Manka Mishra joined me from Paris for Episode 174. She is from Dhanbad, Jharkhand. Delhi University, post-graduation in Pune, a short stint in Mumbai, six and a half years in Delhi, then Ericsson moved her to Sweden. Thirteen years in Stockholm. Amazon then brought her to Paris, where she works in business transformation. Close to three years in France now.
She pivoted from public relations in India to strategic marketing communication in Sweden on what she now calls an overnight decision. In Ericsson elevators at the time, Indians were assumed to be developers. She was in marketing, which did not fit the template people had for her.
The Nordic system does not reward standing out. It values consensus, trust, and planning. Swedish friends schedule vacations two years ahead. You meet every six months because that is the cadence. Impromptu beers with locals are not the game. She came from an Indian educational culture of topping every list and clearing every entrance exam, and that framework stopped working the moment she landed in Stockholm.
Most of the Indian men she saw move to Sweden eventually went home. The women stayed. Her reading is that Indian women are trained to give, to operate, to ask. Men are trained to be served. In a country where nobody is coming to ask you anything, that difference decides who survives.
Paris flipped the script. Engaging, social, language-gated, and heavy with paperwork. Nine months to sort her admin. Three weeks before we recorded, she ended up in a Paris hospital emergency and the staff refused to entertain her because she does not speak French. Her husband does not speak French either. A visiting friend who did had to intervene. She pays 42 percent tax. She knows her rights. She said the confidence to stand your ground in a medical emergency in a language you do not speak is the kind of skill immigrants have to build the hard way.
She is black and white. Straight talk. If you have not told her directly, it does not exist for her. That wiring worked in Sweden, where trust is the currency. She is learning to read between the lines in corporate spaces, but her default is no filter.
Outside work she has a PhD in Odissi and a PhD in vocal. Certified yoga trainer. She paints. Plays golf when she can. Wants to learn swing dancing. Signed herself up to a calligraphy course she saw on Instagram. She runs a Women in Leadership forum she built at Ericsson and is now trying to extend across Europe. The point of the forum is not the usual diversity framing. It is authentic leadership, including leaders showing up to talk about the hits they took on the way up.
She is hard on herself. She admitted it the moment I said it. She told me forty was the year it started to ease.
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