In this episode I’m talking to Nisha Anand, CEO of Dream Corps, working to “close prison doors and open doors of opportunity.” Her journey from punk rock protester to common ground champion is documented in her TEDx talk, The Radical Act of Choosing Common Ground.
Reaching across the aisle doesn’t mean forgetting who you are or your values —in fact, the opposite is true. When collaborating with people who don’t share your core beliefs, it is more important than ever to lead with who you are to arrive at your desired outcome.
Nisha is a grassroots activist and was arrested in Burma for passing out pro-democracy leaflets. She's got expansive organizing experience, and her work has solidified her belief in the power of working with unlikely partners to find real solutions. Her journey from punk rock protester to common ground champion is documented in her TEDx talk The Radical Act of Choosing Common Ground.
For show notes visit diabondi.com/podcast
Dia Bondi00:18
Hey, this is Lead With Who You Are. I'm Dia Bondi. And on this show, we explore and discover what it truly means to lead with who you are. And we're doing it with people who embody just that. In this episode, we're talking with Nisha Anand about what it means to lead with who you are, as you reach across the table to work with unlikely and surprising allies in order to produce outcomes that work for the both of you. I'm having this conversation, because I recognize how easy it is to avoid working with someone you can't even ever imagine collaborating with, because it can feel like a threat to your identity and values. But it's not. And Nisha will show us how, in this conversation, Nisha shares one thing that felt so resonant for me, and I hope it does for you as well. This idea that the way to reach people on the other side of the aisle is not to pretend that you share values and needs with the people across the table, but that you come to that table fully as who you are and standing in your values. And that letting people know what they can count on you for is critical to finding a path forward together. Hey, just a quick reminder, you can subscribe to this show on your podcast platform of choice. We're live nearly everywhere. And you can always listen to the show at Dr. bondi.com. If there's a leader or innovator in your life, who is it their shiniest when they lead with who they truly are, Please share the show with them. And rate subscribe, and leave us a review makes a huge difference in the reach that the show has when you let everyone else know what you love about the show. Thanks so much. Nisha Anand is an Indian-American activist mom of two teenagers and a leader for racial justice. She once was a grassroots activist and she was arrested in Burma for passing out pro-Democracy leaflets. She's got expansive organizing experience. And her work with mentors like Van Jones has solidified her belief and the power of working with unlikely partners to find real solutions. As Dream Corps, CEO, Nisha leads a diverse group of people who are learning just like her the value of unconventional relationships. Her journey from punk rock protester to Common Ground champion is documented in her TEDx talk, the radical act of choosing common ground, which you can find in our show notes. Nisha, welcome to lead with who you are. So I'm having you on today, Nisha, because on today's show, which is our brand new show lead with who you are, there's something very interesting to me in the tension between collaborating with unlikely allies, and, and finding common ground and holding on to ourselves. While we do that, that tension between reaching out and holding on, it's a dance that not a lot of us can do actually think it feels like I think it's quite courageous to be able to know yourself enough to be able to reach across the table, and collaborate without let go without handing yourself over. We feel really often like if we reach across, we may be giving up on ourselves or some version of that. So I want to know, I want to know, you know what it means to do both, in order to have the kind of impact we actually want and to do it without undermining who we are. And instead, do it by leading with who we really are. And I did watch and we'll add in the show notes. We did watch, I did watch your TEDx talk. We will link it in the show notes. And I understand you as an activist, and someone who knows who she is, and also can reach out to cooperate with others in ways that might be actually a little bit surprising. So I'm gonna start right there.
Nisha Anand04:12
I mean, you've basically summed up all of the tensions in my life already. I feel like you perfectly packaged who I am. And it's probably okay to end the podcast now.
Dia Bondi04:21
I love it that you say that you think that I summed up who you are. And that was, that was actually the first question I had, which is, who are you?
