Becoming A Corporate Changemaker With Mita Mallick

Real change can only happen in workplaces if people speak up and intervene whenever something bad is going on. This is the core attitude embraced by Mita Mallick, best-selling author and corporate changemaker. In this conversation with Tony Martignetti, she shares how growing up with racial hate and stereotypes shaped her into a courageous and resilient woman who stands up to all forms of wrongdoings, inequality, and disrespect. Mita also talks about her journey to becoming an author who writes books about building healthier and more progressive workplaces in today’s world obsessed with toxic positivity, patriarchy, and micromanaging.

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Becoming A Corporate Changemaker With Mita Mallick

It is my honor to introduce my guest, Mita Mallick. Mita is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author. She's on a mission to fix what's broken in our workplaces. She's a corporate changemaker with a track record of transferring businesses. She's a highly sought-after speaker who has advised Fortune 500 companies and startups alike, a LinkedIn top voice, a contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, Adweek, and Entrepreneur. She's a powerhouse. She lives in New Jersey on a journey to raise kind and inclusive human beings. It’s truly magical, Mita. It's wonderful to have you, and I want to welcome you to The Virtual Campfire.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for our conversation.

Me too. Just hearing your intro, and all the work that you've done, I've seen along the journey you've been on. It's wonderful to be able to have you here and to share the journey that got you to doing all this work, and to hear the things that have evolved along this way to making the impact that you're having.

I love that.

Growing Up With Racial Hate And Stereotypes

We're going to do this exploration through what I call flashpoints. Flashpoints are the points in your journey that have ignited your gifts into the world. You can share what you're called to share, start wherever you like. Along the way, we'll pause and see what themes are showing up. When you're ready.

Buckle up. I'm ready.

Buckle up. The fire has started. Mita, when you're ready, take us on the journey.

I'll start at the beginning, which is that I'm the proud daughter of Indian immigrant parents. My younger brother and I were born and raised in the US, in Massachusetts, right outside of Boston. Great state of Massachusetts, great state of New Jersey. I was the funny-looking, dark-skinned girl who had a funny, long braid, whose parents spoke funny English until it wasn't funny anymore. I was bullied a lot, both verbally and physically, by peers.

I grew up in a time and a place where there was no Instagram. It was not cool to be Indian. I'm sure many people can relate to that feeling of no matter what your lived experiences of not feeling like you belong. I was painfully shy and introverted. I hate assigning labels. I think perhaps I was born more extroverted, but my environment, where I was and how I grew up, I feel like my voice was taken away. I was muted. I wanted to be invisible. I didn't want to be a target of bullies.

I read a lot. I wrote a lot. I was alone a lot with my brother. I didn't have many friends. If you think about all that, I also loved going to the grocery store, not to go shopping, but I was obsessed with Keebler and the elf and who is on a cereal box, and look at these designs. From a young age, I was interested in storytelling. I was reading Essence. My Black girlfriends would say to me, “You're reading Essence?” I'm like, “Yeah.”

I don't identify as being Black, but I certainly identify with the Black community in many ways. You look for role models, and you wonder who has the power of the pen and why. Who gets included? Who gets to be on a billboard? Who gets to be on a cereal box? Who gets to be in a movie? I think if you know that about me and the origin story, I'll take a page from Marvel, that's driven me, that I am fascinated by who gets to tell stories, whose stories matter more, and why. I think that's still relevant now.

I love what you shared. There's something about that that's born out of frustration, but then at some point, you realize that you've got to do something about this. This is not the way you want to be living. As you said earlier, you want to raise kind and inclusive human beings. This is where you turn that frustration into action and create a path for others to know that there's something different out there, but I don’t want to get ahead of us.

Lead me around this fire. What are we doing next?

I'd like to hear some more flashpoints. Before we do, I wanted to say that this is an element of how these are the starting points. The early childhood, there seems to be something wrong with the way things are. I don't know what it is yet, but I know that there is something I need to do differently.

