Jaya Chakrabarti's D.Sc. Honorary Degree Acceptance Speech

Another Universe 

It is truly an honour and privilege to be here to accept this honorary award from my alma mater today. And to share this day with you all. 

Not least because in another Universe, I gave up studying physics and conformed to my community’s expectations and family’s hopes by becoming a medical doctor. Alt Me also ended up in an arranged marriage to a high-caste Hindu doctor, willing to endure my darker-than-desirable skin in exchange for my high-caste childbearing hips. 

Thankfully this Universe had other ideas. I’m in front of you today because of a series of unfortunate events, mostly failures of my own making. I’d like to share three of those pearls of hard-learned wisdom with you today.

 

1. Embrace your failures 

 

You are in this room because of your success. But success and failure are both paths that lead to new adventures. For me, every failure came with liberation from expectations and a chance to forge my own path.

[Not a doctor]

When I chose physics not medicine, my consultant aunt came down from Manchester to Bristol to help me see the error of my ways. “Look at your brown skin. You will NEVER be respected unless you are a DOCTOR!!!”. 

[Still not a doctor]

I did try and appease those I had failed by studying for a PhD, again here at Bristol. But eventually, after a traumatic event, I was forced to walk away for the sake of my mental health, finally writing off the possibility of ever becoming ANY kind of doctor.

Bengalis don’t do Business

Leaving academia led me to the world of business. Note, Bengalis don’t run businesses. We are doctors, lawyers, accountants and engineers. So, when Stuart, some of his colleagues and I set up a digital agency, my community was not impressed! I’d never have left the comfortable ivory tower of academia voluntarily, but in the new world of business I discovered I had the freedom to rewrite SOME of the rules…

And here I stand 24 years later. Not a medical doctor, not a doctor of philosophy, but a doctor of science. 

Aunty, you’d better be happy!

 

2. Connect your story with the story of others

 

The shoulders of Giants.

My own story is built upon the privilege earned from the sacrifices of my parents. My own father, Birbhushan Chakrabarti, whose engineering maths calculations stopped the Leaning Tower of Pisa from falling down, whose groundbreaking research was the basis for the doctorates of many, many successful academics, was denied the chance to earn his own PhD and was never promoted in his 30-year civil service career, a victim of institutional racism. My mother, a doctor brought over from India to serve our NHS, endured years of racial harassment at work. Ma Baba… you are my heroes. This is for you.

My story would never have happened were it not for my husband Stuart, on whose genius, unwavering support and love I continue to live out almost all of my crazy dreams, including singing in a seventies funk and soul covers band (!). Bengalis don’t generally do THAT either!

Stuart would not be able to change my universe were it not for his parents Peter and Sandra Gallemore, and their sacrifices in raising him, and always being there for us when the going got tough. 

And of course our beloved boys, Talin and Arjun. Everything your daddy and I do to save the world is because you are in it. 

Which brings me to my Beloved Bristol

I did most of my growing up here, starting at this University. I arrived a terrified 17-year-old with an incredibly low tolerance to alcohol, scared to get on a bus.  But… midnight walks to the suspension bridge with friends, lazy days not revising in Royal Fort Gardens, wrestling with general relativity in the physics library, I grew up. And found my best friend and soul mate Stuart on the same degree course. Bristol was my haven when news of my dishonour spread through my community back home. I have a debt to this city that I don’t think I can ever repay. But I will keep trying.

So…create your networks based on your purpose and values, volunteer your skills for the greater good at the edge of your discomfort zone, root yourself in your family, your community, your city, your country deeply. 

Your voice, even on its own, can be a pilot light in the dark, shining until you ignite the light in others who find you. 

In a room full of historians, social scientists, political scientists and international studies graduates I don’t need to tell you that politics, good or bad, affects everything. 

But I will say that everything is connected. Systems aren't broken, they're just wired badly. So when you think you've found something that needs fixing, understand where your world and your story connects with it, and act within your power, with integrity.

 

3. A Call to Arms: Listen to your small voice 

 

[To Mayor Not to Mayor]

It was a conversation at a Bristol Uni enterprise dinner in 2010 about how the city of Bristol never punched at its weight, that led to me chairing a local democracy campaign to change the governance of our city. 

I naively shouted, “Someone should DO something!” and the CEO of a competing digital agency shouted back “YOU should do something Jaya!!”. 

My favourite definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And a small voice within me chided, “If I’m not prepared to be that somebody, why should anybody else?” 

TISC report

I heard that small voice again in 2014, after our digital agency was hit with an unsurvivable bad debt. We made some tough choices and came through it deeply scarred, smaller, but solvent. “Do something different,” she whispered.  “You can make a difference!” 

Fuelled by a renewed desire for social justice after meeting the CEO of the award-winning anti-slavery charity Unseen, Stuart and I created a tech social enterprise to tackle labour exploitation and modern slavery in supply chains. The world’s first transparency-in-supply chains platform TISCreport.org.

Misadventures 

We had created something technologically straightforward that inadvertently turned into a political football. I upset the status quo, confused the Queen, bantered with the Duke of Edinburgh, presented in Westminster a never to be repeated briefing entitled “50 Shades of Compliance”, wore Doc Martens to Buckingham Palace, lobbied Lords and Ladies, met two Prime Ministers (at a time they were rarer than Pokémon) … and we’ve held multinational companies and government bodies to account. 

I’ve always joked that MBE, for me, stood for a call to action for me to ‘Make Bigger Errors’. With a D.Sc. I’m going to have to go with ‘Do Something Crazier’. 

Which brings me to THIS DAY.

This day marks the end of one of the most important journeys of your life so far.

You've come through your tunnel and the light is shining brightly.

Looking at you all I don't see fresh-faced hopefuls. I see an army of determined critical thinkers, who, ready or not, know that you have a job to do.

You are articulate

You are ambitious

You have tenacity

You are completer finishers

You have agency 

And YOU get to decide your story from here on in. Embrace your power. Lead beyond your authority. There's a planet to save.