Nisha Anand04:29
Well, to use what you just introduced with, I think that you actually and I've never said it like that before. So it really clicked for me that in fact, you can't reach across the aisle authentically. I don't actually think you can build common ground in a principled way. Unless you know who you are. I've never thought about it that way. But I think that that's probably the most valuable thing anyone who considers themselves a bridge builder or somebody that seeks common ground, or anyone who wants to try to solve problems. by coming together, instead of dividing, I think step one is knowing yourself. Because what you can authentically bring into a conversation where you're dealing with people very different than who you are, is yourself. So I'm not going to hide it, your listeners should know probably from the start that I go very far to the left, I have very progressive values. I don't hide that at all. I work really well with people who are conservative on the right side of things and have very different value sets than me. And I think the reason why is because when I go into a room, my Republican counterparts can count on me to bring who I am. And my values, I don't try to hide it, I don't try to bend and be someone different. They know that if we're in a conversation around climate, justice, for instance, or climate change, or any kind of climate policy, they know that I'm going to bring in the discussion around equity, that I'm going to be able to point out their blind spots around why, yeah, that might be an okay climate solution. But it still replicates some of the racism or does it actually include the people that are being hurt by climate change right now, in the solution, they can count on me to bring equity, because that's their blind spot. That's not what they're thinking about. And I can count on them to come to the room as great conservatives and point out my blind spots, I'm not really looking at if they're coming from a company, for instance, or a corporate angle, they actually do need to know what the economic bottom line is, I never think about that, I can be honest, that's always a blind spot. I'm never looking at anyone's bottom line. But they actually can explain it in a business way that will make sense to a business person who is actually who I need to pass the climate policy. So that's one of the things about common ground that I think is really essential, is bring what you know who you are, and bring exactly what you're always going to bring to the table. So I don't feel like I compromise on my values. I feel like it's a it's a value add, when I'm in these bridge building conversations, for me to be able to point out their blind spots, and vice versa. That was a whole long way around. Who am I that's a little bit more about who my what my approach is about. But it really went on that you just hit it right, right off the bat, on the head this this kind of tension, very
Dia Bondi07:15
Proud of myself, very proud of myself. I have to say, though, in your answer, I'm sort of hearing two streams, let me see if I can grab both of them. One is, you're talking about something that a great friend of mine, Dino Anderson talks about a lot, which is continuity of experience. And what you're sort of pointing to in how you're talking about what your counterpart, you know, those across the table those with a very, you know, different point of view? Or are they looking at a problem with a very different lens from you, and maybe even a different set of priorities, that, that you there's a continuity and what to expect from one another. And that that actually shows up in the conversation in a reliable and consistent and expected way. And that that, I mean, I'll just take it another step further, which it sounds like that is a component of what allows you to build trust in those conversations.
Nisha Anand08:08
Absolutely. And it also, when you enter a conversation with the, with the intention of understanding the person that's there, or with the intention of trying to build trust that come across, it comes across very differently than when you enter a conversation where I want to convert you to my way of thinking, or I want to convince you that my policy or my idea is the right policy. And those kinds of conversations, even when you're on with your friend, you can tell they're not listening, you can tell they're not actually when they're with you and being present. And that makes all the difference that trust building, that ability to be present, to listen to understand not to convert, that makes all the difference, it means that you can come you can find a path forward, you can find some common ground to build on.
Dia Bondi08:54
So that so I have so many things here for me that are popping, I want to go back for a second. So we can go forward. We when you say I don't exactly remember in this moment exactly what the words were that you use, but you were like you you have to know yourself in order. It's like it's sort of a requirement to step into these types of conversations. And from you know, the buyer we share with our audiences, they have a sense of what kinds of conversations and negotiations you're making with the world, what kind of impact you're having all very high stakes, not just for, you know, your nonprofit or what you lead and build, but for the lots of people that the work that you do touches, you know to Yeah. So when you say it starts, we have to have an understood, we have to know ourselves, what is it that we need to know?