I'll share another childhood story, which I've been sharing more publicly, which is painful. We talked about how I was bullied a lot. I was called smart fart, which I guess is a compliment. I don't know how to take it as that, but people would throw spitballs at me, throw their lunch at me, all kinds of things that would happen. They sprayed the S word and the N word in front of our driveway, and my parents couldn't afford to repave the driveway or what was happening on the road. These racial slurs would be considered a hate crime now. The New England weather had to come and wash it away.

All kinds of things. At the time, I didn't even understand what the S word or the N word was. I was a freshman in high school. I was excited. It was in the Intro to Physical Sciences course. There was a lab portion of the course. I had been the target of these two boys, who had been bullying me. They would find me in the hallway. They would grab my braid, and they would be like, “Neigh,” like a horse. One of them sat behind me, and if I didn't pass the papers back fast enough, he would hold my head back hard.

One day, they decided to set my hair on fire in class. This was in the lab portion. We were on a bench. My lab partner has not spoken to me in six weeks. We were working together. She said, “I think your hair is on fire.” They had been a few benches behind me, lighting matches, and throwing them into my hair. What ends up happening that day is I end up going to the principal's office with them, and made to feel like I've also done something wrong. The boys end up being suspended for a day and come back to class to terrorize me that week.

Just for a day.

My hair was fine. It grew back. It was very long. A lot of it was hidden, but the psychological damage. It's interesting that people who know me, I never like candles and I don't like fire, which is the irony of our conversation sitting around in fire, but it's that trauma of that. Even my children's candles, I won't light. I had wondered for a while where that came from. You're like, “That must have come from that moment.” Something interesting happened that day.

The guidance counselor, who was the varsity coach for track and cross country, discovered that I am a fast runner. I always knew I was not athletically inclined. I was athletically challenged. He forced me to join the cross-country team. It was a moment in my life where sports became an equalizer because I wasn't the fastest, but I wasn't the slowest. All of a sudden, I had a group of girls who respected me for my skill. I use that analogy today to think about who the allies are in our workplaces, who's showing up in our communities, because years later, I can Google the bullies like we do with exes. What are they doing now? What happened to them?

The question is, where were the parents, where was the law enforcement, where were the principals, where was the teacher, where are all these authority figures? We were one of three families of color in town. I look back and think about my dad, rest in peace. My mom is still with us today. They were also being excluded from the community. They didn't have much power either.

I think a lot about the power that each of us has to intervene in the moments that matter. We all have a responsibility to be looking out for each other, whether it's in our home, our neighborhood, or our workplace. Get involved. When you see something, say something, like the New York City subway. Say something. It's never too late to help and intervene. Never.

We're so quick to turn a blind eye because it almost comforts us to say, “That's not happening to me. Why should I care? Why should I get involved when it's not happening to me?” The reality is that these things start to become an issue when they impact our friends, the people who are in our community. We realized that these impacts start to encroach on our world. Now we have to get involved.

You think about climate change. I'm not trying to say that climate change is the same, but when we start to see the impact encroaching on our world, then we get involved. We need to make these issues more front and center and make sure that people realize that this is not something that we can turn a blind eye to. We need to be involved. We need to have allies. We also need to know that the stories are out there, and we need to make people aware of them. That's why I'm glad that you're bringing this to the surface, because we don't hear this enough.

I agree with you. It's so easy to name things, important moments, movements, hurt and harm happening, whether it's anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Black Lives Matter, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, I can go on and on and on. There's so much hurt and harm happening. It isn't easy for me to say, “That's political. That's woke, and I'm going to put it away,” like you said. If I know somebody from that community who is experiencing that hurt and harm, I would never say it's politics. I would say, “This is life and death. I know this person, I care about them.” Trying to gain empathy for experiences that aren't our own is the gateway to stopping stereotypes and hate. All of that starts at our kitchen tables. It doesn't start at our conference room tables. It all starts in our homes.

Trying to gain empathy for experiences that are not our own is the gateway to stop being stereotypical and hateful. This starts at our own kitchen tables.

I couldn't agree more. As you can see, it also happens in school places and the school halls.

School places, you're right. The playground, gym class, all those moments we have.

