From Generational Poverty to Generational Wealth – Deepti Mathew
Originally published in the Stellar Woman Edition
Deepti Mathew is Street Business School’s new chief executive officer. She has over 24 years of experience helping leading organizations build the mindsets, systems, and processes necessary to achieve scale and impact. In this interview with Stellar Woman Magazine, she shares her experience empowering women to grow from poverty to wealth. Who is Deepti Mathew, and what is your backstory? I’m Deepti Mathew, a 50-year-old woman currently living in Dakar, Senegal. My backstory begins in a small town in the very south of India. At the age of two, my family moved to Tanzania, where I spent my early years. In those days, kindergarten wasn’t prevalent, so I stayed at home, speaking Swahili and my mother tongue. My early memories are of my time in Tanzania. Later, we moved to Cameroon, where I unlearned Swahili and learned French and English at the age of five. I lived there until I was about 13. Then, my father decided it was time to return home, which was Cameroon, not India. However, our family left Africa, and we moved back to India, where I completed my education, pursued an MBA, secured a good job, and worked in the private sector for an extended period. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was living someone else’s dream. Although I had remarkable jobs with companies like Unilever and renowned management consulting firms, the gap between who I was at work and my authentic self grew wider with each promotion.
I decided to take a career break during my successful career. I traveled from India to the UK to study gender and development at the London School of Economics. For the first time, I truly enjoyed education and the subjects I was learning. Growing up as a girl and a woman in India and Africa,…