Imran Amed ON: Rediscovering Your Passion & How to Know When Your Job is Holding You Back

and grow. Now today I get to host a very special episode. I'm seated in Oxford, London at the Soho Farmhouse. If you haven't been here before, it's a magical venue, and especially what I'm here for is even more incredible. I've been invited to speak at the Voices conference for the Business of Fashion, and beyond that, I get to sit down with the founder, the CEO, and the editor

in chief of the Business of Fashion, Imran Ahmed himself. Imran, thank you so much, first of all for organizing such a beautiful event and for being here today on the podcast. Thank you. The organization of the event comes down to my brilliant team. I'm sure you've been meeting them in all of the little nooks and crannies around what we

call our campus. But we absolutely love putting this event together, especially this year because it's been two years since we've done Voices, and we think of it as like the best way to bring our team together because we face so many challenges in making Voices happen. You know, there's a lot of people to manage, a lot of things to manage. In this year, of all years, we have something at bof called the Voices Test, which is like

resilience in the face of adversity and rapid changes. And you know, twenty four hours before we were arriving here this year, they changed all the COVID restrictions, so we had to adapt and be agile, and like, my team is just awesome. It's all because of them. Yeah. Well, what's even more special is everyone's really positive too, So they're doing all this hard work, but whenever they're with you or me, or with an individual at the conference

and the event, they've all been just so wonderful. So congratulations to you and the team. I want to start off because we are at Voices and I have been absolutely blown away by every speaker on stage since day one. The diversity of conversation the depth of storytelling. You know, when I was first invited and you hear about the business of fashion, you're thinking, oh, well, everyone's going to be a fashion speaker, and then you're like, no, we're

talking about mushrooms. We're talking about roots Studios, which is incredibly looking at fashion from a completely different angle. We're talking about activism. Tell us about where the idea for Voices came from and what you wanted it to be when it first started, and how it's evolved. Yeah. I think like most industries, there were already a series of other industry conferences, and you know, at bof whenever we do something new, we want to do it differently, we

want to add something to what's already there. We wanted it to be disruptive because my observation was that, you know, most of the fashion events that we have are just fashion people, and therefore you have fashion people talking to fashion people about fashion, which is a bit of an echo chamber, right, And those kinds of conversations are absolutely important, and they happen at Fashion Week, and they happen in all sorts of you know, industry events. But fashion doesn't

live in a bubble. It doesn't exist outside, you know, the intersections of other things that are going on in the world, and especially now amid you know once in a generation, you know, public health cis, you know, economic dislocation, heightening, global inequality, a global reckoning around inclusion, racial equity, diversity. You know, we are connected to everything that's going on in the world. So our idea was, we need to

bring other voices into the room. And so it is a conference about fashion in some ways because we touch on all those topics. But we wanted to pierce that echo chamber, and we wanted to bring other people inside the industry and help them kind of open the eyes of the industry and also to help people understand the power of fashion. So we have all these other people that come inside and and kind of share their time

and their expertise with us. And one of the things they always say to me when they leave is like, this is such a powerful industry. It's such a cultural force in the world, and fashion has the power to change things. So we set up Voices originally with that vision, that idea that we wanted to disrupt the existing trade conferences.

And we don't call it a conference, we call it a gathering and we wanted to bring other people in and just create the kind of conversations that weren't happening enough. And what happens is everyone, the non fashioned people go away and they've learned so much about the industry and they've met all these people, and the fashion people come and they've also met the non fashioned people and it just creates this incredible energy. Well, Iran, today, you're you know,

you're a fashionable gentleman. You're always in the world a fashion But I want to go back to what I ran was like growing up. I want to hear about what your passions were, what your interests were, what you were like as a teenager. You know, what is it that you thought you were going to go out to do. What were your aspirations as a teenager. I think my aspirations as a teenager were in a way largely defined by what other people expected of me. I grew up

in Canada, in Calgary. My parents moved from Kenya to Calgary in the middle of the cold winter in nineteen seventy four. In December. They were both the first in their respective families to go to university, and my mom was already pregnant and I guess they made a decision that they just wanted me to have the best life.