Finding Purpose As A Founder

It's not just in the classroom. It's happening outside of the classrooms. We have to make sure that we're educating people about what we need to make sure that people are learning. I say people, I mean at the youngest of ages, that we're educating them about what's right and wrong. I want to get back into your story and hear more about what you did with all these amazing things you were learning about the world. This is an eye-opener for you. What did you do as you started to move along in your career and take action? What's the next flashpoint?

I went into the beauty industry as a marketer. I didn't see myself reflected in a lot of products and services. I remember fighting aggressively as much as I could at a junior level to make sure that we represented all people, but particularly Black and Brown skin tones. I didn't see myself reflected in any of that. I guess this is the flashpoint that I'll never forget. It was like 11:00 at night at one of these major beauty companies. I'm at my desk on a Wednesday, and I'm working on this eyeshadow line and line of blushes.

I say to the head of product development, “This doesn't work on my skin tone. I'm trying these on.” I said, “If we added more pigment, it could work.” I remember her saying to me, “No one is going to buy the product. It's going to be more expensive. There's no market for that.” It's interesting to see how the world has changed. You see Rihanna with Fenty. You see what has happened in beauty and how much it has exploded. It's incredible. It's wonderful.

It's another flashpoint to say that just because you don't understand an audience or a community, or that's not your experience, doesn't mean there's not a market there. You look at many of the founders in the world, and some of these most successful companies might have started from someone's kitchen table or garage. It's because they saw something that no one else saw.

They saw a need. They saw a problem that needed to be solved. They said, “I'm facing this,” or “My mother is facing it,” or “Someone in my community. I'm going to go after it and build this.” That's amazing. That's why diversity of thought matters when it comes to innovation, because you get all these different life experiences around a table. You and I, and other people, have had different experiences. We see the world differently, and we have different problems that need to be solved. We come up with fantastic ideas on how to solve them.

When you mentioned this, it made me think of that classic HBR piece on marketing myopia. This idea where you get into this place where it's very singularly focused, or with our blinders on. The reality is that opportunities are out here. We also have to be thinking about who we are not engaging with and what we are not seeing. As soon as we start to expand our view of the world, we see that there are so many opportunities to do bigger things. It's classic. That's amazing. I'm loving that you got into this industry because this is exactly where we needed some attention. This continues to be an issue, even to this day. I read a piece about Sydney Sweeney and the ad that she did. I cannot remember the jeans company.

American Eagle.

It's unfortunate. I know sometimes it's not intentional, but we still run afoul of what we think we are doing. We just need to be careful to check.

I have to add to this conversation and say that somebody on social media posted a comment that was so thought-provoking. I say this in my time as a marketer. I’ll say this, and then I'll tell you what they said. Sometimes the whispers are the loudest. Listen to them. Sometimes it's the junior people raising their hands, saying, “Something makes me feel uncomfortable. I might not have the language, but this isn't right. We shouldn't put it out.” I've been through so many marketing crises. The comment was, “Sometimes, once the most senior leader has made the decision, it's game over. There's nothing else you can do.”

Sometimes, the whispers are the loudest voices in your team. When younger people start talking, do not set them aside even if they are making you uncomfortable.

You look at a campaign like that, it's very easy for us to say, “It went through so many rooms and iterations and no one intervened.” Here's the thing. Maybe people did intervene, but the person who had the most power in the final decision wasn't going to be swayed. People forget this. I've worked in so many companies where I see this happen. It's game over. You can do whatever you want, try to convince them, and that person is like, “No, this is the most beautiful campaign we've ever put together. I'm hitting the go button,” and it's done.

It brings us to your latest book, and a lot of the ideas from your latest book. There's a lot of this element where you can have the most amazing people in the organization, and they're raising their voices and saying what they're saying. If you have people at the top or people who have a very strong voice, they can hold back an entire culture. Isn’t that exactly what you're tapping into this post?

It's true. It’s very similar.

I don't mean to steal. We're going in so many different paths.

Lead us around the campfire. I'm here for it.

