Tell us a little about your background and a journey that's brought you to where you are today.

Yes, thank you so much for having me.

And like you said, yes, I was born and raised in Italy and both of my parents are from Bangladesh.

So I grew up my whole life in Italy.

I also have lived for a year in the UK.

I don't know if it's something that I have told you.

And then I've been living in Canada for the past 15 years.

How did that translate for you? So

How can I put it? I think if you could have, like, I don't know, if you could teach every 18-year-old woman three lessons about money, self-worth, and independence, what would those lessons be?

So about money, it would be to basically... to get financial education.

And why am I saying this? It's because I think we go back to the same problem, which is usually women do not tend to learn about financial education at home.

Usually it's the father who takes care of it.

Maybe it's the husband, maybe it's the brother.

It's usually male figure that takes care of the money and women are not taught about independence.

But I always say, as long as you know how to manage your money, invest, save, budget, you can build financial freedom for yourself and you can have options for yourself in terms of like what you want to do.

So tell me a little bit more about this Beyond Borders, stories Beyond Borders.

My parents, they just love moving around.

So we went from the south, we went to the north.

And we went to this place called Vigevano, which I don't think many people know, but it's a very small town.

And we stayed there for three years.

I did my high school there.

Then, again, my parents are like, OK, we need to move.

But why don't you start first with a bit of your journey? Like, how did you end up here in Montreal? And what were those first kind of projects that you ended up starting and being a part of?

So it's been like about 15 years that I moved to Montreal.

And when I moved to Montreal, it started with my journey in university.

So I went to Concordia and I'm saying all the names because you're from Montreal, so I know that we know what we're talking about.

So I went to Concordia and I graduated from a finance degree and right after started to work and I have about 10 years of experience in the financial sector.

And about, I would say, a couple of years ago, that's when I started to realize that I actually wanted to work more on myself.

And I wanted to do things that were more outside of my 9 to 5 job.

Is there any kind of conversations like that, that you're having with them as well?

Can you tell us a bit about that period, how you stayed resilient through it?

Yeah, I would say there's rejections that happen actually twice in my life.

So it was first at the beginning of my career, I...

I'm a fresh graduate, you know, looking for a job, but I was also, you know what, like for me, when it came to my first job, I did apply many different places and I was getting rejected.

And so I was like, you know what, we better find another solution to this.

And I was in university back then and they were having career fairs.

So I would say like, if there is a career fair organized by university, just go to those places and give your resume.

Tell us a bit about your personal branding journey and how you began to define yourself just beyond your job title.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think that sense of belonging, it wasn't because people didn't want me to belong.

It was just me not feeling like you belong.

And so, for instance, like I went to a school where everyone around me was Italian.

So there were not that many immigrant kids and there was no one that looked like me.

Um, there was, um, you know, like maybe I was looking for someone who had parents from a different country and they're born in Italy, someone that I could like open up to, but it was really hard back in the days.

If there's any like major, like, how do I want to this were this themes or takeaways or just things that you've learned from guests in having those stories?

As someone who was born in Italy and grew up in Italy, I grew up in a very South Asian household.

Both of my parents are from Bangladesh, and I was born and raised in Italy.

Growing up, I always felt I was an in-betweener.

I often felt I was an outsider because I grew up in a pre, in a very Italian-dominated environment, so everyone around me was Italian.

There were not that many people that look like me.

There were not that many immigrant, immigrant kids either, so I always felt like I was not in the right place.

Mm-hmm.

The way I grew up had a huge, huge impact about who I'm becoming and who I became so far.

On that note, what did your journey with Toastmasters teach you about finding and owning your voice? And how did those lessons shape the leader and communicator you eventually became?

I would describe my journey with Toastmaster as a journey of transformational growth.

And it really started many years ago.

We're talking about 2019 when I first decided to show up at one of the meetings that they give at Toastmaster.

And they call me upon on stage to give an impromptu speech, which was a disaster if I have to be frankly honest about it.

But upon that mini speech, I decided to show up and come back in the subsequent meetings.

And after that, I always basically challenged myself.

both within individuals and within organizations for women of color to feel not just included, but truly seen, valued and empowered to lead?

Is there a certain space these days where you think people need to be in order to build their brand?

