We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Madhushree Ghosh. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Madhushree below.
Madhushree, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
Confidence comes from within, and only if you are fully sure of what you are–and knowing that what you are changes daily. It comes with age, with a need for learning, an ability to analyze oneself and be willing to course correct. But mostly, confidence starts at home. Growing up, I was very aware that my ancestors were strong and strong-willed women–which meant, they were able to move through life by adjusting, advocating and supporting each other. They were and continue to be my guide.
As I grew from a child who was curious about science and the arts, to a woman who embraced science as a profession and writing as her creative outlet, I also realized life was happening at its pace, and if I wanted to do something with my writing life, I needed to blend the science aspect of me.
That’s what I mean by accepting oneself. You cannot talk about work-life balance and expect work not to affect your life. I not only embraced both parts of my world(s), but also, acknowledged the grief of losing my parents, and how I coped (by cooking and writing). I also came to terms with my own what-I-termed failure, i.e. being part of a marriage to an emotionally abusive and punitive/narcissistic person. It wasn’t a failure, but more of a course correct–if you don’t acknowledge it, you cannot work to fix/understand it.
But that came through writing, moving to write from fiction to nonfiction, all the while noting how my life events affected what and how I wrote. While my writing life moved more into memoir and creative nonfiction, I also actively have been mentoring women of color in science as part of my own personal growth. Mentors get so much out of their mentees–and that helps me to understand my own career choices.
At the end of the day, if you know who you are, why you do what you do, and are a humble leader in every way, it does help build others up. When it does, automatically, your self esteem and confidence builds up.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I have two lives that I manage almost in parallel–that of work in strategy at a global diagnostics company focusing on cancer diagnostics. The other life is that of an author and cook–I work closely with San Diego urban farmers at a community farm, using their produce to recreate foods from my native country. New Roots Community Garden is a farm run exclusively by refugees and immigrants from all over the world, primarily women who support their families through food they grow. I–the daughter of refugees and an immigrant myself–love to support them but in turn, cook food from my land (Bengal) using their produce which is the basis of my food narrative memoir, Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory and Family (2022) which highlights my own story as an Indian graduate student in America, and how food represents our lives we left behind when we as South Asians migrated or immigrated. I also am a TEDx speaker on immigration, talking about how food travels through migration, immigration or indenture–it’s titled “What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Food?” I think food, especially when we are speaking/interacting with strangers/new folks, connects or at the very least, starts a conversation. I love to gather people to have a conversation on social justice, our connections, immigration and what food as a memory means to us–through monthly supper clubs I host in my own space.
The paycheck job as I call it, is in cancer diagnostics. We ALL have been touched by this disease–personally or someone we know. So, for me, it’s imperative that we talk about patient care and advocacy and why diagnostics, quick, and affordable and accessible is essential to treat and start medical intervention. I work with global KOLs and am fascinated by how fast we are moving in the oncology space to detect earlier/accurately/quickly but how far we’ve moved away from the basic premise of what it means to be a patient and how we could improve.
You can get more information on my work(s), life and musings on social media @writemadhushree or on my website: www.writemadhushree.com
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
A curiosity to learn, the ability to own up to mistakes, and to know that we can learn every day of our lives, should we want to–that’s been what I have used in every thing I’ve done. I graduated in chemistry–then moved to a PhD in biochemistry, not knowing much about biochemistry, then a postdoc in molecular biology, not knowing much about it, then moved into my first job in setting up a lab, and working in corporate America (not knowing much about it). Eventually I led a team of R&D scientists, then moved into alliance management and managing relationships with key opinion leaders, hospital decision makers and pharmaceutical strategic leaders–all the while knowing that I was working with people who were distinguished, well-educated and smart folks. But I also knew that I could work hard, and learn every day. Today, I lead strategy in a biotech, and continue to learn from my team, my peers and my customers all the while knowing that my focus remains on patients and how we can best support them in their journey.
In my writing life, I started with fiction because I daren’t write about my own life. So I fictionalized my world and presented it as short stories and novels. When my marriage fell apart, I then acknowledged that I needed to write memoir, set out to find mentors and writing teachers who showed me the way, tried, failed, tried again and I continue to try to be a better writer each day. I focus on supporting other writers, especially those of color, I continue to give back to the writing community by hyping women writers (of color) and continue to learn from my mistakes, whether it is in writing, or in my mentoring or in my speaking engagements or even in my giving back to the community.
To be self-aware, and to self-correct–that’s how I’ve always operated, so I hope others too can focus on truly understanding themselves to improve on their own journeys.
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
As I noted earlier, I am the daughter of refugees when India was divided into what’s now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh when the colonizing power Britain left. At home, my parents talked about our history, our culture, what made us Indians, and what we as Bengalis (from the state of West Bengal) could achieve in literature, music and academia. With that, came the appreciation for food, our regional recipes, and our greens/fish/chicken–so both Ma and Baba taught me a healthy respect and appreciation of what food meant to them–folks who had left their country to make India theirs–and what it meant to me, when I immigrated to America as a graduate student. So what I did to quell my homesickness, was to make my food. Food then represented the country I left.
In turn, what my parents taught me was a love for cuisine, a love for science and how that’s connected to food, and a love for social justice causes as it relates to Indian/South Asian history.
That now helps me, as I navigate the world of biotech and the world of writing, to ask the questions that matter, to understand nuances of culture, the issues of discrimination and the question of justice–be it in gender pay parity, intimate partner abuse, cultural/racial prejudice or challenges faced by women of color in arts and science.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.writemadhushree.com
- Instagram: @writemadhushree
- Twitter: @writemadhushree
- Other: BlueSky: @writemadhushree TikTok:@writemadhushree Threads: @writemadhushree
Image Credits
Author Photo: Natalie Joy Mitchell Photography Rest are personal photographs