Nisha Anand09:40
Oh, wow, it's a great question. I enter conversations very much thinking about my value of servant leadership. All of us have our own value. You know, we have our own set of values. I really do think before you enter any big decision like marriage, what job you're going to take, you know, big decisions you have around your child Run, always going back to your own core values is so important. Those are the things that if you don't listen to them, if you don't obey them, they always feel at a saying, you will be miserable, you'll have the exact same fight. Like if you pick a partner that doesn't share a core value, you're gonna fight about that for the rest of your lives in different ways, shapes or forms. So I think knowing the core values and what you stand for, is really important. And, for me, I've just always been one of those people that hates seeing any type of an injustice, anything that's unfair, I grew up feeling like an outsider, and very much a misfit and felt like I wasn't included, or even that I was excluded from a lot of the things I wanted to be in my, my parents are immigrants, there was certainly I was raised with this feeling of like an Indian daughter is only meant to be, you know, one thing I needed to be pretty and marry well, and, you know, make sure I took care of my family. And that was my expectation. And so I knew, to break that mold, I had to like really break it, I had to completely step out of that mold if I wanted to do something different. And that allowed me to see this value I had and being different. And knowing that I can be a whole bunch of different things. And build a world where people like me, who are misfits, who might not fit in who might want to break the mold, where we can belong, where we can have a place of dignity, where I don't want to see anyone left out or left behind, I don't want anyone to feel like they have to be in this this way or that way, or they don't fit in. And so from a really young age, anytime someone was left out or excluded, I could point to that and say, I don't like it. So that's something I know about myself. And it means any conversation I enter into, I'm always thinking about who's not in that conversation, who is left out and left behind who's hurt the worst, by the problem I'm trying to solve, whoever is hurt first and worse by any problem in this society, I want to make sure they're not last and least in the solution. And that servant leadership kind of lens, the Who am I here for? And what am I doing when I'm there, that's always been a piece of who I am. It's not going to change, no matter what room I'm in, if I'm in the room with billionaires, if I'm in the room with like, far right? Republicans, if I'm in the room with all my peers on the left, you can count on me to always think about the folks who are being left out and left behind and hurt the worst. And just to I'm gonna
Dia Bondi12:31
Jump in here and say like, I hear two themes here, you said, for sure values were one things you have to know about yourself as part of the who I am. And I love this idea of what is unchanging no matter who's in the room. Yes, what what is it? I mean, people might call those non negotiables. Or, you know, maybe that's, that's in the context of, you have a give and take, but what you're saying that the things that remain true, no matter what else is around it, that's a beautiful eyelids a beautiful naming.
Nisha Anand13:08
I love that I you know, we often, I think right now, there is a lot of yelling at each other a lot of name calling a lot of shame, anyone that wants to step out. And like I said, break the mold. Or if you want to step out and do something that might be unpopular, there's so much shame and hatred that goes into it. And when I think of, for me, what isn't changing? Anywhere I go, is that, that when I walk into that room, I'm going to do what I think's best, regardless of that name calling and the shame and the loud and the anger. And I feel pretty good about who I am as a person. I think saying non negotiable, actually, it opened my mind up to a different place. Because for me, I also like winning. I've been an activist my whole life, I like to win, I want to see, you know, big change. But when I think of winning, I think what's become a non negotiable. And maybe this isn't who I always have been, but it's certainly become a non negotiable now is that I don't want to be part of a solution that further divides this country. I don't want to be part of a solution that doesn't include the biggest table possible. I want solutions that will last for a long time that will stand the test of time. And for me, that means building a really inclusive group of people to come up with the best ideas. And that wasn't always the case. I definitely was a really righteous young person who thought I knew the right way. And I think what now has changed and it's become kind of a non negotiable is being able to say I don't know everything. In fact, if I build this table with all of these diverse people with diverse experiences, I will learn something that I didn't know before I can Amen to this room and that will make my solution better.
Dia Bondi15:03
What I love to what you did about what you just said, is this. This idea, I think he said something like I, I wasn't always like this, but now I am. It's something that's changed. I think one of the risks of naming and claiming who we are and leading with it as we can sometimes get rooted in a story that we've outgrown about who we are. Ah, yes. So how, where are there markers along your career and your activism and your leadership? Where you've had to, I would say, like, upgrade, or update your operate yourself operating system to recognize like, Wait, actually, the thing that I keep talking about who I am, the thing that I keep saying that I am, the story I have about who I am is actually isn't so true anymore? And when did that happen? And how did you notice if you can think of an example?