And my parents, even before I was born, I think they were already thinking about what the future they wanted for me, And as immigrants to a new country with five hundred dollars and great education, they really believed in the power of education. And they came to Canada with a view to kind of setting up themselves for a new life. And you know, that was a massive risk and change for them. Wow. And four months later I

was born. So they moved from Kenya to Calgary. And I think the day I was born or someone told me, this kid will go to Harvard one day. And I was named Imran, after Imran Khan because my dad was a cricket player. And so I think growing up, I always felt like these expectations, you know. And I didn't turn out to be athletically gifted in any way, but

I was always driven towards a specific path. You know, in many immigrant families when they first moved to the West, you know, it's a doctor or a lawyer or engineer. And I think when I was a teenager, I felt like those were the only options. So at school, I was I was really really nerdy. I used to get up at four or five in the morning to do my homework or to study, or to prepare for tests. You know. My mom sometimes used to wake up in the morning to quiz me and to work with me.

She was she was a teach my father was an architect, and you know, they really just invested in my education. And I guess I felt this like pressure or expectation that I had to go down one of these paths. In the evenings, however, I was a really creative kid, and I started. My first foray into the performing arts was as a singer. I was in a boys cut choir from the age of eight nine. Yeah, all boys choir,

and we literally sang like this. And then I got into public speaking, into drama, into musical theater, and so my days were really really nerdy and academic, and my evenings were filled with extracurricular activities that were rich with creativity. But when it came to making decisions about my education, I mean maybe I kind of knew that there wasn't really an opportunity for me in the performing arts. You know, as a very small brown person like that, there weren't

roles for me, and there weren't opportunities for me. You know, getting cast and things was very, very hard. You know. I was always cast as like the impish, mischievous puck or mad hatter, you know, in like plays and stuff. But like to have a real career in the performing arts was like a risk that I couldn't afford to take, honestly. So I was really interested in business, an entrepreneurship, and so in a conversation with my father, I remember, we said, well,

what I should study business? So I studied. I moved to Montreal when I was eighteen years old, and I studied at McGill University and I studied for a Bachelor of Commerce. And you know, I loved I loved my time at McGill, in part because it was this global university. There were people from all over the world. And I'd spent my first eighteen years only in Calgary, you know, and we didn't travel that much internationally. We did lots

of road trips in North America. But McGill was my first time being really immersed in a truly international, global environment and it found it so enriching. And Montreal as a city was hugely inspiring to me. It's a bilingual city, and I really wanted to learn French. You know, I've been learning French and since like elementary school, because in Canada you get trained in English and French. But I didn't really speak French. So being in Montreal gave me

this opportunity to immerse myself. And one of the world's was like truly bilingual cities where you know, the locals can switch from one language to another like this. And I remember sitting in a mall one day, the food court, and there were these two women sitting next to me, and they were going back and forth in a conversation and quoting. They were speaking in English and quoting in French, and you know, I just I was like, I want

to be able to do that. So when it came time to graduation, I actually decided to stay in Montreal. I worked in management consulting in a fully bilingual environment. All my friends left. It was great to be still in Montreal, but it was obviously not the same when all my college friends had left and gone to like New York, in Paris and London and Toronto and other places. So after a couple of years, my dream was to work in Europe and I asked my company for a

transfer to Europe. So I want to live in Paris or London. I want to do that. McKinsey right. This was at Deloitte. I worked at a small strategy consulting group that they used to own called Braxton Associates. And they said, well, you know you're twenty two years old, like, we only transfer people if they have unique skills that you can't find in London, and you know, you're way

too young. So at that point I was thinking about applying for business school, and you know, I managed to get an internship slash fellowship with a micro credit organization in Bangladesh, and I started making plans to move to Bangladesh. And actually the day I was planning to quit, the managing director of the office, Bob Leach was his name, he came up to my office, which was very unusual because I would usually go down to his office and he said, it, Ron, I found a way to move

you to London. And you know, it turned out that there was someone in the London office who wanted to move to North America and we were just going to swap. It was the first time in my life I faced a real professional dilemma. I had kind of convinced myself that going to work in Bangladesh was going to be really enriching. It was going to be great for my business school application because it would show a different, you know, professional experience. But I'd always wanted to live in London.

