U n’ I with Rashmi Shetty

U n' I with Rashmi Shetty -Season 3- Teji Sethi

Our guest this episode is Teji Sethi  a Bangalore-based nutritionist-turned-poet whose bilingual works span free verse, haikai verse, and visual poetry. With a distinctive blend of sensitivity and lyrical grace, her poems and reviews have appeared in over forty national and international journals and anthologies,
including The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English (2020–24), Indian Literature Journal (Sahitya Akademi), Modern Haiku, The Haiku Foundation, Acorn, Wales Haiku Journal, The Heron’s Nest, Ribbons, Muse India, Narrow Road Journal, The Kolkata Review, haikuKATHA, SetuMag (Pittsburgh), and The Partition Museum of India.
 
Sethi is the author of moss laden walls (2021) and co-editor of amber i pause (2023). Her poetry often draws from the musicality of nature and the layered narratives of the India–Pakistan Partition. Her Partition-themed Hindi poem “Kapaas Ke Phool” (2019) won the Partition Poetry Contest by the Partition Museum of India and was later translated into Punjabi and broadcast on Radio Lahore, Pakistan.
Her haikai work has been widely recognized, earning numerous awards and commendations. Her haibun on cancer, “it is”, won the Muse India Triveni Award (2023). Her tanka “how does one measure” was among the Top Three in the Sanford Goldstein International Tanka Contest (2024), and her haiga “surgical drains” secured First Prize in the Jane Reichhold Memorial Haiga Contest (2024). Most recently, she received the Glass House Poetry Award (2024) for her poem on cancer, “Genetically Modified Landscapes of My Town”.
Having journeyed through cancer, Teji follows a unique path of art, poetry, and language — harvesting life experiences and transforming them into creative expressions while sharing positive vibrations across both her personal and artistic communities. She is also the founding editor of Triya, a bilingual micro-poetry journal.
 
Founder:  Triya Mag
moss laden walls, amber i pause 
Facebook Instagram
 

U n' I with Rashmi Shetty Season 3- Sunita Biddu

Our guest for the 167 episode of the Human library Audio Podcast is Sunita Biddu. A digital business coach and blogging mentor with 20 years of experience, she owns multiple successful businesses, mostly on auto mode. Her favorite is Unusual Digital, a website and marketing agency for coaches and personal brands. She co-founded it with her business and life partner, Aditya. She works closely with coaches, consultants, and small businesses through 1:1 coaching and mentoring to build a secure profitable business and an equally fulfilling life with ample free time in hand. Practical, empathetic, and her result-driven approach, people love her clarity, calm, and big-picture strategic thinking. A celebrated speaker at multiple forums, she loves creating green spaces, Latin dancing and lipsticks. Sunita values and lives a slow life, emphasising travel, self-care, family, and mental health.
Listen in as Sunita shares her tips for the successful life she leads.She blends Simplicity & depth in everything she does and has shared some amazing nuggets on the way to use social media with complete control.  Must follow her blog and downloadable resources, it is no less than an encyclopedia of entrepreneurship.
For more details visit:https://www.sunitabiddu.com/

U n' I with Rashmi Shetty- Season 3-Dalia Feldheim

Our guest today is  Dalia Feldheim  an award -winning, Creative, brand-builder, organization-builder, and relentless results-oriented executive with a 20Y successful track record as transformational leader at Procter and Gamble and Electrolux. She has won over a dozen internal and external awards (including global best campaign and external Cannes and Effie).
 
Dalia is the founder of the P&G women’s network in Moscow and Singapore and author of MOM (managing our maternity) internal P&G maternity guide (translated to 26 languages) and her first public book ‘Lead Like a Girl’ promoting more feminine style of leadership with a foreword by Sheryl Sandberg IS a fantastic read.
 
Today Dalia is founder of Flow Leadership Consultancy, as well as Uppiness - Up your game at work online Happiness@work game co- developed with Happiness Studies Academy. She is a sought- after international key-note speaker, executive coach and organisational consultant on a Mission to humanise the workplace and drive resilience and Joy at work so more leaders men as well as women connect to their softer skills and lead like a girl!
 
