Hope in a Wounded World
A reflection on staying tender in a world that asks us to harden.
The world feels heavy.
Even in the quiet of slow mornings, the weight of what’s unfolding around us is impossible to ignore: wars raging on, climate disasters displacing millions, mass layoffs, surging anti-immigrant sentiments, and leaders turning to censorship and control.
It feels strange sometimes to hold so much beauty and heartbreak in the same breath. This is the paradox of being alive today. We live in a deeply wounded world, and I choose to lead with hope, empathy, and love.
What Hope Looks Like
Hope is about choosing to believe in life when everything around you is telling you to shut down, be numb, and give up.
Hope is looking at a wounded world and deciding to keep your heart open. It’s leading with integrity when no one’s watching. It’s holding space for someone’s truth, even when it’s hard to hear.
Hope is the breath in a moment of anxiety. It's rest in a culture obsessed with productivity. It's choosing love.
Hope is remembering that humanity matters as much as your performance.
Hope is also letting go of pretending to have it all figured out.
Attuned Leadership
We don’t need perfect leaders. We need attuned leaders.
The world doesn’t need you to be invincible. It needs you to be real. To admit when you’re wrong. To stay curious. To centre compassion. Especially when things feel uncertain.
As someone who has led through crisis: mass layoffs, sudden geopolitical shutdowns, and leadership exits, I’ve learned that true strength is about staying soft even when life hardens around you.
There is power in saying I don’t know yet, I’m here with you.
That’s what people remember. Not your quarterly strategic plans. How you made them feel in the moments that mattered.
Early in my career, I spent a decade guiding emerging leaders as a Leadership Educator across top Canadian universities, teaching not just leadership models, but also on finding your purpose. That foundation of inquiry, humility, and service shaped how I see leadership today.
Later, a decade in the tech industry brought me into rooms with founders, visionaries, and billionaires, where I witnessed the behind-the-scenes realities of scale, speed, and power. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: Culture isn’t what we say it is, it’s what leaders tolerate. It’s not shaped in all-hands meetings. It’s formed quietly, in what gets rewarded, ignored, or avoided.
Culture reveals itself in how we handle silence and dissent, and in whether people feel safe enough to tell the truth. In every room I’ve sat in, from hypergrowth startups to boardrooms mid-crisis, the most impactful leaders weren’t the loudest. They were the ones attuned enough to notice what was unsaid and grounded enough to hold it.
Reintroducing Myself Beyond LinkedIn
I’ve been reflecting on my journey and the core of my being.
I’m a daughter of Tamil immigrants. My parents fled Sri Lanka in the 1980s, escaping persecution, and sought refuge in Germany, where I was born. We eventually settled in Toronto, Canada, where I grew up watching them work multiple jobs to build a better life for my brother and me.
My mother had to drop out of medical school just before graduating. Her sacrifice quietly shaped how I approach every opportunity with hunger and humility. I carried that unfulfilled dream with me, even if unspoken. There was always a sense that I had to make it count. That I couldn’t waste the life she fought to give me.
Independence came early. I fast-tracked through high school and left for university a year ahead. I wasn’t ready, not emotionally or mentally. That’s how deeply I craved freedom. I wanted to chart my path, to see the world, to live on my own terms.
My grandmother, a fearless educator and human rights activist, was my greatest influence. She took me to my first peaceful protest on Parliament Hill in Ottawa when I was 13. That moment lit a fire in me. I went on to study Political Science and Peace & Conflict Studies, determined to do something about injustices in the world.
Leadership found me early. First in student government. Then, as a Resident Advisor. Later, as a Leadership Educator across Canadian universities. Empowering others with leadership tools became my way of showing up in the world. I didn’t yet know that these seeds would grow into a career across continents.
In my early 20s, I took my first solo trip to Sri Lanka, in search of roots and answers. Why did we leave such a beautiful island for the icy winters of Canada? The journey left me with more questions than answers. My heart cracked open seeing how many continued to suffer. It humbled me. It shaped me. My life changed forever.
The Tamil diaspora community held each other through grief. I went on to advocate for humanitarian efforts in Sri Lanka, attending UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva. I left disheartened. Everything I had learned about international diplomacy felt like a mirage. The real story was one of silence, generational trauma, and unhealed wounds.
Much like the world today, where, sadly, history is repeating itself again and again.
Just this week, reports of mass graves being discovered in Sri Lanka have resurfaced in international headlines, opening old wounds for Tamils around the world. For many of us, the grief is not distant; it is all too real. It lives in our bodies. It speaks through our silence. And it echoes in the questions we still carry, questions that remain unanswered, decades later.
The Break That Became a Beginning
In 2014, I took what I thought would be a one-year sabbatical to travel. I never went back home to Toronto.
That break became a turning point. It opened a new chapter of my global career in tech. Along the way, I’ve led People & Culture globally at hypergrowth companies like trivago, Grab, and TikTok. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to travel to over 55 countries. Each one expanded my worldview, added color to my beliefs, and reminded me of how deeply interconnected we all are.