No, I don't think so.

I think it's about finding what's right for you because I think some people, for instance, some people are comfortable being on a camera.

Some people are comfortable just talking, and that could be through a podcast.

Some people are good behind a camera.

That could be through writing.

But you don't need to be in any of these places.

Mm.

What are some of the strategies you found that helped you really discover your identity?

I would say the main one is having open dialogues.

I think what happened with me is that I try to find the right people to talk about this.

Because sometimes when I would talk about the struggle of like fitting in, finding out my identity, like I would speak to many people, but not everyone could relate to me.

And so I became quite aware and quite careful about who I was talking, who I was going, who I was talking to when it came to this issue.

So I would like talk to my friends who had similar experiences, who shared the same struggles.

And they made me realize that carrying two cultures is not a bad thing.

Why is it so important to you to help advance Women in Leadership?

One of my focus is always, were these skills taught to you in school or did you have to learn them along the way? What skills did you learn along the way that they did not teach you in school, but you wish they did?

So a lot of the things I had to learn them along the way, because I think school, they only teach you more from an academic point of view.

It's all about getting a good grade and making sure that you have a high GPA.

And that's pretty much it.

You know, they always focus about getting a degree, getting all this designation completed.

But what taught me about being in finance, what taught me is that you need to build a network, like networking and building connections is so important in the financial world.

Because especially when you get hired, you get hired through references.

What motivates you or what helps you take action?

And I did

my university in English, and now I work in a French environment.

So I feel like that was the first element was, okay, I am using two languages that are not mine to begin with.

It's like they belong to other people.

These two languages are not mine.

So that was the first thing.

And I think the second thing was really to, you know, I was meeting all these people from different cultures, from different countries.

in this journey

So could you just talk to us about the circumstances around how maybe your parents ended up in Italy and just that part of now ending up in Canada and being in this place where you like a third culture? uh woman and this interracial struggle

yeah so basically what happened is uh i am italian bengalis i am italian by birth i'm gali by blood and my parents moved from bangladesh to italy back in the 90s they they're pretty much like immigrants who have moved to italy because they wanted to start a new life to have a better future and so forth and then later on i was born and after my dad tells me i'm the first bengali girl to be born in italy And I do believe in that because I feel like there is no one that is older than me around the community.

It was always me and there were like much younger like kids around me.

And so I feel like I was really the first one, at least in Sicily.

And then I have lived a big chunk of my life in Italy, I would say at least for like 19 years.

And I lived in different parts of it.

Like I lived in the south.

And I'm very curious in terms of how did you experiencing that and now finally coming to have these two platforms, what happened that made you decide, OK, now I want to write a book about this and then further I want to start a podcast about this?

So tell us about earning the CFA and CAIA designations that, you know, shaped your career.

Yeah, I would say for me, getting the CFA was probably my proudest moment.

Like it's something that I do, like I was going to do it no matter what, even though I was not going to use it for my professional career, but it was just my own personal achievement.

I know a lot of people do it for the professional's life, but I had a different objective.

I told myself I'm going to do this no matter what.

And I think I wanted to do it more because I'm a woman and I wanted to, you know, prove that I can do it.

Like often we think about finances, male dominated and You don't see a lot of, you know, you don't see too much of a diversity.

So tell us a little more about your job and, you know, what mindset shifts do you think is essential for functioning in your domain?

Please feel at sorry

...

Montreal, Canada.

And, um, as I like to s- tell people, I am a corporate girl, a proud corporate girl by day.

I do work, uh, and I do have a nine-to-five job.

I'm a finance professional, and it's something that I'm very, very proud of.

But I also have all these different passions.

Yeah.

Can you take our listeners back to not necessarily the beginning beginning, but where things kind of started for you a little bit of, the different countries influencing your journey and how you came to

do the things that you do? So we do have to go to the beginning or we'll be omitting some parts of my story.

I was born and raised in Italy and my parents are from Bangladesh.

And from a very young age, we were always moving around a lot.

I was born in Sicily, then moved to the north of Italy in Went to the UK for a year, came back to Italy and then moved to Canada.

And I am someone who had many houses, many homes, I guess.

I wish like other people I had one place to go back to, but I don't.

So my book,