On the value of dharma and creating an equitable world

My earliest reflections come from my parents. I grew up in South Africa and was born into racial segregation which meant it was legal to divide four races geographically and across systems. Our whole life was defined across racial lines - where we lived and worked, what healthcare system we accessed, and the level of employment or education we had. There were legal ramifications of going to a park or piece of beach that wasn't designated for your race so you can imagine how restrictive that felt. But within all that complexity and hurt, my parents cultivated a strong community focus and were both leaders in our segregated Indian community.

My father taught us a very simple value – dharma Most people understand karma, which is the concept of rebirth and rejuvenation, but dharma is the other part of the equation, and it means ‘giving to others.’ We grew up believing that if we did our dharma every day, we would have a better afterlife, a better karma.

Every night at the dinner table my father would ask us, “What dharma did you do today?” When I was younger, my answer would be helping my mother or grandmother, but he’d always check if they asked me for help or if I saw that they needed something and made the offer out of kindness? He taught us that you feel better when you give rather than when you only receive. That sense of giving and generosity was hardwired, and now I ask my three children the question, “what did you do for someone today?”

I’m driven by the inequity and unfairness that exists. For me, giving is not just the act of physical giving; it’s also about giving your time or a piece of knowledge. But it all begins with a giving or generous mindset, because that is what helps you to do it consistently.

My work is to help organisations harness the benefits of greater diversity, equity and inclusion, so if I don't give my knowledge and research, and if I don't highlight where the inequity or exclusion exists, then people won't see the problem and I'll lose the battle to instigate change. That generous mindset is also a solution-focused mindset, and that’s what keeps me going in the face of obstacles.

I give with real deliberation and a focus. I understand what the issues are and I'm always giving towards very targeted, positive change. I believe that it’s important to have evidence around what the needs are, because without it I might give things that won’t progress anything – and then my giving might not feel worth it.

The kickback of giving is knowing that it made a tangible difference; that’s what will drive me until my last day. When people ask me how much longer I will do this work, my answer is that I’ll stop when inequality is no longer there. We have a long way to go, and I need to keep finding the drive to continue solving this problem.

I give through knowledge and expertise, and I use that to cause a scalable influence in other people. I guess you could label it as collective giving – I think this idea of harnessing the power of the collective comes from watching my parents build community and witnessing the scalable impact of that. If I can get a board or an executive team to make decisions from a generosity or giving mindset instead of focusing on all the obstacles, then I can make a scalable difference to that workforce.

I also have been a Plan International Ambassador and through the business we’ve given 10% of our revenue directly to projects that are addressing girls’ education and equality. The tight commercial environment during and post covid meant that we couldn’t continuously give to Plan International, but our co-founder gives his time on a strategic board committee, and we are forever champions. What I do have is knowledge, expertise and targeted ways of thinking about the right research to do, the right question to ask, and how to crowdsource collective impact from people who have access to money. I call it ‘equity spending’ because if I can help redirect those investments to the right things at the right time, then we can really make a scalable change.

As a behavioural psychologist and qualitative researcher, I've interviewed many women over the years who have come to Australia as skilled migrants or international students. They’re highly educated, often underemployed in their roles and they have this real drive to contribute. But at the same time there’s a conflicting sense of what they need to do for themselves.

Culturally speaking, as a migrant woman, there's generally a low prioritisation of self. There’s a lot of competing priorities in a dual income family and a lot of it ends up on the woman's plate, especially in the zero to five and then the five to 10 years of growing a career while stabilising the household and children.

Giving starts when women have more head space to think about where they can make an impact and how they can contribute. It's important to recognise that for many women, there's a lot of guilt around not doing enough. Professionally, you'll find that most culturally diverse women are stuck between how much they study and focus on their careers versus how much they give and when to do that.

There's also a behavioural component around asking for support because there’s a power struggle between what you deserve to get as a migrant and what's appropriate to ask of someone to give. In my years of coaching of migrant women, the first hurdle is to get them over the hesitancy to ask for help. And once they understand they, they start scaling their impact faster.

Most of my support is strategic because these women are still time poor. Many of them are dealing with competing priorities while pivoting towards that senior to executive leadership trajectory within their careers. I advise them not to worry about being selfish in that journey to get to the executive table because it's about protecting that seat at that table. First you have to get there and then you can create strategic, scalable giving on much a broader scale.

In general, a lot of women who give, become fatigued and in some cases, it can become chronic. If your giving is focused towards an area like gender equality, it's a long marathon; you rarely see any impact immediately and that can be emotionally and physically draining.

I believe that you have to be in the mode of self-leadership. I'm very reflective and evaluative of my own giving and assess it every quarter - how much am I doing, is it going in the right direction and is it returning the good that I need it to? You have to constantly ask yourself if you have enough left to keep going - do you need a pause from giving? Can you redirect it more strategically? 

I've had moments where I've collapsed from fatigue, so this has been a core learning for me. We all need to be real about what it takes to keep fuelling that jet because giving can be overwhelming, and you need to stay mindful about the toll that it’s taking.

I’ve owned and run our business for 13 years. In the beginning, I was heavily involved in giving directly to culturally diverse women, but I couldn't sustain a one-on-one approach. I scaled it to a moderate level where I was running a masterclass within the Monash Business School which the led to designing a larger program– but it was still too emotionally draining. That’s when I shifted to addressing the system and engaging senior leaders to do the work with me. And now I can see that my giving is causing a very scalable impact because I can measure it, and it's improving year on year.

My ambition is to create better collaborations with people who are values-aligned and can help scale the impact of our giving. We have launched Mindtribes in Vietnam are looking to expand to Indonesia and Malaysia. We want to grow our impact in the southeast Asian region and really look at gender equality across those countries, especially in rising Asian superpowers.

We’ve got education partners who will do the research components, and this means that more people can become part of that change. Here at home in Australia we have strategic partnerships with talent firms like Michael Page; The University of Melbourne, Deakin University and Pola Practice to extend our reach and impact. We are intending to run the first professional, business awards, “The Business in Colour Awards”, named after our podcast in 2025 – we are doing this again to crowd source a community of business leaders to showcase what good looks like when you go beyond gender. These Awards are to recognise the leaders who sponsored and activated change for anti-racism efforts in their organisations. A coalition of the willing and good. I believe that we can do more good when we work together. And it’s important to build a community of ethical thinkers and doers around you because that’s what will sustain your giving and keep you moving forward. The load is less heavy when you do and the legacy of giving becomes shared.