My pivot to Kidstir was driven by my creative nature and a need to help my kids with food allergies. My leadership style evolves with my experiences and environment.
Well, I think my leadership style is still developing. Like, it'll always be evolving. I'm sure I'm not the same person I am now that I was, you know, five years ago, ten years, twenty years ago, and I won't be later. So one is I don't think it's, like, some place to arrive at. It's just this constant evolution based on who I am and also, like, what my environment, my world is.
For me, the pivots were drawn were driven by not really like a lot like a plan to make a pivot at a certain point. Like, it wasn't like phase one of my life will be this, and then I will build phase two, and then I'll build phase three. It was more like coming into my own. I had always been a very, like, creative, entrepreneurial, idea driven person. I was always a driver trying to build and do things even in the corporate environment.
And so the corporate environments where I thrived most were the ones where I had more autonomy. I had, like, clear goals, but a lot of autonomy and a lot and an ability to, like, get things done. And so for me, moving into the start up world was an extension of that. Like, at that point, I was a parent. I had a clear need.
My kids were I have twins. They were born. They had food allergies. And I didn't like, I wanted them to feel comfortable around food. I didn't want them to be scared around food all the time.
So I had this thought that maybe I could teach them how to cook Because if they knew how to make pesto or they knew how to make, you know, chicken curry, I'm Indian, then they would know that curry can sometimes have cashews in it and, you know, pesto can sometimes have pine nuts. And then they could be savvy because they have these nut allergies about how to still have, like, a full happy life with that but on their own terms. I couldn't figure out how to do that. I wasn't like a born natural cook, and I definitely wasn't like an educator in the kitchen. So I was struggling with it.
And that's what led me to think, what do I already know that I could use to solve this? And I had been at Disney. I'd worked on magazines where we were creating content for parents, Parents Magazine. I had been at Disney where we're creating experiences and, you know, through the Pixar experiences, like, you know, where we are creating products and experiences that are not only educational but are entertaining and work on a multigenerational level. And I knew with as a parent that I valued not just the exercise of imparting the knowledge, but really building a strong relationship with my kids, like having an arena in which I could tell a silly story or something ridiculous could happen and we could laugh about it together.
So I kinda put my background and, like, what I was striving for together, and that just naturally tumbled me into, hey. I I gotta build this. I felt compelled to build this. So it was sort of like a natural outcome of, where I'd been and, what I thought needed to be done in the