Today we’d like to introduce you to Kanishka Shivaram.
Hi Kanishka, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Finding Myself! “Finding yourself is more important than finding a job, business or world.” Hey there, to begin narrating my story, I’m currently a marketing professional with a luxury brand in Los Angeles and I absolutely love my job. The story I want to bring out about myself to people reading this is about finding yourself. I’m just a normal college graduate who excelled at everything from academics to extra-curricular to leadership and wanted to excel at everything in life. I’m also just about to embark my Master’s journey with ESSEC business school in Marketing Management, which I again chose for its excellent rankings on the QS league table, no.2 worldwide. But, in this extremely chaotic world, when there is so much of noise around you, especially when you are in college or just graduating, where people are so focused on chasing their dreams and building their careers, we often tend to let ourselves get easily slipped down in this whirlwind and start chasing goals and building dreams which in most cases, are anything but our very own. People start working in big corporates, some choose to work in public policy, some brave souls embark the journey of entrepreneurship building their own kingdoms castle by castle, some decide to become lifelong acquirers of knowledge and seekers of truth, some bog their minds down in research, some turn their hobbies into a passion and thereby career and some just left confused.
While we have all been there and experienced that no matter which college we went to, one thing which is most important in life is FINDING YOURSELF and who you are as a person? It might seem an easy question at glance but an unknowing and unending search throughout life to arrive at the answer and it must be that way. While it’s important to run behind your dreams, turn your goals into action, but have we ever stopped to question if the dream that we are passionately pursuing was ever ours or an illusion given to us by the world around us. I’ve seen so many people building startups, discovering fascinating theories and creating masterpieces, while all of this is undeniably astoundingly crucial, the most crucial destination for life is discovering yourself. I’m reminded of a quote of a famous human here, who once said, “Be Unique. The World around you is doing its best day and night to make you just everybody else.” This is exactly how we must be shaping our lives. We don’t always have to choose the most difficult path in life, assuming that is mandatory to achieve your dreams, sometimes the happiest options can be the easiest ones, we only have to dig a little deeper within ourselves and nowhere else. To me, Marketing is a passion, particularly luxury brand marketing. But more than that, I’ve realized that my true passion is my virtue of “Striving for Excellence in everything I do”. Excellence is a journey, not a destination. Academically, I have been very gifted right from a very young age, dancing my way through life, my yearning for excellence in everything led me to being an all-rounder or a multi-tasker who would just focus on bringing out the best I possibly can to the table. This attribute showered me with numerous accolades, awards, appreciations, rewards and recognitions including accomplishing world records, being conferred with numerous titles in dance by highly renowned authorities, being crowned with State Governor’s highest honor for social service and numerous Positions of Responsibilities and an endless list.
I also got admits for my master’s from most of the Ivy Leagues, from every single Russell group Uni and basically from every top college in QS under 20 ranking for my master’s specialization. While I do not want to brag any of these, I mention them to highlight that holding on to that one virtue which you valued the most in your childhood is the spark everyone needs to create magic in their lives. Professionally, I’ve been working as a Political Strategist, which basically boils down to Political Marketing for the World’s largest and most prominent political party. But my yearning for marketing, luxury and global outreach led me shifting to a new job and has now landed me my dream internship in LA! Voila, I’m here talking to you all through my story:) So, here’s my open challenge: To become an artist of your life. If I have to describe my life story so far in one sentence, it would be this: “Porque este mundo no lo entiendo” (Because I don’t understand this world) and I think no one should attempt to understand this world because if you try, you will forget the world inside you. So, let’s all express ourselves crazily to the world and be crazy for not trying to impress the world through our life and work.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The biggest obstacle or challenge we face in finding ourself is most often us ourselves. In order to become the unique version of yourself, you need to fight the biggest battle of life, the hardest battle. That is the challenge. It’s simple. Become the warrior of your life. To become unique, the challenge is to fight the hardest battle that anyone can imagine until you reach your destination. While we are in this pursuit, let’s not forget the destination itself is the insatiable curiosity and thirst for finding your destination. Finding the unique you is important because the world needs each one’s individuality in collectiveness and not similarity in clusters. Basically, the world needs harmonization of heterogeneity speaking of which also speaks volumes of the soul of my birth country, India, that is “Unity in Diversity”. So, I hope at the end of reading my interview, everyone accepts this open challenge of finding themselves and officially signs themselves up as a warrior of life.
In my personal and professional spheres, people have always admired me for my traits of endless curiosity for ideas and theories of truth and also my creativity which reflected in acknowledgment within professional space for unique campaign strategies. To reach this sweet spot, the only challenge we ever need to conquer is the acknowledgment that we are all mere human beings, lifelong learners. This gives us passion for learning, learning not just from books and things we actively engage but also from people we interact every day and experiences that chisel us. For this, I strongly recommend maintaining a diary journal which would be your diary of learnings from life that can possibly be passed down to future generations while also in the process will help you uplift your life. Endless creativity stems from unending learning, this creativity gives birth to thinking, thinking is the blessing we give ourselves, the result of which is knowledge (universally accepted truth) and this knowledge makes us UNIQUE.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m a marketing professional by profession, a dancer by heart, a debater, a Yoga practitioner, amateur guitarist, a painter of art, a lover of philosophy, admirer of learning new languages, leader of self, adorer of fantasies and a nerd by soul. I see marketing as a chance to make things better for those I seek to serve. The world, unfortunately, in its attempt to understand marketing has misunderstood it and has traditionally been associating marketing with spam, mass, shameful and greenwashing. Marketing isn’t a race to add more features for less money. Contrarily, Marketing is our quest to make change on behalf of those we serve, and we do it by understanding the irrational forces that drive us. Marketing is the generous act of helping others become who they seek to become. Marketers are problem-solvers, we offer solutions and opportunities for humans to solve their problems and move forward. It is the noble act of raising people’s expectations of themselves, engaging in their hopes and dreams and helping them see further. They say, “The best way to complain is to make things better” and also, “The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who actually do”. Therefore, through my work, I’d like to change this worldview of marketing.
What were you like growing up?
I was born in Bangalore, the capital of Karnataka in India which is fondly referred to as Garden City, Space City, Science City and so on. However, I grew up in the suburbs of a small but happy town called Salem in Tamil Nadu (referred to as the Mango City and Steel City) and did my schooling from Cluny Convent in Salem singing choirs, wearing the cliched convent uniform with Yellow Satin sashes (as I was the Captain of yellow house: Topaz), reading bible and greeting Sisters (Christian Missionaries in the pursuit of spreading education). I topped all my grades and went to the most prestigious college in my country which is always known for record-breaking cut-offs of 100%. Yes, you read it right, I went to SRCC, DU for my Bachelor in Commerce (Hons) where I also did a minor in Political Science and International Relations. I experienced the silver-white winters in Delhi melt into springs that blazed into scorching summers. Post that, I’d been associated with Political Marketing and tried out numerous internships and have now landed up in LA as a luxury marketer. I’m commencing my Masters in MMD (Marketing Management and Digital) from ESSEC APAC this September with a specialization in Luxury and Digital.
Contact Info:
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kanishka-shivaram-61259b13b
- Twitter: @KanishkaShivara