Listen in as she shares her journey from a little girl ot the inspirational leader she is. Love her take on Failure when she says,
“Failure is a  skill I haven’t yet acquired.”
To learn more visit: https://daliafeldheim.com/

U n' I with Rashmi Shetty ( Season 3)-Janet Yegneswaran.

The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 22 April as International Mother Earth Day through a resolution adopted in 2009. The Day recognizes the Earth and its ecosystems as humanity's common home and the need to protect her to enhance people’s livelihoods, counteract climate change, and stop the collapse of biodiversity.
Climate Change,  man-made changes to nature as well as crimes that disrupt biodiversity, such as deforestation, land-use change, intensified agriculture and livestock production or the growing illegal wildlife trade, can accelerate the speed of destruction of the planet.
Mother Earth is clearly urging a call to action - a need to shift to a more sustainable economy that works for both people and the planet.Protecting the planet is everyone's responsibility.
On the eve of International Mother Earth Day celebrated tomorrow, 22nd April, my guest on U n’ I  with Rashmi Shetty is a self taught landscape artist Janet Yegneswaran. Her mission is to plant trees & sustain the green cover in Bengaluru.  Positive & with an amazing attitude , this 74 year old, clearly shows age is just a number if passion & purpose are equally balanced.
Janet, a landscape designer  started making gardens for neighbours and then commercially for  factories, educational institutions &  government establishments. She landscaped the huge gardens for Kanteerava Stadium for National Games in 1997 and maintained the Stadium Gardens for 5 years. 
In memory of her husband she started  a Trust to plant trees – Rajanet Yegneswaran Charitable Trust. It was in 2005 tree cutting started in Bangalore.  While friends implored her  to join Dharna against tree cutting, she refused. She found the dharna approach negative &  to be positive she decided to plant trees and nurture them instead of mourning. Till date  they have  planted 97,000 trees. The wide network of volunteers in Bangalore is the reason Reforest India project got its due from support from media & their work became recognised.
 
Listen in  as Janet shares her journey as an eco warrior who has found her purpose & her joy!
 
 
 
 

U n' I with Rashmi Shetty- ( Season 3) Usha S. Shetty

 
Our guest for this women’s day special is Usha S. Shetty.
 
After 14 years in the world mass media , Usha’s life led her to her  calling.. Her  boundless passion and positive energy led to the creation of Gramaantara trust in 2008, the focus is on areas of education environment, governance, sanitation, women’s livelihood & housing. She is the engine driving all the Trust programmes. She now is the managing trustee her time to rural development, seamlessly running multiple programmes in parallel.She is the founder trustee of Nivasa, an architectural NGO since 2012, apart from being a POSH consultant with 3 organisations.
 
Listen in as Usha shares her  journey of making a difference.
 
 

U n' I with Rashmi Shetty (Season 3) - Shweta Ektare

Valentine's Day is symbolic of numerous facets of love and affection. It all about the indescribable emotion called love. The beauty is when love makes you take defining decisions that shape what you are even choosing as  life’s path.
 
My guest this Valentine’s day is  Shweta Ektare. A Visual Artist by passion and profession. A qualified  Chartered Accountant, she took the leap of faith and started working as a full-time artist. It’s eight years now & she loves creating paintings that tell stories.
 
She describes what she does everyday with these words,  “It’s an absolute honor to create unique art every day and to be able to serve so many beautiful people around the world.”
 
Listen in as Shweta shares her journey, her choices, her connection to art & how she listened to her heart & stayed loyal to painting over the years. Her ability to blend the creative with numbers that are logical make it a fascinating story.
 

U n' I with Rashmi Shetty ( Season 3)- Vandana Suri

Our first guest for 2025 is Vandana Suri, the founder of Taxshe - a World Bank and UNDP awardee for creating safe mobility solutions for women and kids. One one hand they have women cabs driving kids to schools and tuitions and women to offices and late night airport drives. On the other hand they train women clients to self drive and just get off the risk of abuse in public transport itself. Taxshe has been around for a decade now and created 1.2 million abuse free drives and has trained over 2500+ women to be driving independently. Vandana is an ex investment banker, turned cabbie and driving instructor with a lot of pride, and she believes it's important to be mad to ignite a revolution. She is a TEDX speaker, has got multiple awards which she has lost track on the numbers, but she believes what actually counts is how many women have joined the revolution or got impacted by the same.
 

