Hanika's Stories

    I am excited to share my discussion with Shweta and her colleague Jonita, who shared their story with me! I would also like to congratulate the Opentree Foundation on celebrating 21 years as an organization. Here are my learnings from the offline discussion. 1. What inspired the founding of Toybank? Toybank is the flagship company of the Opentree foundation whose mission is development through play. When Shweta was 21 years old, she volunteered at a children’s home where she observed how playing with toys lit up the children' s faces and gave them joy and freedom to learn and explore. Through this experience she asked herself, what would happen if the kids grew up without the joy of being able to experience playing? This idea stuck with her and later in life she realized that play isn’t just about fun; it shapes people as they grow into adults. That idea was the initial inspiration for Toybank to form, with a belief that every child deserves the right to play. Personally, ...

    I am very thrilled to share my conversation with Tony Earp. He is very dedicated to his coaching career. During this conversation my interest peaked from the minute he started to share his journey with me. I was super excited to write this blog. Here are some highlights of our conversation: 1. Can you tell me how you got into coaching? And what about coaching do you love? Tony told me he loves the process. He got into coaching because, from an early age, he loved working with others. He also enjoyed helping people learn new skills. His favorite part is witnessing that growth and evolution that happens. He mentions the process of going from unknown to being an expert and being committed to the process is something he looks forward to. 2. Coaching is a very important activity that helps any person grow. What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced in your career? Coaching is challenging, and he does not like to see anyone struggle or not achieve what they hoped for...

    Hello readers, today I am going to share with you a few life lessons I learned after my 2025 long course swimming season. Last year I wrote a blog reflecting on my 2024 long course season which I compared with my overall learnings from this season. At a high level, in spite of me moving up an age group, I felt like I did better than the previous year but fell short in a few areas. 1. Mental preparation This season, I felt that I was consistent in my mental preparation. However, I didn’t execute it effectively. I listened to many motivational speeches, but I wasn’t focused on preparing race strategies in my mind. I didn’t pay attention to the concept of visualization at all this season. I now realize that when I was falling short in my races I hadn’t played a short film of my race in my head before the event. Before my last swim meet, I did create a race plan on paper, but I didn’t study it enough to fully understand all the details. Sometimes, I overlooked stretching or c...

    I am super excited to share my conversation with Pawan Badhe. He is currently the Deputy High Commissioner of India (Ministry of External Affairs) stationed at Dhaka, Bangladesh. It was really an honor to talk to him and I appreciate him taking the time to talk to me. Our conversation was a lot of fun! Here are some of the questions I asked him: 1. What inspired you to pursue a career in the Indian Foreign Services? Pawan studied computer engineering in college. After he graduated, his first job was at Infosys. He worked there for a year. During that time, he was curious about civil services and while exploring that option he got interested and excited about foreign policy. This set him on a path to pursue a civil services career. Pawan has represented India at many meetings around the world. For e.g., in Geneva, Switzerland, he talked about women’s rights at the UNHRC, (United Nations Human Rights Council). 2. What types of educational degrees do you need in order to be a...

    I am very excited to share my conversation with Aaron Horowitz. He is the founder and CEO of Empath Labs. Our conversation was very engaging! Here are some of the questions I asked him: 1. What inspired you to start Empath Labs? When Aaron was 13 years old he was diagnosed with human hormone growth deficiency. This meant that his body wasn’t growing as fast as it should be. As a kid he didn’t understand what was going on with his body. This experience and over time he developed a passion to improve young children’s health. In college, he got involved with a program called Design of America. This program helps with using creative problem solving to figure out solutions for social issues. One specific project that Aaron did was with kids who had type 1 diabetes. He saw that a lot of kids were injecting their stuffed animals similarly to how they are normally giving themselves insulin. Seeing what the kids were doing Aaron created a teddy bear for kids with type 1 diabetes. T...