Dr. Daesha Ramachandran, PhD in Population, Family & Reproductive Health | CEO/Founder at Tusk

In this episode, we discuss how Daesha’s initial interests in public service and academic teaching evolved over the course of her PhD program in Population, Family & Reproductive Health, her experience founding a boutique consulting firm focused on equity and organizational and systems change, and her take on the importance of recognizing and affirming your unique worth and talents for sustaining yourself through the many challenges of doctoral training.   

Hosted by Brooklyn Arroyo

To connect with Daesha and to learn more about her story, visit her page on the PHutures #100AlumniVoices Project website.

Transcript

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Brooklyn Arroyo

Hello I'm co-host Brooklyn Arroyo and this is 100 Alumni Voices podcast, stories that inspire, where we explore the personal and professional journeys of a diverse group of 100 doctoral alumni from Johns Hopkins University. Today we're joined by Dasha Ramachandran, PhD in population, family and reproductive health. Founder and CEO of Tusk. So welcome Daesha. I am really excited to be able to work with you today. And let's just jump right into it. What brought you to your PhD in population, family and reproductive health?

Daesha Ramachandran

Thanks for having me. And it's a great question. Well, I started my PhD after jumping into a masters actually and realizing how much I loved the discipline and the methods I was learning at the time. I was kind of inspired initially by some of my early experiences internationally, just watching how International Development practices rolled out and feeling out of alignment with accountability in those and and hoping that by returning to get a PhD and and and a masters that I could be of service to like deeper evaluation practices that really centered beneficiaries in the work.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Definitely so because and I do relate to you in in the sense of like having a more personal outlook on what you're pursuing within academia. And so, do you feel that your the personal identities that you hold sort of led you down this path of pursuing something like. evaluating the systems that exist in our world right now?

Daesha Ramachandran

I mean, certainly. I don't think there's anything to do that I could possibly do outside of the relationship I have to my lived experience and my social identities, right? And I have been conscious of those, I think for a long time in many in like different ways in the different layers. You know, my family is biracial, and I was raised kind of at that intersection of European settler colonial cultures as well as South Asian culture and so, from like an early age, I think I was really provoked by the question of power dynamics inside of culture and community. I spent my undergrad exploring those questions and yeah, I still remain pretty interested in like how it all plays out when we're building communities together, but also working towards common purpose.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And as a fellow biracial person, I think that there's a certain, almost forced awareness that is put on us because there is, like, an immediate split world. We're immediately brought into this space of seeing different cultures interact and seeing differences in how parents are treated and and how we're treated. And so that's really, really profound stuff. I want to know more about your experience than of becoming a founder and CEO and what it is you're doing within your work now.

Daesha Ramachandran

For sure. So, Tusk is a small book like boutique organizational change firm. Our purpose is to really provoke, design, and support regenerative systems that center justice, healing, anti-racism and like wide scale systems change. I was I'm you know, I'm I'm still I feel like in the thread of my vocational lineage in that way in that I'm interested in how systems work and people and relationships and communities are all systems within systems. I’m just impatient to some degree. And I love cross pollination. So, I started Tusk with the interest of really looking at how being in this role of consultant collaborator could provide more like industry pollination, like what are the best practices or things that are happening over here and how do we use them over here? How can we continue to experiment inside of our social organizational design in the spirit of kind of getting there a little bit faster, yeah. And and distributing some of that equity and justice a bit more broadly, right? I can't remember who says it, but the future is already exists, right? It's just not evenly distributed.

Brooklyn Arroyo

So, because you you brought up some of the terminology that like anti-racism, equity, believe it or not, that can sometimes in certain climates be trigger words of a sorts. So have you felt within your work that there has been a lot of misconceptions with what these words actually mean and have you faced friction in and I'm sure you have in in certain areas of of your implementation?

