The 2024 Northern Power Women Awards in Europe — that recognises those who are shifting the dial towards a more gender-equal world — has a Calcutta connection. Sharmistha Chatterjee-Banerjee, an alumnus of Loreto House and Jadavpur University, is one of the 30 recipients on the list.
Sharmistha, who has decades of experience in the education sector in the UK as well as other parts of Europe, now works as director of internationalisation and strategic engagement at Radboud University in the Netherlands, after spending many years at Newcastle University in the UK. She is the only first-generation immigrant and only one from India on the 2024 power list. The Telegraph caught up with her to know more.
What does this honour mean to you and to the work that you do?
I am a Calcutta girl and I am very proud of the education that I received from Loreto House and Jadavpur University. Gender equity stood very strong in my education and though I may not be termed a feminist, I am one at heart. I hope I can be a role model for others who are walking that path.
When you look at the higher education sector in the West, you see that despite women actually entering academia, there are very few in leadership positions and even less women of colour. In the UK, at the moment, there are only 23 women of colour in senior positions. I hope this honour given to me is one way of showing that it is possible to do things. I would like to see more women coming into the world of academia and wanting to be ambitious about leadership positions.
What led you to be on this power list?
Ever since I shifted to the UK many decades ago, I have somehow ended up being one of the firsts in whatever field I worked in. I have always tried to encourage equity, looking at it not just from a gender perspective or colour perspective, but more from an intersectionality perspective. Very few people are aware of it and they try to put you into a box.
My work has involved looking beyond race and gender and more into intersectionality and how that can change perceptions, particularly in higher education, because we are developing leaders of the future and if we can't drive that into our education, then we are not creating the leaders that we want to lead us in the future.
For three years in a row, I have been recognised as one of the 20 most influential Asians and I also won in the inspirational professional category in the Asian Power Awards. For the Northern Power Women Awards, I was chosen out of 1,400 nominations by a panel comprising 70 independent judges. I was asked to give a statement and my statement was that there is no point being a first if I can't be a changemaker and role model.
What have been the biggest challenges to get to where you are?
I studied in JU, which is one the best universities in India, but it was in the pre-Internet age in the 1990s and when I moved to the UK, it was tough to prove that one went to a good university. They knew about the IITs, but no one in the UK knew about JU then. Also, I was suddenly a minority there and I had to start from scratch. I could have done a master's from a university in the UK but that would mean a lot of money. I was also a young mother by then, so for me, it was about leaving all that baggage and going the job-seeker route. I upskilled myself first.
I had the experience and the education and when my son was five, I went back to university. I was the first brown face there, I was working harder than others — as immigrants, we find ourselves doing that. When I got into a position of influence, whether it was at Newcastle University where I worked or at Radboud University in the Netherlands where I am now, the responsibility is on my shoulders as to how I influence change. I work between two countries. I work as director of internationalisation and strategic engagement for Radboud University and I am the chair of the equality diversity inclusion committee and the president's council.
What are the tangible aspects in which you have helped influence change?
At Newcastle University, I was the chair of the Black-Asian minority ethnic committee and one of the things I noticed was that people of colour are not able to succeed in their positions because more often than not, we are shy and modest and we don't present ourselves in the way that we ought to be doing.
One of the things that I did at Newcastle was that I brought people from the industry at a roundtable with the university's senior management to highlight the difference between intention and intentionality. Intention is where you aspire to do something and intentionality is where you make it work. Following on from that, I was able to secure funding to create the first-ever leadership programme, called Inclusive Futures, designed for the BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) community in universities. It is a competitive process... people have to work to get into it and then it takes them through a leadership path. It is important to understand the power of difference. If you put people in boxes, they will never succeed. But if you encourage them to show how their difference can make a difference to the organisation, to society, to community, then you have got it going somewhere.
The other thing I did was in a more societal way. I am also a classical dancer and I translated a few of Tagore's works and presented them through dance and through English dialogue to show how inclusivity existed, specifically in his work like Chandalika. That is a really good example of how inclusivity exists in India. I wanted to change the perception that it is a Western concept.
What are your short-term and long-term goals?
I am 51 and age and stage in life matter. There is a lot of work that needs to be done, around the world and in India, in terms of the whole inclusion game. I would like to spend more time looking into influencing decolonisation of curriculum, right from the
time kids enter school. I have always been part of Newcastle University's mentoring programme and at the moment, I am involved in mentoring refugees. In the next few years, my aim is to look at how to get industry to influence academia and academia to influence industry.
Can you talk about your Calcutta roots?
I grew up in Deshapriya Park in an intergenerational family. When I am told I am progressive, I attribute it to the role models in my house, whether it is my aunt who was a physics professor or my mother who ran a joint family. If you think about management practice, she ran a household of 40 people. She was not trained in management but she could give any MBA a run for their money.
Calcutta is very close to me. I am probably there more often than most people living in the West are. I try and go there during the time of the book fair and I also watch a lot of Bangla films and hang out with my friends. A lot of my university friends are in Calcutta.