And by this point my family, my parents had moved back to Kenya, and so I'd been traveling through London to visit them in Nairobi. And you know, I'd spend like three or four days in London, you know, stop office on the way, and there was something about the city that I just I remember the first time I was like driving down Pall Mall in London. I was in the back of the cab and I was like, oh my god, Yeah, you know, it's like one of

these things you only see on TV. And I called one of my professors, Professor and Hale, and I told her, I don't know what to do, like, I feel like it's you know, I could go to Bangladesh or I could go to London. And she said, Amon, go where your heart is telling you to go. You have the rest of your career to give back. Because I really wanted to go you know, and do this service in Bangladesh, said, you have the rest of your life to do that. If your instinct, if your heart is telling you to

go to London, just go to London. And so I slept on it and I was like agonizing over this decision. And I woke up one morning and Professor Hale was right. She said, you know, I just my heart was saying go to London. So that's that's how I ended up. That's amazing. And you've you just told me before we went live, you've been living in Lone for twenty years now. Yeah.

So I first moved here in nineteen ninety nine. Yeah, and I ended up staying here for a year with Deloitte, and it was amazing because I got to work in Switzerland and Norway and Holland and all over the place, all these countries I'd never been to. But I was also applying for business school and I managed to get into business school about six or seven months after I moved to London. And I've been traveling so much that I actually didn't end up spending much time in London.

And at that point I quit my job and started planning to go to business school. So Yeah, that was here, and then after business school I moved back. Yeah, what do you think were the biggest skills or gifts you

took away from business school? I think that there's a lot of conversation today about education, higher education, graduations, postgraduate, but as someone who actually went to business school, what were the things that you felt you really took away in terms of skills that you wouldn't have got anywhere else. You know, honestly, it really wasn't about the skills. I had studied business in undergrad and you know, um, HBS

has a really different way of teaching. They have a case study method, you know, So I'd studied from textbooks in undergrad and you know, HBS was offering me a different way to study business. And it was great, you know, don't get me wrong. You know, there were elements of it that were you know, different, and I learned stuff, But honestly, business school is not for me. It wasn't about the classroom. It was about again the people, you know,

and I found it really hard there at first. You know, it's a really intense place and if you do the Myers Briggs test, familiar with it, yes, And you know, I think like seventy percent of the you know, incoming class the year I started were EMTG, the so called natural born leaders. So you have a lot of like really similar driven people sitting in a classroom every day. It creates, you know, it creates in some ways a very interesting positive energy to drive you to be the

best you can be. But it's also in some ways it's very limiting, and um, you know, I found at

times it was really hard. And you know, while I was there, nine to eleven happen, and as a as a Muslim, you know, it was a really eye opening experience because you know, you know, HBS is like a community, you know, it's a community of people, and you know, happened in September obviously, and I was in my second year, and I remember thinking about all of the first years I had just arrived from Algeria or Egypt or Saudi Arabia, you know, Muslims from all over the world, and they

were in the US, you know, for the first three or four weeks of their business school career, and this like horrible tragedy has happened. And so a bunch of us gathered all the Muslims on campus together to just say you know, like this is a really supportive community, and by that point there had already been some instances

of extreme Islamophobia and campus. You know, people were saying really misjudged, ill informed, ignorant, hateful things, and you know, you have to remember it was a really it's a really charged environment, was really emotional time, and so of course, like everyone was feeling, you know, there were it was h Harvard Business School. There were so many connections of people in the those classrooms, professors teaching in those classrooms, and that in the trade World Trade Center, and so like.

