Sakshi Bansal, Delegate @ United Nations

Sakshi, welcome to the podcast. If you could just start off by telling us a little bit about your career so far.

My career, I call it a squiggly career. I think it's a word that fits really well for whatever it has been. But I started my career, I think, at the age of 16 when I was still in India growing up, and I started with a tech startup in artificial intelligence. We were providing AI-based solutions to hospitality industry. Very, very badly run business, a bunch of 16-year-olds driving around in the back of dad's car trying to sell AI products at that time, you know, when AI wasn't the cool thing to businesses. But we were doing well for ourselves. We ran it for 2 years. And parallel to the startup, I also started my project, a social service project called Project Leap. We were providing equal education to 1,600 underprivileged families. I've got 300 volunteers. I still run it. It's probably the most important thing that I do in my life. And I was studying to be a psychologist, an organizational psychologist. In 2018, sold the startup, moved to the UK, did my master's degree in psychology again, and started working in leadership development, consulting. Moved into ESG. And currently I work with an organization here in London, and I work with private equity markets, and I try to assess their human factors due diligence and their ESG and social due diligence, which is big words for saying, how can we make sure they're making the right investments behind the right things? And I do a bit of things here and there, you know, still work with the charity mentor students, international students, do a couple of startup gigs. Yeah.

Yeah, we'll focus in on all of them throughout the episode, but I want to start off with that pivotal moment where you moved to the UK, because for this episode, I think there'll be a lot of people wondering. So you went to New Delhi University, or University of Delhi. Yes. And then you came over to the UK and You go back into education again there at Nottingham, or did you go straight into work? How was that whole adjustment period?

Was it— I mean, I came as a— I think I was 20 to University of Nottingham to do my master's degree, and I thought I'll be brilliant, you know. I thought I've been so independent my whole life, I've been traveling alone since I was really young, and I've always wanted to live away from home, so I thought I'll be fine. It was probably the hardest year of my life because first, the UK weather, not so great. The food, sorry, but not so great. Had to adjust to the education system, had to adjust to this UK structure, you know, had to figure out how to deal with British people as well that nobody really prepares you for. So you're so excited as a young person to kind of come into this new country and you feel that you're there and you're prepared, but you're really, really not. So I think it was really difficult at that time to adjust. I think it's actually taken me a few years to adjust, not just a year.

Yeah, the most important thing there is that you sort of overcame those initial hardships, and you've really built an incredible career off maybe a difficult start and that adjustment. What's some actual practical advice that you could give to to any international students listening in terms of, do they have to know why they're going to the UK first to go there, or can they, you know, have they, can they start, you know, sort of go to the UK not really knowing what they want to do and build a career off that?

I think it's an interesting question. I think you can, you can be like, oh, I don't know what I want to do, but I think you need to be sure of why you want to do it in the UK, because every day being here is a sacrifice of not being with your family, not being with your friends, not being in an environment that you know so well intrinsically. And so I think knowing why you want to be in the UK and the purpose that fuels you really helps you navigate. You can absolutely be unaware of what you want to do, that's fine. Like, you could be unaware in your own country as well of what to do, that's okay. But knowing why you want to do it in the UK, I think that's quite important.

Yeah, and in the UK, one of the most difficult things for international students and that relationship with getting a job is companies say, "Oh, we won't take international students on because it's too expensive," and, you know, sponsorship and everything like that. I've heard a lot of mixed opinions on this, and I've recently found that it's not really true that it's expensive. It's not as expensive as people think. Correct. What are your opinions on that whole sponsorship, uh, problem?