Nisha Anand15:55
Absolutely. I think that's everything we are. So we yeah, we hold on to these stories about who we are. And they really are just stories, they're things we've told ourselves, our whole lives and stories change, you can write a new chapter, you can flip that page, you can have a whole nother book, if you want. And it's really hard, because there's a lot of stuff in this world that doesn't want you to change. And I think about old friends or old things I did, or you know, things that they probably are out there that I've said that I totally don't believe in anymore. And if I if I stuck there, I wouldn't grow. And I do see a lot of people just stay in one comfortable place and not grow. But look, I've always wanted to change the world since a young age. I've always wanted to live the life of consequence. And I think the consistent part of the story is that I've always been looking for how I can make change at a bigger scale. Okay, I tried this, it didn't work. I want to try something else that will work. Oh, no, I want to try to make that bigger. And can I make it even bigger and have a bigger impact? I think that's something that's been consistent. What's been inconsistent is that that necessarily means I as a person have to evolve, how I experiment. And what it is I change. And I remember the one there was this, I have two stories coming to my mind. But the big one coming to my mind, actually that changed it where I realized I was a different person than I thought I would was was. I was 21 years old. And I had gotten arrested in the military dictatorship of Myanmar. And I was an activist, like I said, I protested a lot, I got arrested for a lot of different causes. It wasn't necessarily surprising to me, that I went over to a military dictatorship and risked getting arrested. It might have been surprising to my parents, but it was very consistent with who I was. And I was with a group of 18 other international activists from six different countries. And we went into the military dictatorship to commemorate it was the 10 year anniversary of this brutal massacre that occurred in 1988. We were there in 98. And about 10,000 people have been killed student activists who were just you know, calling for democracy, were murdered, exiled, they ended up taking arms up at the border, fought for decades, just for democracy. And we went in with these little leaflets that said, We are your friends from around the world, we support your hopes for human rights and democracy. That's all the cards have that's highly illegal. And a military dictatorship that is illegal. We snuck these leaflets in like on the insides of our shoes, and in our bathroom bags, like we snuck them into the country, handed them out. We had all planned to get on a flight and board home, we had it well planned so that you know, all of our embassies and folks would be notified if we didn't make it home. But all of us got arrested. We did not get on that flight home and spent a week inside a Burmese prison. And on that one week, Mark, we were rushed to a court and be announced to us and spent, I don't know about 12 to 18 hours in a sham trial all conducted in Burmese, so I had no idea what's going on until the end when they said you've been sentenced to five years in prison hard labor. Didn't even know what they meant. Like I said, I was 21 years old. I just thought good activist, and I was terrified. And then the next day, we woke up in the morning, and we were all deported. So I did not spend five years in a Burmese jail. We were deported. And one of the reasons why was a Congressman from the United States Representative Chris Smith. He's a Republican from New Jersey. He's still in Congress. He flew all the way to Thailand, and was advocating on our behalf to try to get us out. He sat on the Human Rights Commission at that point. And I was a young righteous activist. I could not imagine having anything in common. At that point. I was so radical. I couldn't imagine having anything in common with anyone in Congress, let alone a Republican and I thought, well, you know what, we have this 24 hour flight or something back home, I'm sitting next to him, I'm going to tell him about everything. I'm going to talk to him about all the issues. I was a high school debate team nerd in college debate was my life. So I was ready to just talk his ear off. And instead, he opened up the conversation to me and started talking to me about other places where human rights were being violated, not just in Myanmar, but other places. And I found out we had a lot in common, a lot. There were a lot of issues he cared about that I did. And we actually spent the entire plane ride, talking about the areas where we had commonalities, and not the ones where we disagreed.
Dia Bondi20:44
And so was that confronting to you about who you thought you were?
Nisha Anand20:48
Absolutely. I thought that I had to all the time, like, had to win had to talk about everyone had to be consistent, you had to think entirely like me, in order to make the world a better place. I just didn't have room for people who had different views, or at least I didn't think I did. Now I look back on it, and realize that I probably always did have a high tolerance for people who are different than me. But I thought I didn't, I was certainly performing a way that you had to be an activist, which is completely consistent. And, you know, it was all of it, or none of it.
Dia Bondi21:20
And has I imagined an archetype, you know, and an identity attached to it?
Nisha Anand21:25
Absolutely. I had, you know, I had a ton of piercings. And you know, I was a punk rock kid, I had, I looked the part in every way, shape, or form, you could imagine looking the part and I love that person who I was, absolutely, I see it reflected on the streets today. And I think of that there's a whole ecosystem of social change. And in my field, I think any field that people are in, there's a whole ecosystem that makes it work. And that really loud, passionate activist, and all of the students who are really willing to take great risks. That's important, that piece of the fabric of what makes change possible. And so I do love that person. But I think that, that serves a role, the role I'm playing now is a little different, I would have never thought of myself as a bridge builder, back then, I look back now and see the ways in which maybe I always have been. But I think that at that experimentation that I was talking about, like, you have to try something differently. And then you start becoming this different person. I really embraced that. And I feel like I'm now a person. I guess, if you think of the activist and the educator, and you know, the rabble rouser, there's also a diplomat. And I think now I'm playing more of that diplomat role and trying to find that common ground. And, and this has meant that I actually have changed things at a much bigger scale than I ever had before.
