In this episode my guest is Umbreen Bhatti who decided to stop wearing a hijab after it was a central part of her identity for a significant portion of her life. We discuss this journey and process of reframing her commitment to faith in her personal and professional life. 

Umbreen Bhatti has had a career focused on answering the question of what might our most important institutions be able to achieve when they truly reflect their constituencies and the communities they serve? She’s explored that question as a lawyer, then through journalism and media, and now in higher education, with a goal of connecting people and ideas and creating generous, generative spaces and supports for great people to take great work to the next level.

She’s now the Director of the Athena Center for Leadership at Barnard College.

In this conversation we explore

+ how traditions around religion and community can influence our sense of self

+ how our self-expression and identity changes over the course of our lives.

+ surviving the microaggressions that can occur when expressing your authentic self outside of dominant cultural norms.

+ how we can make decisions and reshape faith from a place of abundance instead of fear.