I think so. I actually— there's a very funny story. I— when I first applied for my job, it was my first job out of graduation from my master's degree. And obviously, you know, I had a big Excel, 150 jobs that I'd applied to, 150 jobs literally, and very few came back. And the ones that came back said that, you know, can't sponsor visa. So I applied for this organization that I worked for at that time thinking, "Ah, I'm just applying, you know, I don't really want the job, I don't really care about it." And I got the job, and then after getting the job they realized that I'm international, so somehow they missed that in my application. But then they liked me so much that they got a license to then be able to sponsor me. So it's not that they even had to think about sponsoring me, they didn't even have the license to sponsor me. And during that period it was really stressful because uni had ended I thought I had a job, but I didn't quite have a job. And so I started scrambling around for answers and I went to a lawyer in the UK. I literally found them on LinkedIn and I said, can you just, you know, just give me some general guidance? What is the process? What does the HR person have to do to get the license and then to sponsor me? And so they walked me through the process and I took that document and my notes, my literal scribbled notes, to the company and said, it's not that hard, you should be able to do it, and this is how much it's going to cost you, and I promise I'll be really good. And then they did that, you know. So I think, I think organizations, one, are, you know, they, they don't invest time to understand the process. They just think it's, you know, it's difficult. It's really not. And I think they're missing out on so much incredible talent. UK is known as one of the best destinations for people to come abroad and study. Why would we waste that? You know, it's insane to me that they would want to waste that.

Yeah, I think the reason why you got that job in the end and maybe others didn't is that persistence, you know. And, you know, I want to— maybe it's a bit of an existential question, but do you think that obviously that shows you're a top candidate if you're putting that persistence in, but it shouldn't be that hard, right? It's like to uncover that talent, there are people maybe not as confident as you but equally it's good at the job. So what would be your advice to someone maybe who's not like yourself in terms of overcoming those fears of not just taking no as an answer? What do they do?

I think it starts really early on of knowing your worth, right? And that is part of knowing why you want to be in the UK. I think sometimes people forget that our career isn't the next 1 year or 2 years of our life. Our careers are the next 100 hopefully, or 40 or 50 years of our lives. And I know that students tend to focus on that one job, on that one answer, thinking that it can make or break their career. I think there are very, very few instances in our life that can break our careers, right? And so thinking about the 40 years and saying, actually, if I don't get this job, how can I still create a career for myself that I value? and it doesn't have to be in the UK, and it doesn't matter if it's in the UK. So I think one is that, is recognising that it's a long career and you need to take steps for the long career, not for the short term. And I think the second is understanding the value of yourself as a human being, as a graduate. A lot of the students that I talk to think that reaching out to people or talking to people makes them feel like they're a liability. But they're not a liability. For any organization, young blood is the biggest asset. People want to hear what they have been thinking about, how they're tackling issues, what their skills are. So I think seeing yourself as an asset than a liability and that change in mindset when you approach people or when you talk to people or the way you present yourself is quite important. And I think third is— I can understand not everybody it took me a long time to be confident, is we aren't always born with it, and the systems shouldn't be like that. Is, you know, doing something like you're doing, you know, like taking the time to understand the network and the system and what's— what works for you and what doesn't work for you. I think that's really important. So just taking the time.

Yeah, I should go back to something you said earlier about those people that you, you teach and those students that— that's part of your, your charity, right? Project Lead.

Correct.

And, um, you've got a very busy life if you look at your LinkedIn and just from having a chat beforehand, whether it's public speaking, you know, going on podcasts, or just doing your 9-to-5 job, which is a massive stress and pressure itself, I'm sure. But why do you think it's so important to keep on mentoring even with all this increased workload?

I learn so much from the students. I remember, I mean, it's not very long ago that I was a graduate myself, you know, and the things I wanted to do, I always felt like nobody else has done them. You know, there was a specific thing I wanted to do, which was social innovation in psychology, and I wanted to push the boundaries of psychology and how we apply ourselves right from the get-go. And I never found people like myself, so it was very hard for me to find mentors who I could respect or who I could see myself in, or just purely, simply speaking, who I thought were good enough to mentor me. And, and honestly, I don't think a lot of people took out the time to look at international students and their journeys and really understand the full scope, right? Everybody knows that international students find it hard to find a job in the UK, but nobody tries to go to the second layer. Why is that? You know, What is the cultural angle of it? What is the heritage angle of it? What is the historical, political, geographical angle of that? So I think having somebody to take the pain to ask you those questions and put things into perspective, I would have loved that. I didn't have it. I'm just trying to be there. And very selfishly, I just learn a lot from, from students. It's just another way to understand what's really going on in the world.

On the topic of doing, wanting to do something that maybe didn't exist, I'd say what you're doing right now in the ESG space, that probably wasn't really as, well, at least as prominent a career path back when you was doing your studies. Why is ESG important to you? And, you know, as it is a relatively new industry, people might not even know how to apply for jobs in that space, like, or climate jobs general. Yeah, so why is it so important to you, and how would people even get into that industry?