Writing Books And Embracing Thought Leadership

You worked for some amazing companies along the way. What got you into thinking, “I'm going to do something on my own. I'm going to go off into the world of writing books and thought leadership and all this other fun stuff.” Was there a moment where you said, “I have to do something about this?”

I always wanted to be a writer. My mom said I could pick up a crayon when I was five years old. If you heard the origin story, I was always observing and writing because that was safer for me to do than to be out trying to make friends and trying to interact with people. It's how it was. In my twenties, which I don't tell many people, I wrote three novels. I had an agent, and she was mean, and I had a Yahoo account at the time. She dumped me meanly over Yahoo.

This is an interesting story about feedback. What happened was I wrote one novel, and I remember I met with a Penguin Random House editor, which is a big deal. When you're 21, you don't realize it. You're like, “Okay.” The person was like, “I love your novel. If you would change these three things, I would consider publishing it.” I was like, “No.” I wrote a second one, and this kept happening. I wouldn't take the feedback until finally my agent was like, “This relationship is not going to work out.”

I was at a crossroads where I thought, “How do you make money as a writer?” Which was difficult to do. I ended up getting an MBA, and I was like, “There's a tie to writing and storytelling.” For years, I was in my work and marketing roles. I became a marketing executive, and all along kept career journals, which are different than personal journals. I was writing highs and lows, taking notes about things. I lost my dad suddenly in 2017, which I talk about in The Devil Emails at Midnight, which is my next book coming out.

I think there is nothing like loss and grief to reset the trajectory of your life, when you lose someone suddenly or if it's a journey because they've been ill, or something has happened. You realize, “I could be gone tomorrow. What am I waiting for?” That started with the first book. I came out with Reimagine Inclusion: Debunking 13 Myths To Transform Your Workplace. That came out in 2023. I have a folder of over 50 rejections or more. People are saying to me, “She needs a book more like Sheryl Sandberg. I like Sheryl Sandberg, but I'm not Sheryl Sandberg.

There are a lot of people who look like me, writing books like this. “She doesn't have enough followers. No one is going to buy this book.” I wouldn't let my dream die. I had an instinct that this book was going to do well. I kept pushing. My agent, Josh Getzler, and I went to Wiley, the book came out, and it's so meaningful that it did so well. I still get notes from people. I was like, “I knew that there was a market for this,” as we talked about earlier, but many of the gatekeepers didn't see it.

I kept observing, kept writing, and kept working. Now I have the next book coming out, which I'm excited about. It's been a journey. People don't see what happens behind the screen. Most of us don't see the unglamorous, the boring, the mundane work, and the rejections. Social media is also to blame, and we are to blame because we like to see the wins, and we like to see the end product. No one knows what happened to get to that point, unless you share the story.

I often come back to this quote or this concept that Dr. Marcus Collins and I talked about. He's brilliant. It’s this idea that when we are passionate about something, we're willing to suffer for it. I think there's something about that, which most authors are people who believe so much about something. They're willing to do the work behind the scenes and not worry about how glamorous it looks on the outside.

It doesn't matter.

It's meaningful. Even for those rejections, it's so interesting how you collect those rejections. I have my fair share of rejections myself. You collect them and you say, “That's proof that I'm not giving up.”

It is, and with the feedback. I was looking for feedback on the writing, and there was no feedback about the writing. It was about a lot of other things I couldn't change. Some I could, but some I couldn't, about myself, but also like, “Get a bigger platform.” I'm working on it. I'm not Oprah or somebody with a big platform. It's like, “What do you do as a first-time author when you get that feedback?” I look at it more for inspiration versus woe is me. I do have a folder of love notes, which I hope we all do, which are nice notes people sent you, which I love on days that you feel crappy about yourself. I also think the rejections are not rejections, they're redirections. They redirected me to the yes, and I learned something from every no.

Rejections are redirections to better things.

I want to call back to a couple of things that you mentioned along the way. Number one, you talked about keeping a career journal, which I think is such a wonderful thing. More people need to do that because, oftentimes, we forget about those things along the way, the high points and some of the low points that we're learning from. Reflection is such a powerful thing, and keeping that going throughout a person's journey is so important. Sometimes going back and saying, “I did that thing,” is wonderful.

