Showing Up

[Music] You are listening to Suban scripted, Power Enough. [Music] We've all been there. Little ideas we've wanted to bring to life for years. A passion project sitting on the back burner. Never enough time or maybe the pressure to make it perfect kept getting in the way. Well, you know what I'm talking about. This is me finally putting myself out there. Because there is a power in all of us that keeps nudging, keeps pushing until we finally show up. This is me showing up. Yes, welcome to Suba unscripted. My name is Suba as the name suggests and I can't wait to give you a glimpse into my world. And the people who inspire me, who give me the energy to navigate this complicated moment we're all living through. Over the past two decades, working in international development and philanthropy and even before, I've met countless people whose life stories have never stopped fascinating me. But before I bring you into their worlds, I imagine you want to get to know mine first. I was born in Sri Lanka. I grew up in Switzerland in the beautiful city of Bern. I was two years old when we fled the country. I have essentially no memory of us leaving. I am a refugee child. Yes, I am a refugee child. I say that clearly and openly, not for sympathy, but because it is the first fact of my story and it shaped everything that came after. The way I move through the world, the way I listen, the way I have always had to translate, not just language, but whole worlds and something I was not always proud of, sadly. Which is also part of why I am here today. This podcast is as much about my own becoming as it is about the people I'll bring to you. There's something that gets created in the in-between. When you live in-between cultures, you're neither one thing nor the other. But something entirely new gets formed in that space. A different way of seeing, a different way of belonging, that wasn't a concept to me. That was my whole childhood. I am a third cultured child. My memory is mostly me trying to figure out, where do I belong? In Switzerland, I was the Tamil girl. Back in Sri Lanka, I was the Swiss one. Never quite enough of either. And for a very long time, I thought that was a fracture. It took me years to understand it was actually a gift. Growing up between cultures means you are permanently a little bit lost. And if you can't laugh at that, you won't survive it. I showed up to Swiss events with food that needed a 10 minute explanation before anyone would try it. I code-switch so naturally that I sometimes forgot which version of myself was in the room. That still happens. The ability to move between context to hold complexity without falling apart for people like me, that's not something you learn. It's something you're made of. My parents, meanwhile, had their own very clear vision of who I should be. You know, South Asian parents, with all the cultural expectations that come with that. Be educated, be successful, but not too successful that no one wants to marry you, or date you. Be respectable, be the version of achievement that justifies the sacrifice of leaving everything behind. And above all, know how a girl should behave. And they weren't always wrong. They had built something extraordinary. They had fled a war. Landed somewhere they didn't speak the language, and quietly, stubbornly, made a life. They didn't have the luxury of failing or falling apart. I didn't really understand that back then. But here is something I want to talk about on this podcast, because I think it matters deeply right now. Mental health. For my parents' generation, and for many communities across the world, it simply didn't exist as a concept. You didn't name your anxiety. Who would do that, right? You didn't ask for help. You carried it. You got up. You got on with it. That was the deal. When I started my own inner journey, I became a kind of cultural translator for my parents. I had to find the words to explain what was happening inside me in a language that could reach them, not just linguistically, but emotionally and culturally. I had to build a bridge between their world and mine in real time while standing on it. And you know what? They came. They came on that journey with me. That to me is one of the most courageous things I have ever witnessed. I see young people today across the communities I have worked in, carrying so much, a generation that is switched on globally aware, holding the weight of every crisis in real time. Many families are being asked to make some, make some crossing, or the same similar crossing, like we did, between what they were taught to carry alone, and what their children need them to understand. It matters. We will talk about it on my podcast. I'm not only a leader in this space, I am also a mother, and figuring out how to hold all of those identities at once, without dropping one of them is something I'm still working on. I don't have a clean answer, but I have stories, and I have learned a great deal from the women around me who are doing the same thing. Much better. So many of the most remarkable people I have worked alongside are women. Women leading in systems that were unfortunately not designed to support them, and what I see from them is how they are refusing to be exhausted, not because they are superhuman, but because they have found something most institutions haven't. That power doesn't always look like authority. Power doesn't just sit at the top of a hierarchy. It circulates. It lives in everyday relationships, in quite acts of courage. In the decision to stay in a room that wasn't built for you. I have watched that play out in villages in boardrooms alike. Sometimes power looks like endurance. Sometimes it looks like walking into a room, no one ever expected you to enter, and simply not