Origin Story: Where I Learned to Belong

Sometimes your life changes with one decision — even when you don’t recognize it at the time.

In October 1999, I moved to Belgium. It wasn’t a strategic career move or a carefully mapped plan. It was a leap. I had never been to the country before. I didn’t speak the language. I didn’t understand the culture. I arrived in a small city called Hasselt with one suitcase, newly married just a month earlier, no safety net, and a quiet determination to begin a new chapter at Philips.

At first, everything felt unfamiliar. I became the first person of Indian origin on a 3,500-person Philips R&D and factory campus. Even simple things required effort — the food, the climate, the way people greeted one another. There were days filled with excitement, and others marked by loneliness and doubt. I remember wondering, more than once, whether I truly belonged there.

What I didn’t expect was how slowly that question would be answered — not through grand gestures, but through everyday kindness.

Colleagues became friends. Neighbors became anchors. Hasselt, once foreign, began to feel like home. I learned that belonging doesn’t come from fitting in perfectly; it comes from being welcomed as you are. Philips later shared my story under the title “Discovery Day – Talent zit in je hoofd” — “Talent is in your head.” To me, it captured something simple and enduring: talent can come from anywhere, and belonging is built through empathy, not sameness.

Years later, Belgium completed that story in a way I never imagined.

In 2014, a Belgian newspaper wrote about my thirteen-year-old son and his Braille-printer project with Intel, proudly calling him a “Hasselaar.” Even the Belgian Consul General visited us in Silicon Valley to meet him. The same city that once felt distant to me had embraced my child as one of its own.

That moment stayed with me. It told me something powerful: when you take a risk to step into a new world, that world eventually steps toward you.

Since then, I’ve led teams across many countries and industries. But the lessons that guide me today weren’t learned later in my career — they were formed in Belgium. I learned to lead with empathy before expertise. To listen more than I speak. To build trust before strategy. And to never underestimate the quiet courage of people building lives far from home.

If you are working in a new country, a new culture, or simply outside your comfort zone, I hope you hear this clearly: you belong. Your story matters. And one day, the place that feels foreign may proudly call you — or your children — its own.

This isn’t a leadership philosophy I learned from books.
It’s a life lesson I lived.