It is. Yeah.

Finding The Right People To Support You

The other thing that I am starting to realize about you, and there's something about this overall journey, is having people on the journey to support you, and who can fill you up when you need it, but also call you out when you need to be called out. Do you want to share a little more about maybe some people who have supported you?

I have so many people who have supported me. My family, my friends. We don't do this alone. It takes a village. I have also recognized that I've had toxic friendships. I certainly have toxic bosses, and I've had toxic friendships along the way. I'm happy I'm in a place in my life where I have people who give freely without strings attached. That's how I try to live my life. The people are there for you and cheering you on. You know your moment is going to come for whatever you're doing and aspiring to do, but you're happy and delighted for your friend who had this amazing achievement, whatever it is. I want to surround myself with people like that.

That's what we need more than ever, especially in the world of social media, and the very glossy view we see.

Glossy and saucy, yeah.

Raising Awareness About Micromanaging And Toxic Positivity

It can be hard for people to say, “I don't see myself out there like that. I don't see the success that I'm having.” Sometimes we get down, but we need to know our days are coming as long as we're committed to the process of doing the work that we're passionate about, not trying to be something we're not. I have so many things that I would love to dive into. I want to talk about your new book. What are the key ideas behind The Devil Emails at Midnight?

The Devil Emails at Midnight: What Good Leaders Can Learn From Bad Bosses. I know you love a good campfire story. Here's the story about the book. The book's story is that my mother's home, which she lives outside of Boston, was flooded and destroyed a few years ago. It was a cold New England day, and the pipe burst in the attic. The house was soaked. She's in fact in her beautiful home and happy, but when you're in a soaked home, fire, or some disaster, you're trying to save what you can. It's traumatic.

I would never have known how traumatic it was until I went through it. I don't know that experience. I'm in my childhood bedroom trying to save report cards, trying to save writings from the fifth grade, all kinds of things I had held on to. I found a notebook from my twenties where I had written down a list of bad bosses and then nicknamed them. I had little vignettes for them. I was like, “I wrote this?”

I thought about it for a second, and it was this meme girl's burn book moment where I thought, “What if my name is in someone else's notebook?” I know I've been a bad boss, and chances are, so have you. That was the genesis of the story. It was to flip the script. I talk a lot about how to survive the toxic workplace. People reach out to me all the time, “What do I do if I have a bad boss?” I thought, “What if you are the bad boss? What if you are the person who is contributing to the environment?”

I go through thirteen archetypes. I include myself as a bad boss. It is powerful storytelling on purpose because I want people to be drawn and enjoy reading a business book, but it's not a fiction book. There's a discussion about why we micromanage, why we macromanage, why we let disengaged employees stay, why we spew toxic positivity, and why we are talent hoarders. As you know, I've nicknamed all my bosses. Whether it's Greek mythology or a mobster, they all have clever, important nicknames.

First of all, I think that's such a brilliant way of doing it because when you start to give it a name or an archetype, it's easier to relate to it. Also, I love that you shared this element of everyone thinks that they're not the problem. We're not the problem.

I've been there. “I'm not the problem. You're the problem.”

Never Be Afraid To Speak Up

I think sometimes we have to be okay with that. Sometimes we are the problem, and that's okay. It doesn't mean we're broken. It means that we need to have some awareness, because awareness is the gateway to learning and to improving. Ultimately, that's what I'm looking forward to learning in your book and getting that sense of like, “How do we get that awareness so that we can improve?” Thank you for sharing that. That's awesome. We're already engaged with this idea of the book. Are there any other flashpoints that you haven't shared about your journey that you want to share? I don't want to leave anything crucial out.

I entered Corporate America. I had chased titles and trophies most of my life. The A++, the extra credit. Education was important to my family, and it was the way to gain economic opportunity. I didn't realize that didn't translate into Corporate America. There was no A+, there was no trophy. I didn't realize that I would be received differently. I was very naive in that sense. I didn't realize that the bullies from the schoolyards and in classrooms would follow me into Corporate America.

