The Naina Experience

Naina Redhu
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Practicing authenticity. Life experiences. Photography. Solo entrepreneurship. India. Australia. And everything in between.

  1. May 22

    #175 Aishwarya Mishra - From Software Engineer to Interior Designer in Adelaide | The Naina Experience Podcast

    Aishwarya Mishra spent 12 years as a software test engineer before she enrolled at TAFE Adelaide and switched to interior design. She now runs Aishmi Design in Adelaide.She was born in Odisha, grew up in Hyderabad, and comes from a creative family - trained Odissi dancer, fashion designer uncle, mother in media. The software career happened because in Hyderabad, you're handed a short list of options. She picked software, worked it for 12 years, reached management, and decided she wanted something creative.She enrolled at TAFE Adelaide, got her diploma, and credits the practical training there with making her want to fight harder for her place in the industry. She now works alongside her mentor Tanya Nikolic on residential projects end to end - floor plans, 3D renders, site visits, client and trades communication.Her design philosophy is built around color. She's Indian, not scared of pattern or bold palettes, and says most of her client work involves showing people - through renders and patience - that color in a home is a feature, not a risk. She calls the current state of Australian interiors a "beige pandemic." Her counter: you spend 60 to 70 percent of your time at home. It should make you feel something.Her TAFE final project was designing a home for a client with a degenerative disease - eyesight deteriorating over time, wheelchair use ahead. She added color and high-contrast surfaces and made it feel like his home. National award finalist.Skills she carried from software: fast tool adoption, time management, client and trades navigation. She says software engineering has a role in everything she does in interior design now.Seven years in Adelaide - two in Sydney before that. She says the small market is an advantage for someone building a name. Available for residential, open to commercial.Find Aishwarya:Instagram: @aishmi_designLinkedIn: Aishwarya Mishra on LinkedInFind Naina:Instagram: @nainaWebsite: naina.coYouTube: The Naina Experience on YouTubeBe a guest: Join the podcast

    58 min

  2. Apr 23

    #174 Manka Mishra, Reinventing Career and Culture from India to Sweden to Paris

    Episode 174. Manka Mishra joined me from Paris.She is from Dhanbad, Jharkhand. Delhi University, post-grad in Pune, a short stint in Mumbai, six and a half years in Delhi. Ericsson then moved her to Sweden. Thirteen years in Stockholm. Amazon then brought her to Paris, where she now works in business transformation.We talked about what professional survival actually looks like abroad. In Ericsson elevators in Stockholm, Indians were assumed to be developers. She was in marketing. The Swedish workplace is planned, consensus-driven, and deliberately flat. Friends schedule vacations two years ahead. You meet every six months because that is the calendar.Her reading on why most Indian men she saw move to Sweden went home while the women stayed: Indian women are trained to give and to ask, men are trained to be served. One of those survives.Paris flipped the script. Nine months to sort her admin. A recent hospital emergency where staff would not help her because she does not speak French. She pays 42 percent tax. A visiting friend who spoke French had to step in.Outside work: PhD in Odissi, PhD in vocal, certified yoga trainer, painter, golfer, swing dancer in training, calligraphy student. She runs a Women in Leadership forum she built in Sweden, now extending it across Europe. The focus is authentic leadership, including the hits leaders took on the way up.She is hard on herself. She knows it. Forty was the year it got better.Connect with Manka:LinkedInConnect with Naina:InstagramWebsiteWatch on YouTube.Book a podcast session.

    59 min

  3. Apr 22

    #173 Sabreen Haziq, Building Brand Equity on LinkedIn from Boston

    Episode 173 of The Naina Experience. My guest is Sabreen Haziq, based in Boston, on the production team at Buffer, and someone who has posted on LinkedIn every single day since June 2024.We talked about her "land and expand" approach to content: pick one platform, invest deep, then port the brand equity somewhere else. LinkedIn has been her anchor. YouTube is her current expansion, a rebrand of a dormant 2013 account that already brought in 400 new subscribers off the first video.Her brand deal pipeline runs through LinkedIn DMs, not Instagram. SaaS companies reach out, she builds the campaigns, the work repeats. She's also planning a new Instagram in July with a fresh email, geotagged US, to crack the wallet-share problem she's hit with a heavily South Asian audience.On production, she's refreshingly un-precious. One key light next to the camera, two lights taped to the back wall, a night lamp for fill, Sony A7IV. "Date the camera, marry the lens."The AI section is where she went deep. She doesn't write code. She built a workflow at Buffer where Zapier pulls every message from the top ten Discord channels into Google Sheets, Claude analyses sentiment, Notion receives a monthly report that now shapes product decisions. Her framing: nobody is behind on AI right now, as long as you're willing to embrace it.Plus moving to London at 22 to study and waitress through it, moving to the US at 25 and rebuilding after divorce, launching her coffee brand Breadcrumb Behavior on ManyChat, and the line I keep thinking about: "I get bored very easily. So I sometimes give up before the compound effect hits."Links:

    56 min

  4. Apr 15

    Supriya Joshi, Practicing Family Law and Litigation in Mississauga, Ontario. Episode 172 #ThaNainaExperience

    Episode 172 of The Naina Experience. Supriya Joshi is a family law lawyer in Mississauga, in the Greater Toronto Area. She graduated Windsor Law in 2016, was called to the Bar in 2017, and practises exclusively in family law and litigation at Subhash Joshi Law Professional Corporation on Drew Road. She is the first lawyer to come on the podcast.Supriya and I met years ago because of a shared love of Suryagarh in Jaisalmer. We have travelled together since, in Rajasthan and to Binsar.In this episode we covered the reality of running your own practice and the delegation problem, why hiring in family law has a sensitivity layer most jobs don't, and two of Supriya's cases that have been reported and cited as precedent. One was a spousal support claim from a short marriage that involved violence and relocation. The other was a jurisdictional argument on whether issuing an application is enough or whether it needs to be issued and served.We spent time on how the Ontario courts are working through family law applied to South Asian multi-generational families - joint ownership, family violence presenting differently, and whether large sums from parents to adult children are loans or gifts. Her observation post-COVID is that lawyers are more litigious, not less, because virtual hearings lowered the friction.On AI - Supriya has read submissions citing fully hallucinated ChatGPT cases, and the newer version of the problem is real cases with fabricated quotes attached. Her line: lawyer and advocate are two different things. The advocate part is the human part, and that part isn't getting replaced.Outside the law, Supriya is a serious World War II historian. Grandfather in the Indian Air Force, great-grandfather fought in Burma. She has visited most of the Western Front and a lot of the Eastern Front, and keeps an RAF air mask on her desk.Best line: I divide property for a living.Supriya Joshi - Legal Aid Ontario DirectoryNaina's WebsiteNaina on InstagramNaina on YouTubeCome on the Podcast

    57 min

  5. Apr 15

    Shefaly Yogendra, Reimagining the Boardroom for Uncharted Spaces Episode 171 #TheNainaExperience

    Episode 171 of The Naina Experience is with Shefaly Yogendra, author of Uncharted Spaces, board director, and one of the sharpest pattern-spotters I know. We recorded on the morning of her book launch at The Shard in London. This is her first book.Shefaly introduced me to the word metacognition years ago. Her definition: what we do is what we get engrossed in, and the learning comes when you abstract one layer up to see the principle underneath. The best use of formal education is to apply its principles to your own life. Most people reserve them for work and miss the point.We talked about what boards actually do. Shaping strategy. Overseeing money and people. Protecting the regulatory and social licenses that let a business operate. We talked about principle-based versus rule-based governance, and why the first 100 days on any new board are about listening. Two eyes, two ears, two hands, one nose.We talked about CEOs and the fact that the serial CEO is no longer a thing because the stress is too much. Boards have a human and a legal obligation to intervene when a CEO is in duress. We talked about "trust in God, but lock your car" as a framework for verification. We talked about the epistemic crisis and what happens to public discourse when nobody brings facts to the table.The part I needed most was about building a personal board as a solopreneur. A small group of people you trust for sense-making and challenge. Some good in peacetime, some in wartime. Know which is which. Shefaly reframed Australia as my own uncharted space. I had been calling it survival mode.Uncharted Spaces is out now.Book InstagramBook WebsiteBuy on AmazonNainaInstagramWebsiteSpotifyYouTubeBook your own podcast episode

    58 min

  6. Apr 7

    #170 Saurabh Bhatia, Building Comix.one for Indie Comic Creators Worldwide #TheNainaExperience Podcast