Of course, it was a very emotional situation. But for those of us who were Muslim, was also really really difficult because there was some really really unfortunate things that

were said. And you know, I realized and we said to the incoming class that our responsibility is to educate people, you know, And you know, there's one moment I was in a classroom and we were taking this class called the Moral Leader, and every week we would have a conversation about a significant moral dilemma faced by a protagonist in a fictional book or a situation that happened in the world, and the professor on this particular Monday, you know,

a week or so after the terrorist attacks, decided to turn the focus into the current situation. And what that unleashed in the classroom was, you know, really hateful things, you know. And one person in the classroom said, you know, my friend who's in my section, you know, I'm worried he's going to blow up the school. Another person down the road from me was said, you know, Islam is a religion that teaches every teaches people to kill Jews. And I could, like, I could feel myself really shaking

because my instinct. I got up and I just left, you know, and I remembered that conversation I had without incoming class. I was in the hallway and I left it. I was like shaking. So I went back into the classroom and everyone's hands were up, and I realized I was the only Muslim person in that whole class. So I raised my hand and I just, you know, I just spoke really from the heart. I can't remember exactly what I said, but you know, I just felt like

it was my responsibility to talk. And so I came to this whole story just to say that, you know, even at a place like Harvard Business School, you have these like highly educated people, really well traveled, worldly you know, ultimately the experience is about the community of people were with And after I spoke, the whole class erupted into applause, you know, and for the rest of the day, you know, people were just showing up at my house that I share with my class thought me, it's just to come

and like it was very supportive in the end. But you know this, you know, business school was just really hard. You know, it's not you know, it's not easy. I treasure the people that were there, that were you know, there to support me. And to this day, you know, my friends from university and my friends from HBS, they're my community that you know, that hold me out up, that pushed me. And so it's really not about the classroom.

It's about you know, the community. Yeah, and Maron, thank you so much for opening up about that and sharing that, because as you were saying it, I can only imagine how hard that is to reconcile internally, not just the classroom or not just the conversations or the moral leader discussion, but to deal with it internally while you're in a place like that. Yeah, I've never I've never told that story before, because I think one of the things that happens in our career so looking I went off to

after business school, you enjoined McKinsey in London. I went back and I think one of the things that I've realized over these last eighteen months or so since we were all locked down, is that I've just internalized a lot of this. I've never really understood how it has,

you know, impacted me. And one of the commitments I made to myself over these last months is that, you know, I just need to be more open about it because these these moments, like when you look back in your life, there's these certain defining moments that you're you're changed, And that moment that I just talked to you about, like that was the moment that really shifted me, you know, but I never talked about it. What do you think changed about you behavior wise or attitude of wise or

approach wise from that day? What did you do internally? Now? As as you're saying you held onto it, it it feels like something you didn't share, But how did you process it or did you not process it at aol until more recently? I mean, I think it wasn't a moment of processing. It's been years, but really I think a lot of that processing has happened in the most recent period because you know, I was sitting at home and like everybody, I was reflecting on my purpose. You know,

why am I here, what am I doing? Why am I working so hard? And what am I working towards? And one of the things that's really happened in my role here at the Business of Fashion is I've found

myself in a position of influence. I found myself in a public position, and I've realized that as a gay person, as a Muslim person, as a brown person, as a Canadian with East African roots and Indian heritage, there's actually a lot of people who see themselves a part of themselves in me, and there's not that many of us in the fashion industry, certainly not, you know, in a position that I'm so privileged to have now. So I've just been thinking a lot more about well, what am

I going to do with this position? That's really a lot about what Voices is for. You know, That's why we're here, because I have this opportunity with my team to bring together people, to give them a platform to connect with one of the most influential, powerful cultural industries that touches people all over the place, and as an industry, we have a responsibility and an opportunity to really change

the world. Fashion imagery spreads everywhere now with social media, your fashion needs to be this like really secretive little world.