Daesha Ramachandran

Yeah, I mean absolutely. And I would say that, right, language is both a potent tool and like a limiting factor in any discipline. I remember hearing and feeling this inside of public health and economics, writing papers where we were really saying the same thing, but we had different frames, right? So, linguistics is always that thing that you is a political tool keeps us moving forward together. It's also dynamic, right? Folks can get provoked by lots of stuff. I think the support is in asking questions and staying curious about the why and what's alive for them in those reactions. But I think your question is like a little bit deeper, which is like is the philosophical alignment the challenge right? Are folks like fundamentally? I don't think I don't think at the end of the day, most people are misaligned with the purpose of justice. I think it's about creating this space so that everyone sees themselves in a possible future together. That's not always well explained or articulated.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Yeah, yeah, I because I do think that that at the end of the day, like you were saying, that we all do just want what's best for everyone. I don't think that very many people wake up in the morning and say, I want to make the world a worse place, actually. You know, usually we we want the world to be better and it's just about what our perspective of better is and how we go about that. So, within your work, do you, how do you feel that your PhD has impacted the way that you go about your implementation and the way that you go about impacting your you know, making your influence and that sort of thing?

Daesha Ramachandran

That's a good question. A fair one. You know, scholarship is one way to build skill, right? And I spent a lot of time inside of that in Hopkins, which helps me locate some of my own power and autonomy. So, like I really loved my time doing research and practicing with those methods and feeling useful to some degree, really like having methods that can solve questions. I love that. That really keeps me like happy and engaged and work, and and so like the that philosophical principle, is there still which is how might we? I'm always in the designer mindset. Those tools help me understand a) how knowledge is broadly built in the world and what I'm also working to shift in narrative power, right. So, how we build our sense of science and what's valid and not valid, those are all lessons I both learned and have to work to unlearn in many ways too. So, it's helped inform my practice of staying curious and humble mostly.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And I think that you bring up a good point of you don't necessarily have to be within academia to still uphold what academia tries to instill in us of this constant learning and forever curious, as you put it. And so, do you feel that personally or professionally there have been any surprises to the work that you do, whether that be you didn't necessarily envision you becoming a CEO or in yourself going down this path at all? What have those been for you?

Daesha Ramachandran

Yeah, for sure. I mean, at any given time, right, we have a sense of maybe perceived certainty of like what might happen next in our lives or career. And when I was in the program and doing doctoral work, I felt pretty called to be in public service, which is what I had informed again my application into the programs. And I really love public service. And through Tusk, we do a lot of work with governments because of that. So, I thought I'd probably like lead a health department one day, right. Or do something inside of a Health Department or I would be an academic and a teacher. And both of those desires I think, are still held inside of the work I do now, right. There's a lot of capacity building and teaching inside of the work we do at Tusk and I deeply believe in making the systems around us the public service systems around us functional and like more liberated. So, I get to do that. I just get to do it across more places now.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Yeah, and don't necessarily know where we're going to end up at all. But in in different ways, our hopes of what we will do kind of manifest and we don't even know that that's how they were meant to come together or that's how it was going and even still, you have a lot of room to grow. Like this isn't just the end for you. So, this accomplishing becoming a CEO, founding your own space for doing the work that you want to do. So, if there is a next path, what would like the next phase of your career and professional goals look like?

Daesha Ramachandran

Yeah, well, one thing to say is like I don't, I don't think any of this is linear, right. I think it takes paying attention to what you're longing for in a moment and figuring out what solves for that and that's a little bit of what has to be relearned sometimes in academia is that there is only one right way or a path and some rigidity around that. So, you know, I just keep staying. I pay attention to what keeps me feeling alive in the work. So, you know I'm I'm here to be on purpose, whether it's in community or in like the paid work that I do or you know both. Right now, it's about continuing to deepen the content I share. So, you're asking like what's next for me specifically, it's trying to carve out some more time to write and speak. Like I work so much, you know, in face to face meetings with clients and and community members. And I'd like to have a little bit more time to reflect on what I'm learning. This pulling out a little bit so that I can help share kind of what I'm seeing from, you know, almost an anecdotal perspective of like this is good. This is great data across organizations and science about what we're learning and organizational change, systems change, and community work, and I'd like to time some at some point to write it some of it down.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Yeah, yeah. And I would like to pry just a little bit more what have been some of the biggest moments of seeing the fruits of your labor come from the work that you're doing?

