In Chapter 16 of 22 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview, author Nina Godiwalla answers "What Has You Most Excited About Delivering a TED Talk?" Godiwalla finds the TED people part of her tribe - willing to speak from the heart, willing to be vulnerable and focused on trying to change the world. Watch Nina's TED Talk from TEDxHouston 2011 here. Godiwalla is the author of "Suits: A Woman on Wall Street". She is also a public speaker on workplace diversity and founder and CEO of Mindworks, where she teaches mind-based stress reduction techniques to help organizations improve employee wellbeing. Godiwalla holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business, an MA in Creative Writing from Dartmouth University and her BBA from the University of Texas at Austin.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: What has you most excited about delivering a TED talk?
Nina Godiwalla: I’m very excited about the TED talk because I consider the TED people part of my tribe, part of the people I connect with, like there’s certain people that I’m just so excited to be around with this – it's that open-minded group, people that are willing to speak from their heart, willing to be vulnerable, they want to change the world and to me, those are my people.
So when I was invited to do it, I was just I’m ecstatic because these are the people that are going to make the changes in the world. These are the people that they want to learn. They’re curious and so for me, it’s interesting. It’s been a little daunting at the same time because it’s so important to me. I’m fascinated with them. I love the people as part of TED and I just want it to be kind of that perfect, you know, what is it?
You get that one chance to do that message and I’m actually ecstatic about it and I – you know I’ve gone through so many, “Well, I could talk about this. I could talk about this.” And you get that 18 minutes. For me it’s diversity. I do want it to be about diversity. I had, you know, I had a couple of ideas going back and forth but in the end like that is the core of what I want to speak about. So I will have it focused on diversity and I’m just ecstatic about doing it. I just feel like I’m going to be up there and I’m going to be on fire because this is where I want to be.