I was thriving.
Then came 2021.
That year broke me open. I lost my grandmother and a dear friend and mentor within months of each other's passing. It was the first time I experienced grief in its full force. It wasn’t just the loss. It was everything those people represented in my life. Wisdom. Anchoring. Their absence created a silence I didn’t know how to fill.
Grateful as I was for yoga and meditation, I needed something deeper. Something that could hold the weight of all I was carrying.
Sacred Sites, Sacred Breath
In 2023, I traveled to the Sacred Valley in Peru with a mentor I trust deeply. What began as a simple journey to rest became a portal of reckoning and renewal.
We hiked sacred sites in reverent silence, breathed in mountain air that carried the weight of generations, and met elders who saw beyond what words could hold. One of the most profound moments came during a 4-hour temazcal, a traditional sweat lodge ceremony meant to cleanse the body, spirit, and lineage.
Inside the dome, in complete darkness, surrounded by steam, intense drumming, and sacred songs, I began to release. Wave after wave of grief, exhaustion, and memory rose to the surface. The heat stripped away the layers I had been holding together for years. Titles. Expectations. Perfection. Grief. They all melted into the earth.
I left that ceremony not fixed, but softened. Emptied enough to hear the whisper beneath the noise.
Yoga under open skies, sound healing that vibrated truths through my chest, meditations by the river that reminded me of the quiet power of presence. I was confronted with the trauma I had buried, the grief I had postponed, and the stories I had told myself about who I needed to be. My definition of success was flawed.
And in that stillness, something shifted. I returned to my breath, not as a tool for productivity or performance, but as a wise guide and compass.
Breathwork gave me language for what I hadn’t dared to speak. It helped me access the wisdom of my body in a way no leadership workshop ever had.
It taught me that clarity doesn’t always come from the mind. Sometimes, it rises from the places we’re most afraid to go. From ceremony, slowness, and surrender, the clarity arrived.
Since then, I’ve chosen to live life intentionally and by design. That’s what brought me to Bali: the beauty of the island, the space it creates to breathe, reflect, heal, and build with more heart. From this quieter rhythm, I’ve been creating with greater clarity and alignment.
I guide 1:1 breathwork journeys for those ready to return to themselves. I work at the intersection of body, breath, and presence to regulate the nervous system and awaken deep inner awareness.
After burning out in the fast-paced world of tech, I came home to the breath. These practices helped me shed years of stored tension, soften my nervous system, improve my sleep, and move forward with clarity.
I hold space for others to do the same.
We move through a therapeutic arc using conscious connected breath, facilitated breath repatterning, bodywork, and sound to access altered states of consciousness safely. This is where deep healing happens. Emotions long held begin to move.
This is the work of reclaiming clarity as a felt sense in the body. A place you can return to, again and again.
Five Lessons I’ve Learned:
There’s no impact without embodiment.
The best frameworks won’t land if a leader is dysregulated, distracted, and disconnected. People feel your presence long before they hear your pitch. If we want to lead others through change, we must first regulate our own nervous systems.Stillness is an act of resistance.
In a world that pushes speed, the courage to slow down is radical. When I pause, I often find deeper insight than when I’m sprinting. Silence can be sacred. Space creates clarity.Grief is not something to move through.
I tried to “bounce back” after my losses. What I’ve realized instead is that grief reshapes you. It lives in the body. It softens the sharp edges. It teaches empathy in ways nothing else can.Clarity is not a destination; it’s a state of attunement.
We keep chasing clarity like it’s something we’ll arrive at one day. Clarity comes in waves. It lives in the alignment between your values, your breath, and the present moment.We lead best when we remember we are human first.
Titles are temporary. Who you are when no one’s watching, that’s the real legacy. Being human with your team creates trust that outlasts any strategy.
Leading with Heart
I still believe in the future. In a future where we feel more deeply. Where wholeness is the goal, not perfection. Where we’re allowed to be tender and truthful and evolving.
I don’t have all the answers. I know this:
We are the ancestors of a time not yet written. The choices we make to lead with heart, to listen deeply, to rest without guilt, to disrupt gently, to forgive, to unlearn these choices shape what’s to come.
I want to build cultures where people can breathe. Where their nervous systems aren’t in fight-or-flight every day. Where creativity isn’t stifled by control. Where leaders remember they are humans first, titles second.
That’s why I write, and I guide breathwork because I care deeply about the intersection of healing and embodied leadership. The world changes when we embody a different way of being.
That begins within.
Breath and presence
Thank you for being here, for caring, for not tuning out. It’s easy to numb. It’s easy to escape. Something in you is still awake. That gives me hope.
You don’t have to fix everything. You can keep choosing presence. Keep choosing joy. Keep choosing to be a soft place in a world that can feel harsh.
I’m walking this path too. With a cracked-open heart. With breath as my compass. With reverence for what we’re all navigating.
To rebuild from love. To lead not only with strategy, but with soul.
Thanks for being here on this journey.
<3 Anitta
