Sadia #mixedmonday
Sadia Ghazanfar
Hey, I'm Sadia. I was born in London and raised in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire before settling in Bristol for university. Bristol instantly felt like 'home' and 20+ years later, I'm still here! :) My mama was born in the UK (her dad came here to study in the 50s from Pakistan) and my papa was born in rural Punjab, Pakistan. He was from a poor, farming family. They married and had 5 kids - I'm the eldest.
Great emphasis was placed on academic achievement growing up; as the eldest a lot of that expectation was firmly on my shoulders. As a result, I passed my 11+ exam and went to a great school (just voted secondary school of the year by Sunday Times!). Even though I loved learning, I always felt like I didn't belong (too brown, too working class...). I'm still actively unlearning my high-achieving ways, it's a daily practice y'all!
Looking back on my life, I've always stepped into places where I was the only one that looked like me. This led me to leadership roles where I was often the only person and definitely the only woman of colour. At a point in my leadership career, I hit burnout. I wasn't tending to myself. My habitual patterns and ways of working were no longer serving me and I needed an upgrade. Fast. Enter coaching. After exploring myself with a coach, I decided to invest in myself and embarked on a coaching course in 2017 so that I could help other women, like myself, leverage their unique strengths and style.
Today, I am a professional certified coach (ICF) and facilitator with a mission to advance women into leadership. The world needs more women leaders. I provide leadership and career confidence coaching enabling women to be courageous and step into their personal power. I work with women globally to create empowering narratives that increase self-belief, self-confidence and action through coaching and workshops.
How would you describe your ethnicity? Where are your parents from?
I identify myself as South Asian. Both my parents have a strong Pakistani identity and we were exposed and connected to that part of our heritage most growing up. My father's family is from the Punjab region in Pakistan. On my mama's side we have Pakistani, Indian (my nan's father's family fled Amritsar, India during Partition) and a dash of Persian/Afghan/Central Asian (there's a family tree showing how she's descended from Timur the Lame). We have a very multi-cultural family, with some members marrying outside of their ethnicity - myself included!
Has your mixed-ness influenced your career in any way?
It's influenced me in the work that I'm doing now. Being a woman of colour in leadership roles was incredibly isolating and lonely at times. There was a lack of support and a real lack of role models who looked like me doing the things that I wanted to do. I now run a coaching practice called Slay Your Dragons and work with women (and some men) from diverse backgrounds and industries globally. I give them a safe space to share their career and life challenges without judgment, and help them move forward towards their dreams and goals in an empowered, holisitc and human-centred way.
If you could describe your mixed identity in one word, what would it be?
Ancient. The more I dive into my heritage and identity the more I appreciate how ancient, wise and beautiful it is. Mixed identities have shaped human history; we've been mixing for centuries!!
What is the best thing about being mixed heritage?
Cherry-picking the best bits from all cultures: Pakistani, Persian, Afghan and British and creating my own bastardized version of me! Oh, and the FOOD is so damn good!
