Today we’d like to introduce you to Sandalina Sattar
Hi Sandalina, 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?
I’m Sandalina Sattar, a Pakistani-American Muslim talk show host, event host, and full-time finance professional based in NYC! The journey to the present-day was anything but linear… and the truth behind it all is that to this day, I’m still far from having it all figured out. It’s easy to look at others and assume they’ve cracked the code to life or attained some form of self actualization, but the reality is, nobody truly knows what the destination is. And that’s the beauty of the ever-evolving journey!
I was born and raised in the Bay Area, specifically Cupertino, California. For the entirety of my childhood and young adolescence, I never once questioned the traditional path to a corporate career. It was a privilege to grow up in a neighborhood centered around academia and ambition, but what they never taught us in school is that there’s more to life than GPAs and earning potential.
Education was always a top priority, even when the path to reaching my academic goals involved some twists and turns. I opted to go to community college— namely Foothill College in Los Altos Hills, California— to give myself a second chance at getting into my dream universities as a transfer student while avoiding heavy tuition fees. Choosing the “less socially acceptable” path paid dividends in the long run… In 2022, I graduated from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business with a BS in Business Administration and moved to NYC to start off my career on Wall Street as an Investment Banking Analyst.
Little did I know that my world view was about to be completely shattered, in both the best and most painful ways possible. There were two phenomena occurring in parallel through the first year and a half of my time in New York: 1) I was in constant agony working the seemingly fancy, shiny finance job… feeling trapped with the long hours and health repercussions 2) I was invigorated by the stories of South Asian creators who deviated from traditional career paths… to see people who looked like me listening to their inner voices and taking risks in life for the mere chance of fulfillment inspired me to do the same.
Though it required me to question the very thread of my existence and personal definition of success, I eventually walked away from my Investment Banking job. I also started my talk show— Spotlight with Sandalina— out of my studio apartment, interviewing the very individuals whose stories expanded my world view. And the cherry on top of all this was joining the finance team for a company in Beauty with a much healthier work-life balance, allowing me to pursue my passions in my free time while focusing on living a healthier lifestyle.
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?
Smooth and struggle are all relative, and the last thing I want to do is paint a narrative projecting a falsely inflated sense of difficulty endured along the journey. The journey wasn’t easy, in the sense that it required me to go against the grain socially in multiple instances, and deeply question my world views. This inevitably led to long periods of existentialism and questionable mental health repercussions too. And yes, I took risks that required the sacrifice of comfort and predictability. But at the end of the day, I can’t hide the fact that I’m fortunate enough to know my parents would’ve been there as a safety net to support me if all else failed. And that safety net is the reason I hesitate to call my journey a difficult one.
I share this to implore you all to evaluate your situation and definition of appropriate risk based on your personal circumstances. Would I have taken the risk of leaving a cushy job on Wall Street to run a talk show while job searching in a historically record-low job market if I didn’t know where my next meal would come from? Absolutely not. All struggles faced along my journey were ultimately champagne, first-world problems in the grand scheme.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m the talk show host for Spotlight with Sandalina. The show presents a vulnerable deep dive into the journeys of South Asian / Muslim creators in NYC, through the course of a one-hour, one-on-one conversation.
There is an entire generation of South Asians residing in first-world countries, born to immigrant parents who took a leap of faith in leaving their homeland. For the first time in South Asian history, an entire generation of young adults is grappling with the contradictory nuances of Eastern and Western cultural ideologies. There is an emerging ecosystem of South Asians questioning generations-old thought processes, and carving a path for themselves deviating from tradition. And the best part is that they’re successful in doing so, as they’re collectively gaining traction in mainstream media. Their individual stories are worth documenting, and I’m so proud to be one of the storytellers uncovering this phenomenon for audiences.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
I look back fondly to the days when I was living in California and could hop in the car with my parents and siblings on a whim to pick up In-N-Out before aimlessly driving around and talking for hours. The good news is we continue to dabble in this two-decade-long practice every time I visit back home!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/spotlightwithsandalina
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spotlightwithsandalina
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555142197558&sk=about_details
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfjfeKKtMaOtTviHvYHDFgA
Image Credits
Photographers:
Avani Patel (@photosbyavani https://www.instagram.com/photosbyavani/)
Misha Patel (@mishmediaplus https://www.instagram.com/mishmediaplus/?hl=en)