Dia Bondi22:46
I feel like you know, who you who we are, can change and the story you're telling, I can still imagine, or I experienced who even in this conversation is somebody who is still that person, but it's more like rings of a tree than it is, you know, as we grow, it's like, we get rings in your tree, instead of erasing what you were and replacing with a new version, you know, and so I love that in that way, we let ourselves change, but we let ourselves retain sort of our own source code, you know, and I love that we are, I think, you know, what you're pointing to also is that your role may be different, and recognize that you can play a different role that has an impact on the outcomes that you want to create in the world, but you're not actually changing who you are, you're adding to who you are, you're taking command of who you are, you're harnessing the power and the passion and the the, I don't know, the conviction that you have, and the ways in which it gets expressed or integrated with others. As part of as you say, the fabric you know, of makes the of what makes it work changes or, you know, yeah, I'm curious, what does it mean then as, as I hear a shift from like, you know, this sort of radical activist dis, you know, disposition or lens that you saw the world through to, you know, the woman who sat next to Republican congressman and unpacked the human rights, the stories of and realities of human rights violations across the world, and now you know, we're on we're on a call where we can see one another, I don't see one piercing on your face, maybe you're hiding it. But as the rings of your own tree, have sort of, like, you know, grown out what does it mean for us to enter into partnerships, that feel a little odd for us, you know, they feel unlikely or surprising. Without actually betraying ourselves how do we reach across and hold on?
Nisha Anand24:41
I think we're born with this skill set. I think we actually hone it every single day of our lives because we are not just one thing or another thing. I love that right. You know, thinking about it as rings of a tree, but I also think that there's we're a big patchwork hodgepodge of all the experience As we grew up with, just in that last set of conversations, I mentioned that I was captain of the debate team and a punk rock kid. I was, you know, a child of immigrants and I was very, very American. Trust me, I was there to make sure I had like, such and such name brand. And I wore, you know, a sari to prom, and made my parents buy me guest jeans, right? Like, we're always a mix of these things. We're negotiating quite difficult identities every day, just inside ourselves, I do not buy it, that we don't know how to negotiate different identities, once it's external to us. We know how to do that we do it in our own family, everyone in your family is not a carbon copy of you. We know how to sit at the dinner table, I grew up in the South, we are very polite, we can have all sorts of different opinions and still enjoy, like, you know, drinks together. That's just how we do. And so I think we, we've been able to do that in our lives. I think it's a myth saying we can't do it now. Like all of a sudden, because you tweeted this thing that I don't agree with, we'll never be able to talk to each other. That's not my experience.
Dia Bondi26:03
Yeah, what you're speaking to is this notion of range, right? We don't have to just pick one way, but that we can expand our range. And let ourselves have a big range known in my work. Helping leaders speak powerfully, there's always it can be very confronting, because they may in the way I coach them, or the content that we create for that moment, or what that context begs of their voice and needs from them feels, you know, they often will feel outside of themselves often say like, it doesn't feel like me doesn't sound like me. And I'm like, Hey, you are so compelling right now, like this is it is you it's just an expansion of you. It's a growth in your range. So I love this idea that we can we know how to be at a dinner table with our grandparents. And we also know how to protest in the street. And we also know how to be a mom and one moment and a partner and another and a best friend and another and an advocate and another and Right? Absolutely. They don't cancel each other out. Right? So then what is the risk? So, you know, on this show, we're wanting to really talk about doing things on our own terms and sort of speaking from who we really are. But what is the risk in that? What do we need to pair it with? So we can advocate for our dreams without, you know, holding something hostage? Maybe
Nisha Anand27:23
I can ask something similar in a lot of different ways. And a lot of different times, folks see some of our unlikely partnerships. And they assume, Oh, you must be compromising one of your values to be in this partnership? And I don't know how to answer that. Because I've never felt that. I say no, I go into the room just like me. I don't pretend like I'm some Republican so that I can talk to Republicans, that doesn't work. People can see right through it. What people know right now, more than like than anything else, they can judge authenticity. We look at so much crap online all the times we know when someone's being authentic. And that, to me, is the only way you can get into those rooms without compromises. Be your authentic self, and ask for other people to be authentically themselves. And you'll get far so you know, one of the stories that I like to tell people is about this piece of legislation we passed under the Trump administration called the first step, that first step Act is a large piece of criminal justice reform legislation. Very proud of it. It passed about three years.
