“I want to be deeply feminine and powerful” - Meghna’s personal branding experience
Meghna Majmudar (LinkedIn) is a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) coach and consultant for a boutique firm called ReadySet. She’s the Head of Executive and Leadership Engagement, working with executives and leadership to have difficult conversations about differences and make major organizational changes.
Meghna has an incredible backstory as an immigrant, and she brings a deep, thoughtful and introspective understanding to everything she engages in. In this interview, she talks about how 2020 changed her approach to her work, life and her identity, and how she wanted to reflect that journey in her photo session.
This blog post is a summarized version of the interview edited for clarity, with the full video at the end of this post.
How did you come to your line of work?
I was raised in an Indian immigrant family with the typical mentality of: just do well at school and everything else will take care of itself. My family lived the American dream; my parents came over with very little money and then built successful restaurant businesses. My sisters and I studied really hard. I ended up going to Harvard. So far, wow, right?
But that’s where my story starts to diverge. There were always parts of me that I didn’t appreciate or stay present to, because this was the game I had to play to get to that level. I felt like I really didn’t know myself, and I needed to get out of the system. So I decided to go study abroad in Tanzania for a semester. While I was in Tanzania, I went to the rift valley, I was able to see the wildebeest migration across the Serengeti. Spending time in nature, under the stars, feeling that land, helped reground me, and I realized that what motivated me was people’s experience of life.
When I got back to Harvard, in my Senior year, I took a medical anthropology class where on the first day, the professor asked,, “What’s the role of suffering in your life?” It was a question I couldn’t put down and it had me ask more spiritual and philosophical questions instead of just focusing on winning or surviving.
After college, I had the opportunity to live in Cape Town, South Africa for 15 months, on a Rotary Scholarship. While I was there, 9/11 happened. It felt very awkward being an American, but Indian, abroad. But then, it was always weird for me, not quite fully fitting in America or in the Indian community at home. I came back and tried to get on with life, by working at a startup, going to business school, and then into consulting.
While I was in consulting, I got to engage with the people side of business and was exposed to coaching. I was fascinated by how leaders make decisions. But even then, some things that were important to me stayed inside and weren’t expressed. And then the 2016 election happened, and I felt I really had to do something differently and committed to developing my ability to coach, especially people of color and immigrants, the firsts and onlys, the first from their family or community, or only one like themselves in the room.
What got you interested in a photo shoot?
Even with a full-time job, I maintain a private coaching practice and a personal website. I’m no stranger to the world of online marketing, so having professional photos is something I think about. But towards the end of 2021, I realized that the previous 18 months changed me irrevocably. The world had changed irrevocably.
I saw my pictures online and I didn’t like them. I felt, “I don’t look like this. This is not my energy any more.” For many years, I had been talking about power and making an impact. Now, all of a sudden, due to a profound set of upheavals and tragedies, I was finally able to share my unique point of view, to influence, be seen and heard, appreciated, respected…powerful.
More and more, I wanted to embody where I am today. I saw one of your profiles with another client and I said to myself, Wow, I love this. I appreciated your storytelling approach. What is the past, the present and the future? What’s the arc we want to convey or the narrative underlying the photos? I was very curious about that approach.
2020 and the period following that was a time of transformation for so many of us. What changed for you?
Everything! For so many years, I had been talking about power. Now, all of a sudden, due to a great set of tragedies, I could show up in the world in a more powerful way.. I had been self-rejecting for so long, but now I live in greater alignment with what’s true for me. And the entire world flipped.
I remember a day in 2020 in the Bay Area that was completely orange due to the wildfires. I had a full set of training and coaching sessions that day. I was indoors, with all my lights on and I’d go out in between sessions and marvel at “How did we get here? How did this happen?”
I read Isabel Wilkerson’s essay in the NYT about caste in America, and it was an integration of my Indianness and Americanness, and the experience of race growing up in both cultures. It started to give me an understanding of patterns of wounding cultural narratives and what I had internalized. I saw clearly the beliefs and ways of thinking that did not serve me—and I knew I could go forward differently.
I realized that you can have a critique and be staunchly against many of the power structures in society, and yet be positive and optimistic about humanity as a whole. It’s not utopia or complete anarchy. The fear of what’s going on externally can’t shake one’s trust in one’s self.
What was the planning process leading up to the shoot like? How did your story evolve as you went through the process?
The process made me come back to myself. I operate in a way where I lose myself to my work and the people I’m working with. So I appreciated sitting down to create a Pinterest board and wondering: What are the images or colors that call to me? What am I trying to say? Going through the process itself changed what I was looking for, because there’s a lot of digestion that happens during the process.