I think so the fundamental difference between ESG and anything else with sustainability is everything else is once you have made your money, how do you use your money, right? Do you put that into charitable causes? Do you put that into corporate social responsibility? Do you put that back with the people, with the public? ESG is fundamentally how do you make the money in in the first place. That changes the game, you know. If I could tell you that it is not about how you spend the $10 you have, but it's how about you made the $10 in the first place, that's me trying to make a systemic change in the world, in how exploitative we are with the planet and with the resources, and what is our boundary of exploitation. So I think that is why ESG is so important, is the fundamental concept is very systemic, deep-rooted in the boundaries of exploitation and risk and putting the risk where the money is. And if you can change the money and follow the money, you can make actual change in the world. So one part of your question is that I think is that's why it's important. I think the second part of that is how to get involved. I think for the longest time, and we have seen this in tech, right, in AI, it was all engineers involved and all businessmen involved. And we saw what happened, right, with AI being misused for hiring practices, organizations being sued for hiring with a lot of bias because AI wasn't built in collaboration with psychologists and anthropologists and economists and young people and public. It was just built by people who understood the tech. And we are seeing the same thing with sustainability is there's a lot of environmental experts, there's a lot of economists and policymakers involved. Not enough psychologists, anthropologists involved. And what that will do is make this field, one, very closed off to the people that it is trying to help, and two, it will make it very one-sided. There's dangers of it being biased, there's dangers of it being not holistic. So I think it's exactly that, is knowing what your field can do for the planet is fundamental to every job at the moment. Even though I'm a psychologist and the way we traditionally applied ourselves was for people in the workplace, we need to think about— but those people exist in a planet that is dying. So how do I alleviate my game? It's as simple as that. So I think thinking about how do you alleviate your game, how do you apply what you've learned at uni or in your job to say How does it align to the Sustainable Development Goals, which is the pin that I'm wearing there, the SDG pin? What, what are the SDGs that I care about? How will my work add to it? I think once you figure that out, you don't have to figure it out 100%, but once you know how you want to apply yourself, going with that to organizations and saying, this is how I want to push the boundaries, I think people are willing to listen to that.

Yeah, something I've been thinking about a lot recently is you've got to make a first step into some sort of career path, right, straight out of university. As a recent graduate, you know, I'm still thinking about exactly what I'm going to spend my time on, looking at what's a great day for me to have as a career sense. And when you pick something, how do you not lose sight of— because there's so many important careers and jobs, and you never know how useful you could be to the I mean, to me, that's where I think the value of networking comes into things, you know, constantly speaking to the right people that can challenge your thought process and the way you think. But also just like, you know, when you're sat at home, maybe after work, how do you keep yourself excited and aware of the other developing industries that are going to be so important for the future of our world?

I think you're absolutely right, a lot of that is networking and My network keeps me motivated. They remind me of my own purpose and my own vision that I've started with. I think the second important thing is looking at your career not as one into the other into the other. So it's not linear, it's not one after the other. It's almost very cyclic in nature. It's about connecting different dots, right? So I come off my 9-to-5 job and then I get into doing my charity work, and then I get into doing my foundation work, and then I get into doing my startup work. But what I've learned in, in the last few years is what I'm trying to really do is find connecting golden threads in all of these. And that keeps me going because there's a connecting umbrella for me in terms of my purpose. And all the different things I do are just a manifestation of that bigger purpose, that bigger thread. Um, just to bring that to life, my bigger goal is is social impact using the power of psychology. Now, every year the way it manifests itself changes. You know, some year I'm campaigning for C-suite titles in psychology, other years it's about getting psychologists involved in ESG, another year it is about young people and inclusion at work. So it changes every year, but the golden thread exists and it persists, and that really keeps me motivated. And I think it also helps me not look at my career as broken parts of big thing. It's almost like small parts of a big picture.