Dia Bondi28:34
And I remember when it happened, regulations. Yeah,
Nisha Anand28:37
thank you. 20,000 people came home since then, from federal prison. And we were faced with a question when Trump took office, there's only one way to get a piece of federal legislation passed at the end of the day, the President has to sign it. That's it, you're going to have to get that signature. And when he took office, we had already been working on this bill in a bipartisan fashion under the Obama administration. And the question, I run an organization called Dream Corps, we kind of skipped all of that part. But I found an organization called Dream Corps. It was founded by Van Jones and van is a dear friend, but he's been a boss and a mentor. And he's also an insane visionary and an amazing communicator. And when Trump took office, he turned to all of us and he said, some of you might want to wait on working with the federal government on passing this bill. But if you're gonna stay on this staff, I'm going to ask you not to wait. Period, we are not waiting. There are people inside prison who need us now and they do not care who is in the White House. They want to get home to their house. So if you care about the people inside, we are going to keep working on this legislation. We're going to try to pass this legislation. I realize it's not the friendliest administration at the moment, but we are going to do it. And that was our commitment to the people inside which meant we didn't stop which meant we had to find a way at the end of A day to have Trump sign that bill. And that meant working goes back
Dia Bondi30:04
to goes back to what you said earlier, I'm going to interrupt here and say, like goes back to what you said early, what doesn't change, regardless of the context around it, keep going, keep going.
Nisha Anand30:12
It's that it's the mission, it's the people you're serving, that doesn't change. What does change is? Well, now we have to get a few more Republicans on board with the bill than we had in the previous administration. But we have to get Republicans on board with it no matter what I think that's the myth, everyone should stop. Like, you're going to need to work with people from the different party to get anything done. So realize that that's true, and then figure out what you're gonna do. But we, every single time, and this was really hard. Of course, they were people from the right, who really hated what we were doing. They called it the jailbreak bill, you're gonna let all these criminals out of prison. But we also had people from the left people, I grew up with hating what we were doing, why are you working with those folks? They must be using you. Why are they even working with you, they couldn't even imagine that there was a possibility we had some shared goal, or that we were you know, that we were always being used by people on the other side, it's like, no, I'm showing up as me. And they are showing up as them. And we do not come at this conversation for the same reasons I come at it. It's the angle. When I look at criminal justice reform, I think it's unfair. I think it is a racist system that has targeted black and brown people since its inception. That's why I come to it, I do not want to see that injustice anymore. But the people on the right who come into the conversation have a very different reason. Fiscal conservatives don't want to pay any more taxpayer dollars for a prison system. That doesn't work. The religious right, they believe in second chances. They're anti death penalty, they believe in redemption. And our current incarceration system has none of that. It's a complete failure, you have libertarians and other part of the right who are coming at it because they don't like the overreach of the police state. They don't like the drug laws that incarcerate a lot of people. So even though we didn't come to it, for the same reasons, I could hear why they were at the table, they could hear why I was at the table, and we could come up with something that worked. And at the end of the day, it meant getting that signature.
Dia Bondi32:11
A lot of our listeners are also folks who don't work in activism or in the political landscape, but work in organizations or entrepreneurs beyond but they're having to collaborate with in cross functional groups. Yeah, even even, but to have impact on the cultures that they're cultivating and building inside their organizations to make them more equitable, to allow for participation to you know, so this is, you know, this notion of identifying and recognizing everybody has different needs, on the path to getting a shared goal completed. And absolutely, it's what gets, it's the, it's the outcome that matters. And recognizing everyone's need, in that, you know, the need that they bring to that outcome they're seeking, like, we don't have to have the same need. But if we have the same outcome that we're wanting, then we can, we can still work together toward that outcome.
