We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Indrani Goradia a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Indrani, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of our favorite things to hear about is stories around the nicest thing someone has done for someone else – what’s the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?
My telephone calls were ignored and it was not like Mr. Bower to not return my calls. I mean, I had great news for him, the Blue Cross refund checks were going to add up to thousands of dollars.

I finally found the time and saw his housekeeper’s face as she answered the door. My smile felt stupid and froze on my face. Something was wrong.

I arrived in NYC 3 days before my 21st birthday in 1973. I had finally left my tiny island, Trinidad in the West Indies, and was itching to be able to attend university, I still had to figure out how to get accepted, and find the money, but those details were not going to stop me. As a 21 year old, I was not a typical student and I did not care. Education was my way out of poverty, and I had heard Frank Sinatra belt out “if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere” and I was going to make it.

In 1973, NYC was a scary place, especially for an immature woman from a developing country, who had been told her whole life that she was not good enough to reach higher, or want more than my parents had, or step out of the shadow of the poor immigrant in the big city.

First step- APPLY FOR JOB

Lucky for me, September was a big hiring month in NY for holiday help and I had my own “Breakfast at Tiffany” moment when I found myself staring at the massive entrance on 57th and 5th in the heart of midtown Manhattan. I took all of my one hundred ten-pound, 5ft 1.5-inch, brown skinned body through the doors and asked for the employment office. The seven-foot-tall human looming over me, quietly took me outside and walked me to the employee entrance. I think I saw him smile, but I am not sure. In those days I hardly ever smiled myself and was suspect of all who did.

Second step- PASS LIE DETECTOR TEST

Yes, I had to take a lie detector test to get the job. I was petrified. “Did you ever steal?” Yes, I took a pencil from the place where I worked in Trinidad.
I think I saw him smile. Not sure though.
“Have you ever taken drugs?” Yes, my mother used to give me a piece of valium.” Again, I think I saw him smile, but this time I saw his teeth. Yes, it was a smile. Now I wonder why. Is he laughing at me? Will my drug habit keep me from getting this job that I really need?

I did get the job at Tiffany as Christmas help.

I returned to Tiffany as summer help and Christmas help and returned to that safe, sweet space for the next 5 years. Tiffany became my family. I learned how to be American at Tiffany. I learned how to dress at Tiffany, by looking at how others dressed. I learned how to turn up my nose of lower prices at Tiffany and learned to turn my nose down again when I realized I could never afford the lower prices. I met Mr. Bower at Tiffany. He was the EVP of Corporate Sales, and his corner office was on the floor where I worked. He never seemed to smile. He was always serious. He said hello to the top corporate salespeople, and the managers but people like me scurried out of his way when we saw him coming.

I snagged a fulltime job at Tiffany after I graduated from College. I was on cloud nine! This was not my ultimate goal though. I wanted to go to graduate school.

When I got my acceptance letter from Kent State University, I made an appointment with my friend Lisa, who was Mr. Bowers’s secretary. The office was all dark wood and furnished with two visitor chairs and a big bulky desk. He sat behind his desk and he looked up with an enquiring look on his face.

The words fell out, “Mr. Bower, I was accepted to Kent State University for Graduate School, and I will be starting in September.”
Mr. Bower sat back and sat up and HE SMILED at me a made eye contact. He invited me to sit. I bent my knees and hovered above the chair. He gestured, “sit”. I sat. He asked me questions about the program.

Yes sir, I got a scholarship.

Yes sir, I have enough money.

Oh, Thankyou sir, I would love to work here in the summers and at Christmas holidays.

Mr. Bower continued to follow my graduate career over the next 2 years. Every time I went back to Tiffany, he called me in and I shared my life and progress. He was visibly sad when I told him that the Iran hostage situation was affecting me in Ohio. People were yelling at me to “go back to Iran.” He spoke the obvious, you are not even from Iran. We shared a moment of silence in recognition of pain.

After grad school, I got a job at Lazarus in Columbus Ohio. I needed a car, and I had no money. I had no success at trying to get a loan from a bank. I had no family to help. I needed two thousand dollars.

One day, I sucked up all my courage and went to ask Mr. Bower for a loan for two thousand dollars. I caught him up with my life. He sat back relaxed and smiling as was his way with me now. I told him that I needed to drive to my job in Columbus because there is not public transport. He sat up, his face changed, and he leaned forward and opened his middle drawer. He was no longer looking at me. My heart sank. I started to get up and he did not look up.
He took out a large folder.
He opened the folder and I saw that it was a book of checks.
He began to write.
He wrote the date.
He wrote my name.
He looked up and said “you need money for insurance. Do not drive without insurance.”
I could not find my words.
He said, ” I will make it for Two thousand five hundred.”
I collapsed into the chair and for the first time, I cried in front of Mr. Bower. He waited until my tears stopped. He said I was going to do well in life. He said he had seen seeing how much I had grown and matured since I began 4 years ago.
Mr. Bower had been seeing me all those years when I could barely see myself.

He got up from his desk, came over to my chair and helped me up. He hugged me.
I left with the check and a promise to repay every cent. He said, do not rush. You will when you can.

I began to work at Lazarus in Ohio, making twelve thousand per year and sent intermittent checks to Mr. Bower. Sometimes it was fifteen dollars, or twenty dollars. Some months I sent no checks.

In those days, I balanced my check book to the last penny and Mr. Bower never cashed his checks, nor did he ever send them back. I was often perplexed at why he did not cash the checks.