Yeah, I think social impact and also semi-related, the topic of social mobility, it's a weird one because I'd say the government probably cares about what it's doing less to help that cause right now, but startups are, you know, amazing startups being born in that space and they're disrupting disruptive by nature, and they're actually— there's less red tape, it's more streamlined, and things are really getting done in that space. And I'm sure you're a big part in that. What, what do you think has to be done to keep improving, at least in the UK, that sort of just generally social impact and social mobility in the face of a dysfunctioning government, let's say?

Do you mean what the government can do better?

I just think, what do you think the world could do better? Like, how can people at a younger age start thinking about how they could contribute to the cause, be it, you know, politically or in a business sense, who they can work for, how they can work with them?

Well, I think young people, they don't have a choice, you know. They are going to be contributing, and they are contributing already just by being on this planet, every action that we take is contributing to social mobility, to history, to sustainability, to the larger issues. So I don't think anybody has a choice in whether they get to contribute or not. I think every action that people do is contributing. Good or bad is up to them. And I think that's exactly that, is it's understanding the accountability that every person has, even as a young person or as, you know, somebody who's retired. That they have equal amount of accountability when it comes to larger issues. I think the one thing that we could do better is helping young people see their lives as more purpose-led. And I don't mean that people have to write it on a paper that this is my purpose and stick to it. Absolutely not. Purposes change, interests change, let them change. But I think leading a life that is a bit more Here is a cause that I deeply care about. You know, maybe it is born out of personal circumstances or things that you've observed, but having a life that is purpose-led, that I want to do something for this cause, for this issue, I think that really becomes a strong anchor for your life that helps you navigate different situations. And then it doesn't matter if you're a young person or an old person. Or a mid-age person. It just matters what you're there trying to do and trying to alleviate. And so I think we could do a bit better job in helping each other find our purposes and allowing each other to work towards a purpose-led life. And I think the second thing is honestly decency. Like you would think that people are just decent human beings, but they really, really aren't. —whether it's the public sector, private sector, even startups, you know. I think indecency exists. It's very blatant. And there is different kind of isms that we face in the world right now. You know, there's ageism, there's youngism, which is ageism towards young people. You know, you sprinkle a little bit of racism and you add a bit of sexism to that, and you've got a population, a huge part of the population that suddenly is just facing too many types of isms, right? And they either quit the work or whatever they are doing, which is huge economic implication, or even worse, they become the perpetuators of that ism later on.

And so I think decency and respect, showing that, I think it's such an obvious thing to say, but you know, I don't think anything you said there is necessarily obvious, and I think it's stuff that needs to be said that probably enough light is not being shone on. I want to pick up on that word accountability, right, and maybe look at it in a different sense. For me, it's probably one of the most important things to have someone hold you to account, to be someone that holds other people to account, because let's apply it as a student, you know, maybe take you back to your time as a student. You go from a very regimented school structure your whole life, and then you're put into university with, you know, different social life, and there's alcohol, there's, you know, no teachers telling you, "Oh, you're an idiot for not submitting this." You're completely on your own, and you're not even with your parents who would hold you to account. And then, you know, and throughout your life I'm already experiencing, you go through different phases, and maybe you have a boss who holds you to account really well and has these goals that they set you, or maybe you do a trip into entrepreneurship, and everyone's got a different relationship with it. What's your sort of relationship with holding yourself to account? I mean, you've got so many different deadlines and goals you've got to meet for yourself, for other people. Yeah, that's something you really must think about, how you manage it, a lot.

I think accountability is an interesting thing. To be completely candid, The really truly thing that I care about on this planet is to travel. As long as I'm traveling, I'm enjoying my life and it's giving me perspective. You know, I've been traveling alone since I was really young, and meeting strangers and traveling alone and experiencing life that way is really, really important to me. It tells me how small some of the daily mundane issues are and how big the world is. It's, it's gonna be slightly weird to hear, but that keeps me accountable, you know. The ability to travel and to experience the world in the way I want to experience it, and then to come back to my general life and to kind of say, actually, gotta get this shit done, you know. This, this is, this is it. This is how I— everything that I've learned from my travels, this is how I put it into place and into practice and this is what I'm giving out to the world, this will be my legacy, this is what people will remember me for— that's accountability enough for me, you know. And I think everybody will have their own way of enjoying life. How do you enjoy life is very, very important to then be able to hold yourself accountable. You can't just be on your high horse 24/7 trying to, you know, do everything. You have to find ways in which you experience and enjoy life. And that, I think holds you accountable more than people realize. It's not a way out, it's a way in, is what I always say.

