Memoir - Divorcing Ambition
I was never married to ambition. What I carried instead was something quieter and more demanding: the need to prove my worth in a world that had already decided my limits.
I grew up in a society where women were valued less, and I learned early that excellence was my only socially acceptable defense. In India, the phrase “be a man” is spoken casually, without shame, as if it were advice rather than a verdict—an assertion that strength, competence, and authority naturally belong to men. I absorbed that lesson deeply. If power was masculine, then I would meet it on its own terms. I studied relentlessly, not because I loved competition, but because independence required it.
In college and university, my rivals were always my male friends. Beating them brought a particular satisfaction—not pride, but relief. Toward my female friends, I was gentler, more patient, quick to help when they struggled. Only much later did I recognize the contradiction in myself: I was both resisting and reproducing the bias I had inherited. Even my kindness was shaped by inequality.
I abandoned economics—five years devoted to a subject I genuinely loved, a discipline that taught me how systems breathe and fail—because love did not translate into security. Instead, I turned to computer science, a field I barely knew, armed with just one year of formal education that I compressed into eight unforgiving months. I worked obsessively, earning extra credits each term, clinging to mathematics—the one constant joy that made the pivot survivable.
My first job in India was an entry-level role at a multinational company. When my father saw my first paycheck, he was stunned. It was nearly seventy percent of what he earned as a Chief Finance Officer in a public-sector organization. I remember the silence more than his words. Somewhere in that moment, I learned that validation could be quantified—and that I was good at earning it.
I learned how to make myself visible to senior leaders, how to speak with certainty, how to insert myself into important work. Grit became instinct. Failure was not an option; assertiveness was not a trait, but a survival skill. I was climbing the ladder effortlessly.
I moved to the United States after meeting my soulmate and joined another multinational company, fully expecting the difficulty to come from the move. What I did not expect was diminishment. Once again, I was placed in an entry-level role—maintaining other people’s systems, managing clients, doing work that asked for obedience rather than imagination. I reached outward, built networks, asked for more. I was willing to prove myself all over again.
But this time, effort was not always enough. I encountered racism openly—casual, structural, unapologetic. Discrimination was not new to me, but here it wore a different mask. America, I realized, held multiple standards at once, and they shifted quietly depending on the color of your skin and the sound of your accent. Immigrant ambition was welcomed only as long as it stayed in its assigned place.
I resisted in small, careful ways. My protests were soft—measured words, deliberate silences, strategic refusals. Sometimes they worked. I noticed a thinning of arrogance in my white superiors, a subtle recalibration in how they addressed me. But I also learned to recognize the polite mask of irritation, the civility that barely concealed annoyance at my refusal to stay in place.
I moved often—between projects, companies, roles—not in pursuit of power or money, but in search of work that would challenge me, work that might make me feel alive again. I still believed that merit would eventually speak for itself. That if I proved myself indispensable, organizations would recognize my value. Over time, that belief began to erode. I never found a corporate space untouched by racism—sometimes blatant, more often quiet and procedural, woven neatly into policy and culture.
As I followed white male leaders upward, I found myself absorbing parts of them I did not admire. I grew sharper, louder, more combative. When I entered leadership, my questions turned upward. I challenged senior executives directly, especially when their decisions crossed ethical lines. I used data and analytics to expose how employee engagement was being sacrificed in the name of profit. What I saw was not strategy, but self-preservation—ego disguised as leadership, loyalty rewarded over impact.
Colleagues advanced without delivering tangible value, while my team and I were sidelined. I was unwilling to nod along when directives violated my ethical standards, and dissent—however rational—came at a cost. The message was clear: competence was acceptable, integrity was not.
In that pursuit, I paid elsewhere. My health frayed. My family life thinned. I told myself these were temporary sacrifices, justified by a future I no longer even wanted.
June 2024 became the breaking point. My marriage—to my only friend, my husband—nearly collapsed. At the same time, I was reporting to a manager who ruled through insecurity and intimidation. His survival depended on a familiar formula: kick down, kiss up. My team’s morale reached its lowest point, and I was living through the most stressful period of my career.
I carried all of this with confidence into my home, convinced I was managing it all. Realizing how deeply I had failed there was devastating. I had neglected the very life I was trying to protect—for work I did not respect, in a system I no longer believed in.
That was when the idea of leaving ambition began to take shape—not as an escape, but as an act of preservation. I did not walk away from ambition because I lacked it. I walked away because I understood its cost.
Somewhere along that path, ambition began to change shape. It stopped being about outpacing others and started asking a harder question: Who am I becoming while I am winning?
Comments