Daesha Ramachandran

This is impossibly like an unsatisfying answer, but the biggest fruits have come from my own sense of connectedness to myself. So, like for me, Tusk was as much about cross pollination, as it was about really finding a way to affirm the skills and talents I want to bring to the world right, and creating that space to do it in a way that felt right for me. I feel like the last five years of running Tusk has affirmed that. Like that my point of view is useful and and and and supports transformation at like an individual level with people we coach and the teams. And so that's been really the like a big, juicy, satisfying part of the work. And the other piece is really seeing and hearing from teams and organizations we work with, you know, a year or two years later, saying like, wow, we're still like really resonating with that work or those practices. And like, here's what we're doing with it. Here's how we've evolved it. You know I my my hope is that nothing I provide or offer is like the finality of that thing. It's like going to be continued to refined and iterated on if I'm doing my part in the process, and that's always exciting and I'm like super connected with the people I work with. I feel very invested in them. So, if anything, it just gives me a bigger line of sight into how big and how awesome the world is as far as like, how many people are working hard to make it a place where everyone can thrive.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Right, definitely. And that wasn't a lackluster answer, by the way. It it brings up that important point that I think oftentimes people forget, especially people who are passionate about like community and worldly impacts and want to have some sort of lasting change and are passionate about that, I feel like a lot of times it's isolating because you feel like you're single handedly facing a lot of big problems and then you step into that world and you realize a lot of people are all doing the same sort of work. And we're all, you know, striving for for good. And so, what advice would you have for someone who's looking to step into the sphere of of significant and authentic and tangible change on communities and and yeah, and stepping into that world of impact and equity work?

Daesha Ramachandran

I think you're you're sort of landing it, which is you, my advice or invitation is to there's a few things I think about. One is, right, that you're never alone. You're never in this work alone. The work of systems change is the work of a collective right moving towards something and and in moments where you're feeling that like take a beat. And check in and find that width in your community because there are others alongside you rooting for you. Even if they're not in the same space or discipline, right? Figuring out how you power your own resilience is important. Part of that is recognizing. Yeah, no, no one’s solving these problems on their own. That's silly. And also, like not the right work for someone who wants to do that because it's about dynamic exchange, right? Our work of systems is about changing how we are in relationship with one another. And then the second thing is you're already ready to do it, right. You already have the wisdom in your body and your brain to advance your purpose. I think the biggest thing that's hard to get past or was hard for me to get past was feeling like I ever had enough right at any time. Did I know enough? Was I smart enough? Was I capable? And I wish I could go back sometimes and tell my younger self that like you've already got. It just do it, right. Ask the questions, find the people, be brave and vulnerable about what you don't know, but recognize that you do have a set of really explicit, like unique talents that are yours alone to offer.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Yeah, that's and that's just really inspiring and I feel like a lot of people know it and sometimes we don't, like remind ourselves because we think ohh we know we know we're good enough and so we don't tell ourselves, but sometimes we just need to have that reminder. You you have enough, you got it, you do.

Daesha Ramachandran

I mean, the cultures of academics are competitive and they don't always inspire that belief. I didn't feel that when I was there. I'm not sure if I’m allowed to say that. You know, it was hard. It was hard and rigorous, but it was rigorous in a way that I wasn't aware it was going to be. And I don't actually think—maybe don't record this—but I actually don't think that universities actually support people to understand the psychological onboarding to the rigor of that work. It's like pretty hard and it's very isolating sometimes, and the thing that's so wild is that you're actually not alone. You're in these like you know, cohorts of people who are walking alongside you, but sometimes in holding both like, what is my purpose and how am I with all these other people, we lose ourselves a little bit in one of them.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Yeah, and and we want honesty. Like people want to hear honesty. On this podcast we want to hear honesty. So, appreciate everything you say because for me personally, and I think that many other people will agree, it's a very relatable sentiment. Academia is unbelievably competitive and a lot of times we can lose what led us here, and whether that's something is really profound, like wanting to have an impact on the world, or simply you want to study what a cell is, that gets lost sometimes in the the rat race of trying to make it to the university level of academia. So yeah, I I definitely agree.

