't want your money. Just sit
Speaker 1: down with me for five minutes. And he said to me,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you. And a few minutes
Speaker 1: later he said, you're not listening to me. Say yes,
Speaker 1: I am. So he took a piece of paper and
Speaker 1: he wrote something down, crumpled it up, and he put
Speaker 1: it into my hand. He said, hold this in your hand.
Speaker 1: He said, I want you to tell me your favorite color.
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't have a favorite color. I
Speaker 1: was in such a negative place. I said, I don't
Speaker 1: have a favorite color. But McKinzie told me to wear
Speaker 1: blue shirts blue. He said, what's your favorite flower. I'm
Speaker 1: not really a flower person, or I wasn't back then,
Speaker 1: and my cousin's wife had calla lilies in her bouquet.
Speaker 1: So I said lily. And then he wrote down my
Speaker 1: name and he put one, two, three, four or five
Speaker 1: over the letters of my name, and he said, what's
Speaker 1: your favorite number? And I picked number three because right
Speaker 1: in the middle, and I like symmetry. He said open
Speaker 1: your hand. I opened my hand, and the little paper
Speaker 1: that he'd given me five minutes earlier said blue lily three.
Speaker 1: And he said, now, will you listen to me? And
Speaker 1: I spent an hour talking to that man, and he
Speaker 1: said a lot of really crazy things, but the one
Speaker 1: thing he said to me was you need to practice meditation. Wow.
Speaker 1: And you know, in my culture I'm in his smiling Muslim,
Speaker 1: we practice something called bundigee. And my grandfather used to
Speaker 1: wake up every day at four in the morning and
Speaker 1: he used to practice bundigi And whenever I tried to
Speaker 1: practice meditation, I could never do it, but it stuck
Speaker 1: with me. And then through a conversation with one friend
Speaker 1: and then another friend, everything pushed me towards something called
Speaker 1: hipposita meditation. So I wrote this memo to McKinzie explaining
Speaker 1: that he needed a sabbatical. I was feeling deeply unhappy.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure I wanted a career in the firm,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't going to be able to think about
Speaker 1: this properly if I was working as hard as I
Speaker 1: was working. Everything at McKinzie was done with memos. So
Speaker 1: I had to make a business case for why they
Speaker 1: wanted me to take this time off, and they gave
Speaker 1: me the time off, and I found myself in South
Speaker 1: Africa doing bit positive meditation, which is ten days of silence.
Speaker 1: And that's when everything changed because I learned how to meditate,
Speaker 1: and I won't I mean, a whole other conversation that
Speaker 1: we can have one day is that experience, because it's
Speaker 1: like but I flew from Cape Town to Nairobi and
Speaker 1: I sat down with my parents and I said, I've
Speaker 1: done everything that you thought I should do, and you've
Speaker 1: given me this amazing education, and you've given me everything
Speaker 1: you could possibly give me, but I'm so unhappy. I
Speaker 1: need to try something different. And they were really worried
Speaker 1: about me because obviously I was just like overachieving kid,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden I was in South Africa
Speaker 1: in the middle of a force meditating. I mean, they
Speaker 1: were worried that I was going to turn up in
Speaker 1: saffron robes or something and like, and I know you
Speaker 1: were a monk. So I did that, yeah, And they said, okay,
Speaker 1: we just want you to be happy. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: when everything switched in. Then one of the realizations I
Speaker 1: had as part of that whole sabbatical, I started talking
Speaker 1: to people in fashion, music and failing. I wanted to
Speaker 1: work in a creative industry. And you know, when I
Speaker 1: was a young, young young person, I used to watch
Speaker 1: this television show called Fashion File, which was hosted by
Speaker 1: this man named Tim Blanks. I was on every Saturday,
Speaker 1: and I just there's something about that show that I
Speaker 1: always was so curious about because Tim used to be
Speaker 1: in Milan, in Paris and London, all these places, all
Speaker 1: these interesting people, and like there was a business, but
Speaker 1: it was also creative, and so I was like, I
Speaker 1: just I feel like drawn to this industry, and so
Speaker 1: a lot of time when young people say like, how
Speaker 1: do you know what you're passionate about? I always say, like,
Speaker 1: what were you? What were even drawn to when you
Speaker 1: were a child, before anyone told you what your path
Speaker 1: should be, before you understood the expectations of society or
Speaker 1: other pressures. What was what we're like? It's inexplicable what
Speaker 1: we're drawn to as children, because it's purely intuition. And so, um,
Speaker 1: I quit my job at McKinsey, and that's what my
Speaker 1: journey into the fashion industry began. And well on that
Speaker 1: spectacular Honestly, that is so beautifully shared and there's so
Speaker 1: many parts of it that I want to deep dive on.
Speaker 1: I was going to be respectful of your time. So
Speaker 1: it is exactly the time that we had promised to finish,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to ask you to promise me that
Speaker 1: we can do a part two another time, because I
Speaker 1: feel like we just framed who you are and how
Speaker 1: you got there, but I want people to hear about
Speaker 1: what it happened after that, because we're in a really
Speaker 1: beautiful space. So I just want to thank you from
Speaker 1: the bottom of my heart for taking out the time
Speaker 1: for opening up, for being so vulnerable with our community.
Speaker 1: You know, both of us had I'd never have any
Speaker 1: idea what I'm about to do one of these what
Speaker 1: I'm about to learn. And I can honestly say that,
Speaker 1: you know, everything you've shared with me today not only
Speaker 1: has moved me, but I know it's going to move
Speaker 1: my community. So I want to thank you. I appreciate you,
Speaker 1: But I know that you've got a busy schedule, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to be respectful of your attack you and
Speaker 1: We're going to find another time to complete the conversation.
Speaker 1: Let's do that even after I'm back, and we'll schedule it.
Speaker 1: We'll make it happy. Yeah, it's it was really special.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jay, and thank you for no one's really
Speaker 1: asked me those questions before. You know, like when you're
Speaker 1: when you get in a position like this, what sometimes
Speaker 1: happens is like the media creates this narrative around who
Speaker 1: you are. And what I've realized over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years is there's a real gap in the way
Speaker 1: the media has created the story of this overnight success
Speaker 1: and you know all the stuff and you know fashion
Speaker 1: and yeah, just the names as well, like mcginsey the business.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, of course, everyone, yes, every you know, everyone thinks, oh,
Speaker 1: it must have been an absolute dream. Not it has
Speaker 1: been a dream, but it's a you know, dreams come,
Speaker 1: dreams like the experience that I've had, they come with
Speaker 1: a lot of challenge and struggle, and you know it's hard,
Speaker 1: you know, it's really hard. So I'm really grateful that you. Um,
Speaker 1: I didn't know what we're going to talk about either.
Speaker 1: I just sat down and I had no idea what
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss, but I wasn't. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: That was beautiful. Thank you.