One day, my mail was returned. Quite a few checks had been returned. I called Tiffany and was told that he had retired. I did not have his home address.

A few months later, I left Ohio and returned to New York and began working at Blue Cross and Blue Shield. I went to Tiffany and got Mr. Bower’s home address from one of his friends. He had told them it was ok.

I decided to deliver the checks myself. His building was old NY style and it looked like a place where I could never afford to live. His housekeeper opened the door.

Mr. Bower was laid out on a hospital bed with tubes and beeps and tears stung my eyes. I went to the bed, and he saw me. I held his hand for an eternity. I began to straighten his sheets and pillow. I took dirty cups to the sink.
I said, “I brought the checks you did not open.’ He smiled and sgestured to put them on the desk.
His desk was overflowing with unopened mail.
I asked if I could sort it. He nodded. I threw out junk, made piles and I caught him up with my life.
I then realized that he had about one hundred unopened mail from Blue Cross and I asked if I could open them.
He nodded yes.
It turned out that he had uncashed checks from the insurance company, and I filled out deposit slips and took them to his bank. I took the claim forms that he had not submitted and walked them though the system myself when I went to work.

This was our routine.
I would visit a few times per month. I would bring my own check, open the Blue Cross mail, separate the checks, fill out a deposit slip and take the other claims with me to my office.

We had a flow. He became weaker and could barely speak. His housekeeper told me he had no other visitors. His world was now, a visiting doctor, she and me.

On my last visit when the housekeeper opened the door and looked at me, I knew.
Mr. Bower had passed away.
We hugged each other. I gave her my check. I did not enter. His body was already gone.

I sat on the stoop of his building and wept.

Goodbye my friend. It was my honor to know you. Thank you for helping me to repay my debt and thank you for your love and friendship.

A few years later, when I created the life where I had to write a lot of checks, I ordered the folio style that Mr. Bower had. That was more than thirty-nine years ago and I still have that style of check.

Indrani, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Allow me to start with what I am most proud of. I am most proud of ending generational violence for my children. I need to emphasize that this deep desire to end generational violence was a daily often hourly decision to not blow up or lash out. The easier part was to never hit my children. We cannot expect to have significant change in our lives but not want to make significant changes to our behaviors. The process is where the magic resides. There is no magic pill that we can take to end abuse. We are the magic. We can do hard things, but only if we want to!

I suffered severe childhood violence and know first hand how hard it was for me to navigate life as a child and young adult. Even during my job as Blue Cross and Blue Shield, I endured and accepted verbal abuse from my boss., That was easy to do because my whole life had been steeped either in physical or verbal violence. I did not know that life could be different. I actually accepted that she could make me feel small and useless and that I deserved it because I want unworthy of respect.

When my first child was born, I wanted to hit him. You can view the TEDx I did on ending violence at www.indranigoradia.com

I managed to control my urges. I learned that verbal abuse was as destructive and learned to end yelling and screaming.
I want the people who follow me and who would like to coach with me to know that peace starts at home. I can guide those who want to live in peace to make different choices.
I want corporations to understand that creating a domestic violence policy for their employees will be good for business. The world looses trillions of dollars yearly due to domestic violence and the effects in the workplace.
I welcome questions from corporations and individuals.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Oh yes! When I started my foundation www.raftcares.org I wanted to work with survivors and give them skills to end violence at home. I began working in domestic violence shelters and quickly realized that survivors had more pressing concerns like food and housing. They had little or no bandwidth to listen to me talk about parenting differently and not taking abuse from others. Oftentimes, their abuser was the one who kept a roof over their heads and food on the table.

There were times I showed up at the shelter and no one came to the workshops.
That was disheartening.

I decided to change our model to do the workshops with advocates and staff of the domestic and sexual violence organizations. This is the model we currently have and it works well. I am grateful we had the courage to pivot. Also during the pandemic, we switched to zoom gatherings and can now reach more organizations, regardless of their physical location. It is also more cost effective for us to deliver or classes.

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How do you keep your team’s morale high?
The best advice I have is to treat people the way you would like to be treated.

No one likes people to yell at them or put them down.

Listen to your team. If you inherited them, hold gatherings to understand who they are. What are their inherent strengths? You can ask your team to take a strength survey at www.viasurvey.org. When the whole team knows the strengths of one another, you can be cohesive and accomplish more. Let the team know your strengths.

Hold communication brownbag lunches. We held a conflict resolution retreat with my team and it was one of the better things we did together. We are a virtual team and we needed to understand our dynamics of communication.

Step out of your office and be physically accessible, or step away from zoom and do a catch up telephone call on company time.
Talking about time, respect their time at home.

Do not stalk their social media or be friends on social media. You are their manager, bleeding the roles together, gets in the way of delivering tough news.

Empower people to solve their own problems e.g if they bring you a problem, ask them to come back with 2 or 3 solutions and discuss.
Support the solution you both choose.

Be consistent. Treat people equally. No favoritism allowed. I once took a high end course and when we were in person, it was glaringly obvious that the owners of the company loved basking in the presence of Olympians or football players. I was not their employee and I knew that I took a back seat to the favorites. It did not feel good.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.raftcares.org
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/indrani.goradia
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/raftcares
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/indranigoradia
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/indranis_light
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/indranigoradia
• Other: www.indranigoradia.com

Image Credits
head shot image by Tasha Gorel