All of everything was kind of contained. And as an outsider, you know, management consulting background to come into this industry and be able to learn from everybody, you know, through all the interviews I've done all over the over the years, like every person I've met has taught me something, and now I have an ability to use all of that and connect that with my curiosity and my interest in that, you know, being part of a global community, you know, the one that I hadn't been guild, the one I

had at HBS, and the one that we've built here at bof Like all of these things are threads through my life. And so the processing has happened over a very long period of time, but I think in the last twelve months or so, it's really become much more sharpened. And that's the session that you know, we're going to have this this afternoon with you is like everyone's going to be talking about how their purpose has been either shifted or sharpened or focused because of this period that

we've lived through. Absolutely, thank you again for sharing that. It's It's truly beautiful being drawn into your personal experience. And I love that you described it as a thread because it just shows how interconnected you feel it. Early is often people feel their life is like a series of pivots, and You've had a lot of pivots in your life, but you don't see them as pivots. You're

seeing them as a thread. I wonder when you do make the transition from successful McKinsey consultant to starting the business of fashion being the authoritative voice in the industry, tell us about what gave you the courage Again, I feel like you're just one of these people that's constantly had and I have a lot of these questions from my community, my audience. I have questions like this from private clients I work with and people that I've coached

in the past. A lot of people struggle with transition. So whether it was your transition to McGill, your transition to London instead of Bangladesh, then London to HBS, then HBS to McKinsey, then McKinsey. You know, there's many transitions here and then you take the biggest one, which seems to be where you're feeling your purpose is being fulfilled.

Tell us about what gave you the courage to make that transition from a phenomenal career which most people would dream to have at a place like McKinsey, but then to be able to make that I find that really fascinating. It's interesting to use the word courage because I didn't feel courageous. I felt I just I was really unhappy. And without denigrating McKinsey, because McKinsey is an incredible institution

with deeply held values. It's flawed like every organization, but walking into those doors every day, I felt like I was leaving a lot of myself at home. And you know, it goes without saying I was leaving all my creative side at home. You know, my power point slides, they were very pretty. That was my outlet. But there was some professional feedback. You know, McKinsey loves feedback. You get feedback after every meeting, you get feedback after every project.

To get feedback every six months, and in some ways that's really helpful. But some of the feedback I was getting. It's basically like they said, I didn't have gravitas. I've been thinking about this a lot recently. They said, well, you don't have gray hair, so you need to be less expressive. I use my hands a lot. I'm a very expressive person. I'm an ant. That's my theater side. And then one day someone said to me, what did you feel more comfortable if you were a tie and

a blue shirt? And there was one meeting I was in and everyone was was all men who had gone to Oxford or Cambridge, and they were all wearing checked shirts. And they realized that the checks on their shirts were the same, were kind of the size of the checks on their shirt were commensurate with their tenure at McKinsey.

And they all got up in a row and they lined themselves up, and I was sitting down at the table, and I've been thinking about that moment and if that's not a moment of uthering because I was wearing an orange shirt. I was a brown, gay Muslim guy at McKinsey, and these were all like straight white man And basically what I've learned over the last few months when I realized that it was a very coded language that was being given to me to tell me to not be myself.

And I know that now, but back then, all I was feeling was pain. And so I wrote them a EMO and I asked for a sabbatical. And someone came up to me in the New Delhi airport and he came up to me, and I was on my way to Bangladesh actually to go visit a friend of mine who was on that same program that I was thinking about doing many years back. And he came up to me and he said, I've been observing you. I have some things to tell you about your life. And I

thought it was one of those quacks, right. I was like, I don't have any money. I'm leaving. My rupees are gone. He said, no, I don't want your money. Just sit down with me for five minutes. And he said to me, I want to talk to you. And a few minutes later he said, you're not listening to me. Say yes, I am. So he took a piece of paper and he wrote something down, crumpled it up, and he put it into my hand. He said, hold this in your hand. He said, I want you to tell me your favorite color.

