Varsha Venugopal

We try and be good at not having any calls and doing more deep work and reflection and working on our papers.

The rest of the time, I would say, is fairly chaotic, though I try and bring some semblance to it, especially because a lot of my work is outward phasing and trying to reach funders or talk to peers and potential partners.

or maintain government relations.

So there is an element of time not completely being in my control.

I think the one good thing is because we work in India and the day starts early and I'm an early riser.

So it's also early on, once the kids are out of home, I can get a lot of my work done in the first few hours.

And then some of the calls and work that doesn't require any kind of deep attention, I can focus in the afternoon and in the evenings.

That's hilarious.

So at the moment, Fiona manages our team, which also makes sense because she's moving to India.

So she has one-on-one meetings with several staff colleagues.

We are trying to get better at organizing them in a way where she and I talk and then we kind of roll down and the meetings she has with others follows that.

We also have a senior staff meeting on Monday afternoons that's with Alex, the head of operations, Fiona and me.

Again, going through what is our reflection from last week?

What are we aiming to get done this week?

Especially the bits that need coordination.

And also we have this gratitude section, Fiona insists on, which is again about keeping us motivated.

And I'm really bad at that.

I usually start ranting halfway through.

So I think those are the big cycles.

And then other than that, every Friday, we either have this Jai Pakoda where we meet all of our team, India here and talk shop.