Yeah, I mean, that's fascinating to listen to, especially someone who's, I guess, slightly carving out a, uh, you know, it's not a well-trodden path, exactly what I'm doing. In fact, I couldn't even pinpoint, you know, I couldn't put a label on any part of what I do. But, um, yeah, it's made me think a little bit about whether I'm being naive to think that you can live a life like that when so many people surrounded by you are like, no, you just, you do this job for 5 years, you get the paycheck, you maybe take a sabbatical at most, or you just work until you— like, it doesn't sound— it doesn't excite me, that, that life, that, like, career. And it also doesn't feel like the ambition within those career paths is even capped, do you know what I mean? Like, you know, that progression even within the company is difficult. So I mean, not everybody can obviously have the same mindset and attitude, or, you know, a lot of jobs wouldn't get done. But I guess it's a sort of chicken and the egg situation. If you really want something that bad, you're going to try and carve that out for your career. I mean, how were you like, your first steps of— I mean, if you knew that that traveling and everything was what makes you happy, and you literally do work a very physical corporate job. How are you making sure you can still do that then, like, practically?

I, I literally carve that life out, you know. So, so very practically speaking, you get limited amount of annual leave in a year. 10th December is the most important date of my whole year. 10th December, I don't speak to anybody. I literally sit down with my laptop and I book my whole year out, literally. And I use my annual leave in that way. And, you know, I, I always thought I would never do this Like, I was such a spontaneous traveler when I was back in India. I would sit on the train, didn't even know where the train is going, and then figure things out. Like, had a backpack on me constantly. I never thought I would be this kind of a person, but I— if I want to be a traveler in the UK, living in the UK, that's what I need to do, and that's what I'll do. 10th December, don't talk to me. I'm going to be booking my whole year out, and I'm used to leaves to maximum. I figure out a way to go to conferences and places that I wanna travel to. I figure out a way in which people can pay me for my speaking gigs in those conferences, so a little bit of that travel is covered. That's how I do it. And I think it's possible. I love that you said that everything that you're doing, you can't even put a label to because it doesn't exist, right? Like, there is no umbrella within which it sits. And I felt like that a lot of times as well. And I think it's no longer the case where we have to make a decision between our passions and our interests and what pays the bills and what's just for fun. I think people can do those things together. I'm not saying that everybody should, you know, leave corporate jobs and become an influencer. I'm saying that even with, with whatever jobs you have and whatever niche you carve out for yourself, you can still build a life you enjoy.

You mentioned youngism, right, as just one of the many isms. But there's another way of looking at it, maybe, is that you aren't rewarded for loyalty to a company as much anymore. There's a lot of like jumping from one company to the others. Which one do you think it really is? Because I'm, you know, I don't know what exactly what journey I'm going to take and if I'm going to join a company, if I'm not, and I guess that's the novelty of this podcast, is someone who's generally young and is documenting their whole journey through the unknown. Yeah, as someone who's semi been there and done that, you've tried a lot of different things. How do you know when it's right, the right time to move on to the next step in your career?

Wow, I think you just— it's like, how do you know it's the right person for you to spend the lifetime with? You just know. And it's such a vague answer, but a lot of the times when I felt like it's time to move on is either I have saturated what I could learn from that place or that they have really exhausted and tired me out and I'm not experiencing life and enjoying life anymore. It's always been one of those. And I think it's in all of this, it's really a high regard for your own self, right? I regard my brain and my brain cells very highly and I don't do anything that comes at the cost of my brain cells dying. And so if you are experiencing a system or a situation where your brain cells are crying for help, where they are not learning, where they're rotting away, or where you know that progression isn't possible, succession isn't possible, success isn't possible, then you leave. And it's absolutely— your body tells you that. I mean, in all honesty as well, doing this much work and doing it so early on also takes a toll on your body physically, right? I started to develop like stress rashes at one point and I realized actually my body isn't enjoying this anymore. And so I have to highly regard my brain cells and my body and leave. And that's it. That's what you do.

Final question, see. What is your definition of success?

Ooh, um, traveling the world, pushing the boundaries of psychology. That's it. Great.