I was like, I don't have a favorite color. I was in such a negative place. I said, I don't have a favorite color. But McKinzie told me to wear blue shirts blue. He said, what's your favorite flower. I'm not really a flower person, or I wasn't back then, and my cousin's wife had calla lilies in her bouquet. So I said lily. And then he wrote down my name and he put one, two, three, four or five over the letters of my name, and he said, what's

your favorite number? And I picked number three because right in the middle, and I like symmetry. He said open your hand. I opened my hand, and the little paper that he'd given me five minutes earlier said blue lily three. And he said, now, will you listen to me? And I spent an hour talking to that man, and he said a lot of really crazy things, but the one thing he said to me was you need to practice meditation. Wow. And you know, in my culture I'm in his smiling Muslim,

we practice something called bundigee. And my grandfather used to wake up every day at four in the morning and he used to practice bundigi And whenever I tried to practice meditation, I could never do it, but it stuck with me. And then through a conversation with one friend and then another friend, everything pushed me towards something called hipposita meditation. So I wrote this memo to McKinzie explaining that he needed a sabbatical. I was feeling deeply unhappy.

I wasn't sure I wanted a career in the firm, and I wasn't going to be able to think about this properly if I was working as hard as I was working. Everything at McKinzie was done with memos. So I had to make a business case for why they wanted me to take this time off, and they gave me the time off, and I found myself in South Africa doing bit positive meditation, which is ten days of silence.

And that's when everything changed because I learned how to meditate, and I won't I mean, a whole other conversation that we can have one day is that experience, because it's like but I flew from Cape Town to Nairobi and I sat down with my parents and I said, I've done everything that you thought I should do, and you've given me this amazing education, and you've given me everything you could possibly give me, but I'm so unhappy. I

need to try something different. And they were really worried about me because obviously I was just like overachieving kid, and all of a sudden I was in South Africa in the middle of a force meditating. I mean, they were worried that I was going to turn up in saffron robes or something and like, and I know you were a monk. So I did that, yeah, And they said, okay, we just want you to be happy. Yeah, And that's

when everything switched in. Then one of the realizations I had as part of that whole sabbatical, I started talking to people in fashion, music and failing. I wanted to work in a creative industry. And you know, when I was a young, young young person, I used to watch this television show called Fashion File, which was hosted by

this man named Tim Blanks. I was on every Saturday, and I just there's something about that show that I always was so curious about because Tim used to be in Milan, in Paris and London, all these places, all these interesting people, and like there was a business, but it was also creative, and so I was like, I just I feel like drawn to this industry, and so a lot of time when young people say like, how do you know what you're passionate about? I always say, like,

what were you? What were even drawn to when you were a child, before anyone told you what your path should be, before you understood the expectations of society or other pressures. What was what we're like? It's inexplicable what we're drawn to as children, because it's purely intuition. And so, um, I quit my job at McKinsey, and that's what my

journey into the fashion industry began. And well on that spectacular Honestly, that is so beautifully shared and there's so many parts of it that I want to deep dive on.

I was going to be respectful of your time. So it is exactly the time that we had promised to finish, and I'm going to ask you to promise me that we can do a part two another time, because I feel like we just framed who you are and how you got there, but I want people to hear about what it happened after that, because we're in a really beautiful space. So I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking out the time for opening up, for being so vulnerable with our community.

You know, both of us had I'd never have any idea what I'm about to do one of these what I'm about to learn. And I can honestly say that, you know, everything you've shared with me today not only has moved me, but I know it's going to move my community. So I want to thank you. I appreciate you, But I know that you've got a busy schedule, so I'm going to be respectful of your attack you and We're going to find another time to complete the conversation.

Let's do that even after I'm back, and we'll schedule it. We'll make it happy. Yeah, it's it was really special. Thank you, Jay, and thank you for no one's really asked me those questions before. You know, like when you're when you get in a position like this, what sometimes happens is like the media creates this narrative around who

you are. And what I've realized over the last couple of years is there's a real gap in the way the media has created the story of this overnight success and you know all the stuff and you know fashion and yeah, just the names as well, like mcginsey the business. Oh yeah, of course, everyone, yes, every you know, everyone thinks, oh,

it must have been an absolute dream. Not it has been a dream, but it's a you know, dreams come, dreams like the experience that I've had, they come with a lot of challenge and struggle, and you know it's hard, you know, it's really hard. So I'm really grateful that you. Um, I didn't know what we're going to talk about either. I just sat down and I had no idea what we're going to discuss, but I wasn't. Yeah, thank you. That was beautiful. Thank you.