Nisha Anand33:05
Absolutely. And if you're willing to listen to my needs, and I'm willing to listen to your needs, and actually meet each other and get to know each other and figure out what those needs are, you're gonna have a great advocate and me for you, and vice versa. And I'm telling you, if in a Republican controlled House, Senate and White House we got this bill passed in the Senate passed it not just a few Republicans, it was passed 87 out of 100 people voted for this bill, it was a huge bipartisan effort, I promise that in whatever company you're in, you can absolutely find common ground and actually get to a place to make the change you want to see. Because big changes are possible, like very big changes are possible. But you have to seek that understanding. And you have to really mean it when you say you're going to take care of their needs.
Dia Bondi33:58
So you had a really big dream, you have lots of big dreams. I get that sense. But you had a really big dream with that bill, in particular, what and sort of for my second, the last question for you is what is your hope for people who also have a big dream
Nisha Anand34:11
that they'll seek that they will start speaking it into the world that they will say it and live it? Because right now I feel more than anything, folks are scared to say it. If you say one thing wrong, or you identify, you know, one area there is now social media that's everywhere that is waiting to attack or to shame. We've gotten so easy to criticize each other try to pick apart each other thinking instead of exploring. I hope that can be reversed soon, and I have great hope that it can. But I just want people to have a little courage to say it. Don't worry about sounding cheesy, don't worry about sounding ill informed. We, the future is not decided it's created. And in order to create that future you Have to say the future you want to create and live it. And that's what gives me hope. When people ask why I'm an optimist, I often say I'm not just an optimist. I'm a determined optimist. So I know that my determination can only lead to the outcomes I'm creating. I don't know if I'm getting a little weird here. But I do think that we create the future. So what gives me hope is that we can create that. And I want other people to say their dreams and to pursue them. That's the only way dream come true.
Dia Bondi35:28
Yeah, in project as like an auctioneer, we talked about the notion that you have to let your dreams be known,
Nisha Anand35:34
yeah, by others, and at the risk of looking foolish, because guess what, you're going to look foolish at some point in your life, it's going to happen. Get it just live, live yourself, and it'll be better than living in fear.
Dia Bondi35:47
So to wrap, what does it mean Nisha, to you to lead with who you are.
Nisha Anand35:54
Leading with who I am really means feeling confident in my values, quite honestly, I've tested them out in so many different circumstances in so many different times, and I still come back to the idea that community is important to me, it is so important to me, it's hard for me to even I can't do anything without it. I've realized that's not an important value to other people. And that's okay. Understanding that some people really like community versus individual or thinking of, you know, the whole instead of an individual part, that's an argument that's been as old as time I'm not going to resolve it my way isn't better than someone else's way. It's simply my way. So being comfortable in my values gives me the confidence to just show up in absolutely any room. When imposter syndrome creeps in as it does for all of us, remembering that being at the table means being myself. What actually I contribute to the table is my unique way of being nobody else has my unique set of circumstances. Absolutely nobody else at that table is like this strange, you know, animal that is me. That gives me a lot of confidence to be at the table, whatever room it's in. It's not that I don't have impostor syndrome. It will live with you the rest of your life, no matter where you are. But in my better days, that being me and leading with who I absolutely am. It helps stop those those kinds of thoughts.
Dia Bondi37:24
Beautiful. Nisha, it's been lovely. Where can people find you?
Nisha Anand37:29
My website is my name, NishaAnand.org. And that'll give you links to Dream Corps, the organization that I am so lucky to run, and you know, social media. I know I gave social media a bad rap. But I do spend some time on Twitter, more than a lot of the other places so you can find me there too. And what can people do with you? At dream core, we're really trying to build a home for changemakers. For anybody who wants to create, you know, a better world social change social justice, racial justice, we want to show the world that there's a place for absolutely everybody that you do not have to divide, you do not have to hate you do not have to show up in a certain way to be part of dream core, that who you are, can can and we will help you connect with people of all different types of folks trying to solve all different types of problems that want to make the world a better place. We're kind of looking for that new way to do social change.
Dia Bondi38:26
Beautiful. Thank you, Nisha. Lead with who you are is a production of Dia Bondi communications, scored, mixed and produced by Arthur Leon Adams, the third and executive produced by Mandy Miranda, you can reach out to us at hello@deobandi.com or leave us a voicemail at 341-333-2997 you can like rate, share and subscribe at Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Go to deobandi.com For show notes, and to learn about all it is that we do to help you speak powerfully and lead with who you are