U n' I with Rashmi Shetty ( Season 3) - Nakul Shenoy

Our guest to day is Nakul Shenoy aka The Mind Reader,  an Indian mentalist, magician, author, and critical thinker. A speaker of choice for Fortune-500 companies, he has delivered high-impact, mind-reading experiences across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, UK, and the USA. With 10 TEDx Talks and numerous television appearances to his credit, Nakul has earned a global following for his mesmerising performances. 
A compulsive reader of books and a self-proclaimed tea connoisseur, Nakul epitomises a mentalist in the real-world via his demonstrated expertise in the allied fields of magic, communication, hypnotism, NLP, user experience, people behaviour, and skepticism. 
Nakul’s book ‘Smart Course in Magic: Secrets, Staging, Tips, Tricks’ is published by HarperCollins and is available in all leading bookstores and online. 
 www.nakulshenoy.com 

U n' I with Rashmi Shetty- N.K.Chaudhary

Our guest today is Nand Kishore Chaudhary, a globally acclaimed social entrepreneur, is the founder of Jaipur Rugs, one of India's largest manufacturers of hand knotted rugs and is often referred to as ‘Gandhi of the Carpet Industry’.
With just two looms and nine artisans in 1978, his journey four decades later stands
at Jaipur Rugs becoming a global social enterprise exporting to over 60 countries
while providing sustainable livelihood to 40,000 artisans in 600 remote villages across five states in India, out of which 80% of them are women.
Management guru, C.K. Prahalad featured his revolutionary business philosophy in his globally acclaimed book -The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.
Mr. Chaudhary has also been termed as ‘father of modern social enterprises’ by Prof.
Jagdish N. Sheth from Emory University, USA. Sheth said, “Jaipur Rugs has become
a role model, that business can serve society and at the same time ... can be a capitalistic institution”.
In 2019, Raj Sisodia featured Jaipur Rugs and NK Chaudhary in his book, ‘The Healing Organization’ for ‘The Power of innocence’. The book highly celebrated NK Chaudhary’s steps towards healing the customers and transforming the society with love.
He has won awards including E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award, CNBC TV18 Emerging India Award, Social Impact Award conferred by former president Pranab Mukherjee amongst  others.
As a simple man, he is devoted to the Indian hand-knotted rug industry with an aim
to position it rightly in the world and to empower its real owner and creator - the Indian weaver.
His philosophy of totality, inclusion and for-profit solutions to society are widely discussed.
Listen in as he shares significant moments in his life with some amazing life lessons.

U n' I with Rashmi Shetty- Season 3- Beno Zephine

Today as India celebrates her 78th Independence day, our guest  on "U N' I with Rashmi Shetty is Special India's first Visually challenged Foreign service officer , the inspirational  Beno Zephine N.L, IFS Under Secretary Policy Planning and Research, Ministry of External affairs.
Beno Zephine received the “First Women’s Award” from the hon’ble President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind in January 2018 for becoming India’s first visually challenged Foreign Service Officer. She secured 343rd rank in the all-India Civil Services Examination 2014. She was instrumental in bringing out MEA’s Annual Report 2019-2020 in Audio format for the benefit of public.
She excelled at learning French language, as part of her compulsory Foreign Language. At the Higher Secondary level, Beno attended Global Young Leaders conference in the US in 2008. She had Secured first place in the Secondary level Examinations, at the state level, among Visually Challenged Category.
She was instrumental in making the Government of Tamil Nadu pass a Government Order for honouring visually challenged students who secure the  first 3 ranks in the Board examinations at the state level. She is the recipient of several awards like Woman of the Year Award by Deccan Chronicle and best Woman by Ritz Magazine.
Google has published herquote, “We are too precious to let disappointments enter our minds” as part of its Google doodle on International Women’s day 2019. Beno has a Masters in English Literature and believes Disability should not inhibit anybody from reaching the Stars. She is often quoted as saying, “I might not have vision, but I have a vision to be a hardworking Civil Servant”.
Listen in as Beno shares her love of life , her positive attitude and why she believes women are Precious.