    Saurabh Bhatia is the founder of Comix.one, a marketplace, crowdfunding platform and community for indie comic creators, all in one place.In this episode we talk about his 20 years in tech, growing up on A.H. Wheeler stalls in nineties India buying Nagraj, Chacha Chaudhary, Archie and Richie Rich, and the fact that we both kept our Archie collections in newspaper-covered wooden boxes until we were 35.Saurabh ran his own comic book Kickstarter in 2017, raised around six thousand US dollars and produced two printed volumes. What he discovered after his campaign ended is the problem Comix.one now solves. Every creator he spoke to had a campaign in February, another in August, and in between the community they had built just dissolved. Comix.one closes that gap as marketplace, crowdfunding and community in one place.Creators on Comix.one keep 85%. The platform takes 15%. On Amazon, creators hand over around 65% and still have to fight an SEO game. Print on demand through Comix Wellspring now ships books from creators in Australia, the US, Canada, Mexico and the UK to fans in America. There are print partners in Canada and China too, both introduced by creators already in the community.We talk about working alone for two years before his sister joined to build the front end and the catalogue jumped from 200 books to 2,000. About bringing in PR help from people who used to run PR at Archie Comics and manage creators at King Features, the syndicate behind Popeye and Beetle Bailey. About DM-ing the head of marketing at DC Comics on LinkedIn and getting a response.We also get into the deliberate choice not to raise VC money, why well-funded platforms like Comixology and Zestworld kept losing alignment with their communities, the AI debate in illustration, and why Saurabh believes the value is always in the process.Guest links:Website: Instagram: Twitter: YouTube: Host links:Instagram: Website: YouTube: Book the podcast:

    55 min

  7. Apr 3

    #169 Deepika Jindal on Empowerment, Meditation, and Honoring Yourself - Circle of Calm, Sydney

    Episode 169 of The Naina Experience Podcast with Deepika Jindal - empowerment coach, meditation teacher, and founder of Circle of Calm in Sydney.Deepika moved to Australia from India 21 years ago. She spent years in corporate and public service before a moment of clarity during meditation gave her the courage to leave a toxic workplace and start coaching women full-time.We talked about people pleasing, self-doubt, the inability to receive, nervous system dysregulation, and the conditioning that keeps women from advocating for themselves. Deepika shared how she watched talented women get passed over in every workplace because they were not vocal about their contributions.Her coaching program takes women from self-doubt to self-trust. She runs corporate mindfulness programs and has worked with Reuters and Capgemini. She has just launched monthly women's circles in Sydney starting April 2025.This conversation got personal - I shared where I am post-breakup, my struggles with honoring myself, and why I have been chatting with Claude AI as a coping mechanism. Deepika reminded me that nothing beats human connection and that movement helps emotions process instead of getting stuck.Deepika Jindal - Circle of CalmWebsite: circleofcalm.com.auInstagram: @circle.of.calmNainaWebsite: naina.coInstagram: @nainaYouTube: The Naina Experience on YouTubeSpotify: The Naina Experience on SpotifyBook a spot on the podcast: naina.co/product/the-100-podcast

    1 hr

  8. Apr 2

    #168 Swapna Namboodiri, Turning Ocean Plastic into Art in Adelaide

    Swapna Namboodiri is a multi-disciplinary environmental and sustainability artist based in Adelaide. She works with upcycled single-use plastic - turning it into sculptural wall pieces, large-scale installations, and wearable art. No formal training. No gallery representation. International sales since 2017.In this episode: 6 years at Infosys (with a full creative practice running every evening after work the whole time), the move from Bangalore to Doha to Adelaide, building 136K Instagram followers through raw process content, her wearable art piece Amphitrite at Australian Wearable Art on the Sunshine Coast, and a commission for Bank Australia and Parley for Oceans launched at Martin Place, Sydney.We also get into the practical - shipping, pricing, Art Finder, Blue Thumb, and what it looks like to build from scratch in a country where nobody knows you yet.Swapna's WebsiteSwapna on InstagramSwapna on FacebookSwapna on YouTubeNaina's WebsiteNaina on InstagramNaina on YouTubeCome on the Podcast

    1 hr
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About

Practicing authenticity. Life experiences. Photography. Solo entrepreneurship. India. Australia. And everything in between.

Information

  • Creator
    Naina Redhu
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2026
  • Episodes
    186
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Naina Redhu
  • Show Website
    The Naina Experience

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