Check out Meghna’s mood board on Pinterest
There’s a balance that I wanted to find between centering myself, and thinking about the bigger purpose, the greater cause I was serving. I believe that there are mystical, divine, otherworldly energies that course through each of us, and we are an instrument of those energies.
As I was looking for photos, I found many images of typical “women’s leadership”, in power poses, in a suit with feet wide open and arms crossed. My reaction was: Oh, that’s so masculine!. I want to be deeply feminine and powerful. I want to show up in a way that’s powerful in a cis female body, and I want there to be new and additional models of that.
However, I find the typical idea of “feminine leadership” revolting. In all of my coaching work and my work with myself, my focus is on what’s authentic to you as a human. I had a breakthrough when I was talking to a girlfriend and I asked her: What is a feminine model of being powerful and confident? My friend brought up the idea of Guanyin, the Chinese Buddhist goddess of compassion. There are a lot of images in which she’s crouching, as if she’s about to get into action. It reminded me of yoga practice and holding certain squatting positions for a long time, and I loved the physicality in those images.
I find a lot of traditional women’s poses very two-dimensional. Often, when we think of a woman looking confident and feminine, the default is to go towards looking ‘sexy’. That’s not what I wanted to go for. I’m in my mid-40s and child-free. Every day, I battle the idea that I’m somehow ‘less than’, given how much our cultural narratives center and reward procreation. However, there are so many voices and so much contribution from women who haven’t birthed children from their bodies. I want to bring that into the conversation. My arms aren’t just strong so I can hold children. My arms are strong so I can break some shit if I have to!
I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of the Maiden, Mother and the Crone as stages in a woman’s life. A woman in her mid-30s through her mid-50s or even her mid-60s, is in a deeply creative portion of her life. Evolutionarily, it was probably when she was moving into grandmotherhood or menopause. There is so much creative opportunity in that phase that’s not talked about, and I wanted to emphasize the power of creation, rather than procreation.
Wow, thank you for that deep share! How was the actual experience of the session for you?
I was really happy that we found a sweet space to do this. As we were prepping, I realized that there is a lot of commitment that goes into this experience, not just in terms of monetary resources, but also planning outfits, props, and understanding your own unique narrative.
On the day of the shoot, I was excited and nervous at the same time. I really appreciated that you had an assistant (Kelly) and she was phenomenal. It wasn’t something that I was expecting, but I appreciated having another person’s energy to push me a bit and give me many more options for trying things out.
What did it feel like to see your photos for the first time? And how has that feeling evolved?
It was great that we did part of the shoot indoors and part outdoors. The indoor half of the session resulted in photos that are very professional and I know I can clearly use them that way. The other half – I have no idea how to use them right now, and that’s not a bad thing! That’s the half where I’m like, what is this energy? What is this photo showing me that I’m still not willing to connect with, that I’m still rejecting about myself?
It was fascinating to watch the outfits as a progression – nods to my professional past to my present moment, and then into a bit of a dream about what’s in the future. Because we did the outdoor section towards the end, we got only one outfit there, which makes me wonder what would have changed if I had done more outfits outdoors.
The photos that were a reference to my professional past went down easier. I feel like I’m showing my power and confidence and that sort of thing. The later photos make me go a bit: Whoa, who is this person? I see more sexiness and playfulness, a little less seriousness. But there’s still this intensity and this confidence, and I think that is the energy of creation that I’m feeling nowadays.
I was listening to Kunal Shah, an Indian entrepreneur on a podcast saying, “soulfulness is a function of chaos and inefficiency”, and I completely agree with him. Those pictures outside with nature and the trees and the roses makes me wonder, What’s so inefficient and chaotic about them? What part of my soul have I not been willing to see?
Thank you for sharing that. Would you recommend this experience to a friend or colleague? What would you tell them?
Of course! I’ve already shared your information with people during the process, even before we got to the photos!
There’s something unique about your process that isn’t just like, ‘Hi, just show up and we’ll take some pictures!’ You have a commitment to stewarding and being a partner in a growth process for your client. It’s also taking a snapshot of a moment in time; I can see myself doing another shoot in 5 or 10 years and seeing what’s changed or shifted. So your process is different.
I also like you as a photographer! You’re bringing a certain way of viewing that’s based on your own life experience, which I profoundly respect. You’re able to see people and the intersectionality they live in, the multiple contexts and identities they embody, with a very gentle and supportive eye, and total commitment to their full actualization in the world.
