In this International Women’s Day talk, entrepreneur Riddhi Vishwanathan shares her personal journey of confronting the underrepresentation of migrant and international students in UK university leadership. She recounts how, five years ago, she ran for and became the first full‑time International Students Officer and served as Diversity Officer at the University of Manchester, paving the way for more international students to attain senior roles. Leveraging this experience, she founded Generation Purple, a startup supported by the Masood Enterprise Centre, dedicated to improving access to corporate workplaces for marginalized student groups—including women, BAME, LGBTQ+, disabled, and low‑socioeconomic students—while educating employers on inclusive practices. She links her work to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and calls on the audience to support the mission and continue challenging inequality.
Chapters
Hello everyone, I'm Riddhi Vishwanathan, an entrepreneur building my startup Generation Purple, which is supported by the Masood Enterprise Centre at the University of Manchester. I'm also an active advocate for inclusion. Firstly, here's wishing everyone a very happy International Women's Day. This year's theme is Choose to Challenge, and I'm compelled to think about the first time I chose to challenge to bring about a major change, which was 5 years ago when I chose to challenge the underrepresentation of migrants in university terms, international students being elected to leadership positions at my university. I chose to challenge by contesting in the elections myself and being elected as the first full-time international International Students Officer at Manchester and also serving the University of Manchester as the Diversity Officer. Today I am proud that a number of international students, not just at Manchester but at various universities in the UK, are increasingly being elected to senior leadership positions. Serving as a Diversity Officer at Manchester Students Union alerted me to the fact that the problem of inequality and underrepresentation was much wider than I could imagine. Through my own little way, I decided to undertake the challenge of reducing inequalities in the society, which has also been recognized by the United Nations as a Sustainable Development Goal. Through my startup, Generation Purple, in our own little way, We are addressing the underrepresentation of marginalized student communities in corporate workplaces. We at Generation Purple are on a mission to make corporate workplaces accessible to every marginalized student community in the UK, such as women, students from the BAME, the Black Asian Minority Ethnic background, students from the LGBTQ+ background, disabled students, and students from lower socioeconomic background, while also continuously educating employers to adopt more inclusive practices. This Women's Day, I request you all to further support us on our mission and challenge the inequalities to bring about a positive change. Thank you.