Those people had grown up, and they were now in the conference room. That did not occur to me. I talk in The Devil Emails at Midnight about one of my former bosses, whom I nicknamed The Sheriff. The Sheriff was networked. He was super tall. He could look over everyone's cubicle. He knew exactly what was happening everywhere all the time. He decided at the time not to call me by my full name, which is Madhumita Mallick. For all the reasons you would suspect, it has been a source of shame and joy for me.

I had gone by Mita, and then I went to business school and said, “I'm going to reclaim Madhumita.” I go into this company and I'm like, “I'm going to start my marketing career with this name.” He refused to learn how to pronounce it. He didn't want to call me Mita, which was an option. He renamed me Muhammad. He decided that was funny and appropriate. It would be like, “Muhammad, can you get the sales samples? Muhammad, the agencies are here. Muhammad, are you going to lunch?”

I'm telling you the story as my kids would say, “Cringe,” like “I'm cringing” because there's their shame that I allowed myself to be renamed, but also to stay in a place for months where I let that happen. That goes back to this idea of allyship. I remember sitting in his office distinctly and having the courage to say, “I'd like you to call me Mita.” He said, “You're being too sensitive. It's funny. It's a joke.” What I clearly remember about that time in my career was that many people saw this happening and didn't do anything.

For junior marketers, it's hard when you're junior. It's very easy to use your voice and speak up. There are consequences. I know that. What about his peers and what about his boss? The irony I talk about in The Devil Emails at Midnight is that my first book comes out as a success. Would you believe that in my DMs is one of the former leaders of this company congratulating me, that this person worked for.

I was like, “I know that you had to have at least once heard him call me that name. You all thought it was funny and did nothing about it.” Another flash point, for me, that I take away from that is I'm going to do my very best. I've failed at this, but I'm going to do my very best to intervene when I can, when I see things happening to people as much as humanly possible. I will do it.

I'm so glad you shared that because here's this thing. I'm cringing when I hear you say this story. This is a very tough story to hear because if I were in that situation, I'd be freaking out. It'd be like, “I would want to just yell and fight back.” How you tolerated that for as long as you did, I don't know. I know that it's a name, but our name is everything.

Someone with hopes and dreams named that for us. Somebody gave us a name that they imagine all these amazing things for us. It's so sad when we cannot honor each other by saying our names correctly.

Somebody gave us our names. It is sad when we cannot honor each other by saying each other’s names correctly.

As you said, the people around you who heard this and didn't do anything are part of the problem. We need to make sure we call them out and see if that is an issue. I'm glad that at least a lot of the companies that I've been involved with are starting to become more aware of this issue, and they're raising their voices, but it's still a systemic issue. There are still a lot of problems.

I want to thank you before we started our conversation, you asked me how to pronounce my name, which sounds so simple, but it's an important gesture. I said, “Is it Tony? Did I say your name correctly?” It's a small thing. It's the thought that counts, and the fact that you try to get it right. My situation was egregious. He renamed me. It's not that he was mispronouncing. That's what I want people to understand. You want to make the effort and show that you care.

We don't always have to be. This is one of the things I've always believed. It’s this idea that we don't always have to agree, but we have to show some respect. I think respect is the biggest aspect of this. When we're coming together with other people, respect is all we're asking. What's interesting about the journey we've been on in this conversation is that everything ties together. At the beginning of your story, there were bullies. Even in the workplace, they are the thing that you're rallying against. You're fighting against the people who oppress others by trying to control them or put pressure on other people. That's the challenge that we need to be thinking about. How do we make sure that we stop bullying in all its aspects?

I have empathy for bullies now in a way that I didn't. Especially if I go back to my freshman year of high school, I wonder what was happening for those two boys in their homes or outside of school. I'm not trying to excuse their behavior, but I’m thinking that with the Sheriff or these bosses. I've worked in many spaces and places, large public companies, private companies, and too often we make excuses for people to stay when “It is time to leave. She has caused too much hurt and harm.”