leaving. That's the power in us at the heart of this podcast. I have seen time and time again how much power we hold to change society, to shift mindsets if we believe in it. How do we turn our vulnerabilities, our fractures, or in between places into strength? Having grown up with multiple identities, I spent years trying to merge them. What I found was that the experience gave me something invaluable. The ability to read a room across cultures, to find the human underneath the context, to be curious rather than threatened by difference, and to be a bridge builder. Identity I've come to understand is never fixed. It's always being negotiated, always in motion. And that's not a weakness. That's where the richness lives. And here's something I keep coming back to. Everyone in some way is the other somewhere. Maybe it's culture, maybe it's background, maybe it's the family you were born into versus the person you became. The feeling of not quite fitting most of us know it. The question is whether you let it diminish you, or whether you make it your own strength. I know which one I chose eventually. Having worked in communities navigating enormous change, sitting with local leaders, grassroots change makers, mothers, fathers, teachers, government officials across different places, Africa, Asia, South America, the Middle East. What I keep finding is that change ultimately comes down to understanding and dialogue. Deep listening isn't just a skill, it's a way of being. Not listening to respond but listening to truly understand what someone is carrying, who they really are beneath the context. Because most of us we actually listen to respond and that's not a great thing. That distinction to understand the context changes everything. We often listen to respond. Rarely do we listen to truly understand and that gap between hearing, words and genuinely receiving a person is where so much breaks down in communities, in families, in organizations. When I first became a CEO, that was what struck me most. How valuable it is to simply spend time with your team. At first I kept thinking I was just talking to people. I'm spending so much time on this that I should be more productive doing other things or actual work. With time I understood the people are the most important part of my work and the most important part of my role. The most important part has always been people. The people I have worked with in communities, most of them without formal power, commanded a room. They had conviction. They had the ability to bridge across divides. I often wondered what is it that they have this ability to speak to different people. I hope to bring some of those answers to you through this podcast. This ability to bridge across divides. Coming back to why now. Why now a podcast? The world I work in and my upbringing with the war in my native country as a constant backdrop has always been somewhat uncertain. But something about this particular moment feels different. More fragile. What kind of leadership are we role modeling for the next generation? Hopelessness is at its height. Humanitarian and development budgets are being cut while security budgets are rising and conflicts are rising. Wars are rising. Have we learned anything from our histories? A lot of people I know intelligent, caring, engaged people. Many of whom you'll meet in my conversations. Feel something between rage and helplessness. Problems are too big. The climate crisis is real and urgent. Inequality is among the top risks of world faces. It can feel like individual action is a joke. But I cannot reconcile that with what I have seen. Because I have seen a single individual spark something a hundred policies couldn't change doesn't always begin with systems. It begins with people. I have sat in rooms where one person's courage gave others permission to be courageous. I have watched transformation begin with someone who simply chose to do the right thing in a moment when it would have been much easier not to. To young people especially who feel hopeless if this podcast has a mission it is to transmit hope to show the power in us what the power is capable of. So why a podcast? Because I want to have these conversations out loud. I have been having them in offices in communities at airports, schools, on trains for more than 20 years. It's time they had a bigger room and honestly I should stop having them only in my head. It's a form of therapy too. And why me? I'm still working that one out. I didn't have all the answers. Something I learned as a CEO never aspired to have all the answers. I am simply someone who has lived and worked between worlds her whole life. Been shaped by that and who is genuinely endlessly curious about what makes people tick. What makes embrace or scared or both at the same time. And why now? Because I got tired of waiting until I was ready. Readiness I have learned is mostly a story we tell ourselves we tell ourselves to stay comfortable. This podcast will be messy and personal and I have a responsibility to honor the authentic stories of the people who share them with me. The show is called unscripted for a reason. I'll have solar reflection episodes like this one and conversations with people who embodied the idea of powering us in very different ways. I'll evolve it with you with your feedback. I don't know exactly what this podcast will look like in a few months and that's okay and I'm also here for the for the learning. If any of this resonates, if you felt between worlds or felt the weight of a problem too big to handle or met someone who's quite courage stayed with you then this show is for you. Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast shared with someone who needs it. I'm super this is super unscripted power in us and we are just getting started.