How I’d like to start my day and how I actually start it are two very different things.

The first thing I do is wake up is check my emails. I do not recommend it, but it’s just the way I function. As global director, I’m working with teams across seven different editions of our magazine, which means several different time zones, so I’ll start by checking in with India and China because their day will be done by the time I get into the office. 

I am someone who needs alone time in the morning; if I’m not emailing, I’m reading The New York Times (which I’ve done every morning since I was 17), listening to music and drinking coffee. Those things ground me for the day.  

I come from a global community.

I’ve never known a life without travel. I was born and raised in Mumbai, India, but my father lived in Nigeria and the rest of my family was scattered across Hong Kong, Singapore, London and the Caribbean. I come from a community called the Sindhis, who were displaced during partition and are now spread across the entire planet, so travelling to see family was normal. I feel lucky that I had the chance to see all these different places so young; it’s meant I’ve ever thought of anything or anywhere as ‘foreign’. 

I got into magazine publishing by accident.

After studying in the US, I came back to India for a few months and took the first job I could get. They were launching a new edition of the fashion magazine L’Officiel and needed someone on sales. I fell in love with the creative energy. I was a part of the team that launched Vogue India in 2007, which was a beautiful and historic moment, and three years later I was offered Condé Nast Traveller as my first editor-in-chief gig. I said to my managing director, “I don’t know if I can do this. I read fashion magazines, not travel magazines.” He said, “Well, make this a magazine that you would read.” I took those words to heart.