Daesha Ramachandran

And like that's and and if anything, it's like, oh, yeah, and it's if, if if folks if they are listening right. It’s not a rat race. And that's the challenge, right? It's how do we step outside of a narrative that actually doesn't support our best work. And a rat race actually definitely doesn't. And rats are super collaborative animals like I don't even understand where that phrase came from so. And I would say that, you know, you asked me earlier, sort of like how does my lived experience inform and shape I guess where I'm at now, but part of it was really interesting and tough moving through academics coming from a lens that is both like inside of my own body, both colonized and colonizer, right, like carrying the ancestral traditions of my father's family from India, which was like, you know, obviously, a place colonized by the British and then also holding the like the simultaneous lived experience of European immigrants in my mom's side and inside of that complexity grappling with sometimes in academia feel that there's only one right way of of studying of epistemology. There is a lot of rigidity that gets confused for rigor inside of academia sometimes and it can get easy to get lost or not feel like you have your own knowing to pull from to bring you like to actually innovate inside of a very old discipline, right? There's something new for you to offer.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Definitely, and it brings into the an important point of something that I understand in relation to anti-racism, but it's really from a broader perspective of constantly asking ourselves, why do we think this? Constantly questioning, I have to do it this way because that's the right way. Why do we think it's the right way? Why is this professional and this is not? Why is this you know, the highest level of you being academic and why is this not? And and that's a really hard conversation to have sometimes, especially when we're at this level of academia because people will feel offended by questioning it, and it's not to deny any hard work it took to get here. But but why is this the quote UN quote best path or why are we the ones doing it right?

Daesha Ramachandran

For sure. Yeah, those unnegotiated norms and like benchmarks, they can get hard to continue to hold up, especially as you deepen your own. I think for me, my personal connection with self-awareness, right or inside of anti-racist work like where I want to show up in that, what my positionality is in that. The more I ask those questions, the harder it becomes to sort of receive an answer like well that's just the way we do it. It's like, well, and we can undo that. Like, that's the whole thing. It's all human created, so we can actually reimagine and redesign the systems we’re in.

Brooklyn Arroyo

Right and for a lot of people, it's sort of split on what academia means because for me personally, and for many others, academia is about asking ourselves those hard questions, deepening our understanding of not only ourselves, but the people around us and the systems around us, and yet there are people who come into academia who just want to study what they want to study and then regurgitate it and not really have a deeper understanding of what it is they're studying or what it is they're doing, or the impact that it may have. And so, I think that there is conversations that need to be had on what it takes to become a critical person of not only yourself, but the world around us and and how, how beneficial that could be for our society in future generations.

Daesha Ramachandran

For sure.

Brooklyn Arroyo

So, I guess this sort of steps into the next part of the podcast and it's and we've been talking a lot about things that are really inspiring and really profound and the work that you're doing. And so, I guess the finale is what is inspiring you right now?

Daesha Ramachandran

Well, I would say that this is also sort of kind of on the more meta level. So, I'll try to get concrete inside of it, but I'm really inspired by the possibility of building regenerative systems right now, so not just landing on like what's good enough or sustainable or things that sustain us the current practices, but really move us into systems and communities and possibilities that are giving more than they take and that create a sense of abundance for both like the Earth and its people and inhabitants like that's exciting to me to think about how do we how do we build for that? Sustainability has always been like the word right for, and it still is, but I don't actually want to sustain the current systems. I want whatever comes after that, and so I'm inspired to think about how do I do that and prototype that in my own life. What does it look like to move from sustain to regenerative action? And that is as simple as figuring out like how do I, I mean I am a parent, right of young kids and I'm running a company and do all the work and so it can be hard to feel like that's even possible. How do you create a container and a set of practices that put more in than they take out? So that's what I'm doing at the very micro level is exploring that right now.

Brooklyn Arroyo

And that is extremely inspiring and and you've inspired me and I'm sure that everyone listening to this will find inspiration in the work you're doing and and in your goal and aspirations, just as a person, you know, that's that in itself is inspiring. So, thank you again for for coming on to the PHutures podcast and chatting with me today.

Daesha Ramachandran

Thanks for having me.