What do we do? We mandate an executive coach. We don't need another executive coach. People need therapy. People need help. “Hurt people hurt people,” that famous quote. How can you acknowledge that? You have to be hurting pretty badly to be lashing out and doing these kinds of things in the workplace or your home. You're like, “What is happening with you? What is broken inside that needs to be healed?” I now have that evolved perspective, which, if you had asked me five years ago, I didn't.

It's a beautiful reframe. I think that's what we need to come back with. How do we come back and look at that person and say, “How can I better understand why you're this way? How did you get there?”

I'm going to say that I'm not excusing the behavior. We're not excusing it. I'm just saying I have a different sense of empathy than I did before.

One of my favorite coaching questions I often ask people is, “What are you tolerating that you shouldn't in the workplace?” Sometimes that's the challenging question because tolerance seems a very challenging place to come from. Oftentimes, we tolerate a lot in the workplace that we need to sometimes say, “I need the courage to step up” and say, “We cannot have that anymore.”

I love that. What a powerful question, Tony. That's great. I'm going to cite you when I use it. I will credit you.

You Are Stronger Than You Think

Before we go into our last question, what is something that you haven't shared about your journey that you've learned about yourself?

We're stronger than we think. We’re more resilient than we think. If I went back to my younger self and some of the things that she went through, I think she'd probably be floored that I'm sitting here speaking with you. It's a long road. I never thought, when you grieve and you lose someone you love, there are all sorts of things you think you'll never bounce back from, and life keeps living and you do, and you have a strong community. You keep growing and changing.

Mita’s Book Recommendations

It's a beautiful lesson of resilience, especially as you hear from this little child who, at the beginning, went into your happy place in solitude, to someone who is now shining brightly, is out there, and has a voice that helps others. That is a wonderful story. A lot of people tuning in to this can say, “If she can do this, then I can too.” Thank you so much for sharing that. One last question. I love this last one. What are 1 or 2 books or more that have had an impact on you and why?

I have to plug my own book, The Devil Emails at Midnight: What Good Leaders Can Learn From Bad Bosses. There are so many books. I'm going to give you two. A friend, who's a fiction writer, introduced me to Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic. She's famed for Eat, Pray, Love, the movie, and all that. This is interesting. It's how our creative ideas are born and sparked, and how you hold onto them. I loved that book. My friend Morra wrote a book called The Anxious Achiever.

The question that has haunted me since I've read her book is whether it has been ambition or anxiety that has driven me my entire career. Ambition or anxiety? For me, it’s the anxiousness of feeling like I don't belong. Sometimes there are rooms I belong in, but I'm so anxious, and I have trauma from other workplaces that I come in expecting people to exclude me. We've all been there, where we have not been given a chance. Is it the anxiety that's driven me, or is it ambition? I still think about that question in that book.

Get In Touch With Mita

That's going to stick with me all day. Thanks for throwing that in my head. Morra is amazing. I love what you shared. Those books are amazing. I cannot wait to dig in and read your book. I cannot thank you enough for sharing those insights. These are like the breadcrumbs that people get to dig in and see where to go with this. I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show. This has been wonderful. Your stories land, not just with me, but also with the audience. I know that people out there are experiencing their own elements of challenges in their lives, and hearing yours allows them to relate and think, “How can I think differently about my journey?” Thank you for sharing that.

Thank you for having me on. This is an awesome conversation.

Before I let you go, I want to make sure people know where to find you. What's the best place to consume your insights or thoughts, all of that?

Find me on LinkedIn. I haven't started a newsletter or a Substack. That's the latest trend, but I’m going to. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram, MitaMallick.com. You can find my books on Amazon or at your local independent bookstore. Thank you again, Tony. I appreciate you.

You're so welcome. Thanks, everyone, for coming on the journey. I know you're leaving inspired. Go buy these books, and you're going to love Mita’s materials. They are amazing.

Important Links

• Mita Mallick
• Mita Mallick on LinkedIn
• Mita Mallick on Instagram
• The Devil Emails at Midnight: What Good Leaders Can Learn From Bad Bosses
• Reimagine Inclusion: Debunking 13 Myths To Transform Your Workplace
• Big Magic
• The Anxious Achiever

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