Morning Person: Mallika Goel
We have an amazing team of volunteers who help us make CreativeMornings happen every month. We think they’re super cool and you should totally meet them. First up: Meet Mallika!
1. Who are you?
Mallika. One of the first questions anyone who’s remotely Indian will ask is what your name means (if they don’t already know) because in our culture we place a huge importance on this. So if you’re wondering, mine means ‘Empress’ and in South India it’s also a type of flower.
2. What do you do at CreativeMornings/Auckland?
I’ve been part of the CMAkl team since it first started, those many moons ago. Aside from helping out front of house and welcoming guests, I write (with my colleague Bree) our morning pre-coffee name-tag riddles. I think some of our best creations have been:
- Your childhood in three words (for Childhood)
- Bread is to Butter as Backwards is to….? (for Backwards)
It’s always a huge pleasure to see the creative replies that people come up with!
3. What gets you up in the morning?
Well I love my job at Designworks so getting up and heading to work is something I genuinely look forward to. But even more than that I suppose what gets me up is making it to training first thing in the morning – whether it’s rainy or cold or still dark outside, you’ll find me sweating it out at the gym as early as 6am. It helps me start the day in the right mood!
4. Tell us a surprising fact about yourself?
I’ve grown up pretty much all over the world. I speak four point five languages. My father’s a diplomat and contrary to my accent – I’ve never lived in the States or Canada!
5. What’s your favourite thing about Auckland?
Favourite thing about Auckland – well I have lots – this is incidentally the longest I’ve ever lived in one place so something must be right! – I do love how multicultural the city is and I’ve lived in heaps of cities (even an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean) so trust me when I say that sort of tolerance and diversity is really, really important!
6. Best breakfast you’ve ever had?
Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day, though I rarely deviate away from some form of cereal/oats/muesli. I’ve had some really good breakfasts and accompanying coffees at Mojo in Newmarket.
7. Best CreativeMornings/Auckland talk so far?
Hands down Richie Hardcore’s talk on ‘Rebel’ last week. Inspiring and amazing, had lots to process after that! There have been so many other good ones though.
Philip Fierlinger’s talk on the UX of Money (Feb 2013) gets an honourable mention because that was so interesting. As someone who’s mortally afraid of accounting it was just a beautiful and behaviour changing talk – the power of design!
8. Favourite CM talks from around the world?
I’ll pick two:
- Joost Bakker speaking on ‘Reuse’ (one of those blow-you-away talks that makes you re-examine how you’re living your life and where you can make little changes to reduce your footprint. Also made me appreciate places like Scullery on K road a bit more).
- Ji Lee on the importance of personal projects (I do heaps of personal projects – the talk reinforced my love and passion for them and hammered home the point that you should always see your crazy ideas through because you’ll never know what’ll come of it!)
9. Favourite quote?
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