B&T has partnered with Smelly Lunch Stories to amplify stories of culturally diverse talent who have risen to the top. Even though a third of those starting out in the industry are from ethnic minority backgrounds, only 12 per cent rise to the C-Suite, and we hope these stories inspire the next generation.
Fresh from claiming the B&T Women in Media’s Rising Star award, Initiative strategy and communications design director Pawena Kania shares her Smelly Lunch Story.
1. Tell us about yourself in one sentence.
If I’m not deep in a work flow state, I’m by the beach with a spicy marg and a book.
2. What’s the “smelliest” lunch dish you’ll proudly defend forever?
Biryani! Hands-down! No doubt. And it’s not even “smelly”, smelly would be tuna, or sardines or anchovies! Biryani is the most divine fragrant dish that we make in my family home every 2nd Sunday. It’s an elaborate dish and a full cocktail of spices – with peak detailing, I must add. You choose your protein: fish, meat, chicken, prawn or soya beans!
It’s a heritage dish Mauritians take from their muslim counterparts on the island I come from, it’s closer to an Afghani or Pakistani biryani than it would be to the Indian Hyderabadi biryani or Singaporean biryani.
And that’s the beauty that I love about how a dish like the Biryani takes to the geography it goes to via the diaspora or the indentured trade as a result of colonisation in the 1800s. While we have variations in terms of spice intensity or gravy vs no gravy for the protein, the base is simple: tonnes of effort, love and hard-earned sweat to simply make that dish.
3. Please tell us your Smelly Lunch story.
I was born and brought up in Mauritius and to be honest, I’m not sure I ever faced any “Smelly” lunch stories situation.
Mauritius, in the truest sense is a rainbow nation and a pluriethnic society. I grew up in a village with seven Masjids or Mosques, as someone from a Hindu household with neighbours Sino-Mauritian neighbours and a quarter of my family coming from a Christian faith.
We grow up being extremely respectful of differences and celebratory of our festivals, we are one of the few countries in the world which has a public holiday for every ethnic group and when I say that we are truly a melting pot, I really mean it and invite you to absolutely visit the island one day to understand that.
In the face of this [forget tolerant], but inclusive upbringing, most places I travel to in the world come across as merely a mixed bowl.
So, I’m sort of proud to say I didn’t have a smelly lunch story. I was never made to feel the lunch I brought anywhere was somehow not okay, until I actually took up an internship at 22 in the bustling city of Sydney.
That was wild.
One of my French co-workers was heating her lunch, a Thai Green curry, in the office kitchen and my boss called out to me for a private chat.
He said: “Please don’t heat your pungent food in my kitchen.”
I furrowed my eyebrows, didn’t get what he meant. I hadn’t brought any lunch, I would usually buy my lunch at a nearby cafe and go sit at a park to eat so I didn’t understand what was what until it later dawned on me that he assumed the curry “smell” was from my food because I was obviously the only brown person in the crew.
I never bothered to clarify him, I usually never clarify old white men.
4. Was there ever a moment when you felt different or like an outsider because of your cultural or ethnic background? How did that make you feel?
There’s a telling dynamic I’ve noticed in the workplace: colleagues I interact with daily rarely need me to repeat myself, while those I engage with less frequently sometimes struggle to tune into my accent.
You know the signs: the slightly-too-long pause before responding, the polite “sorry, say that again?”, or that particular smile that suggests they’ve decided to laugh along rather than ask for a third repeat.
However unintentional, that friction can quietly erode the ease of a relationship or friendships in the industry. In a people-first industry, approachability isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the whole game. When that invisible barrier appears, the vibe simply doesn’t land the way it should.
Then there are the moments that are harder to name. The inside jokes that reference a shared cultural shorthand I was never handed. The pub trivia nights where “general knowledge” turns out to be a very specific kind of Australian-specific knowledge. I used to sit with the quiet sting of that, feeling a little dim when the answers came easily to everyone else.
Eventually I made peace with laughing along, showing up anyway, genuinely wanting everyone to have a good time, even when I was still mentally two steps behind trying to piece together what the moment was even about.
Karaoke is its own chapter. The music I grew up with doesn’t feature on those screens, and there’s a particular kind of loneliness in scrolling through a catalogue that has no memory of you. Once, two of my managers made a point of asking me to put a song on, something I actually knew and to just sing it. It was a kind gesture, and I won’t forget it. But I’d be lying if I said it didn’t also crystallise something: I stood there alone doing my bit, the only one who knew the words, the only one in that moment who couldn’t quite dissolve into the crowd.
Belonging, it turns out, isn’t just about being invited. It’s about finding yourself reflected somewhere in the room.
5. If you were stuck on a desert island, what one piece of media (book, podcast, film, album) would you take with you?
Just a stash of Bollywood and Tollywood SVOD subscriptions with an empty journal does it for me. From a mainstream SVOD platform POV, Amazon Prime definitely has a bigger array of South Asian classics, Netflix is slowly catching up.
7. Who opened a door for you, and who have you opened one for since?
It’s been the people at the beginning of my career. Jahn Sapanlay, my SEO Director at the time, was the first person to do so for me. International students have a negatively geared upstart in the media industry.
We come with a lot of cultural intelligence, and cross-market maturity, often with a work ethic that’s unquestionable, the industry works on referrals and we are all guilty of referring people who look a whole lot like us because after all we tend to hang out with people who are similar to us, especially when with common languages as a denominator.
Despite being a hard worker, and I would like to believe a high performer, getting my first role was a Herculean task. The only options open at the time for me were small start-ups which turned out to be major scam schemes eventually extracting labour from us without any remuneration; I still haven’t received any formal payment for 2 months worth of labour.
I had to quickly look for my next move and it was Jahn who trusted me enough to give me my first break and also later refer me for more stable roles.
It’s six years for me in the industry now and I can precisely count four different people who come from international student backgrounds as well who I have successfully referred and provided the same opportunities to.
8. How does your cultural background influence the way you approach your role?
I can’t tell that my multicultural origins have helped me influence any campaigns directly if I’m being candid simply because we don’t do multicultural targeting, so the influence hasn’t had an obvious outlet there. But the indirect imprint is everywhere, and in some ways, that’s more interesting.
Working in comms and media strategy means you’re constantly making assumptions about who the audience is, what they already know, and what will land. My instinct is always to interrogate those assumptions.
I notice when a brief quietly presumes a monocultural reader. I notice when a meeting falls silent not because the room has nothing to say, but because some people come from cultures where speaking over a senior or volunteering an unsolicited opinion simply isn’t done. I try to create the conditions where that voice gets drawn out rather than written off as disengagement.
There’s also the dual labour of operating in an industry built around a cultural fluency I’m still acquiring. Understanding the tribalism of AFL versus NRL fandom, the nostalgia packed into something as specific as fairy bread, these aren’t trivial to grasp from the outside. They’re the invisible grammar of Australian culture, and fluency in them is often mistaken for intelligence or competence in rooms like ours.
I work twice as hard to earn that literacy, and I rely (gratefully) on teammates generous enough to context-set without making me feel like a guest.
What my sociology and anthropology background has given me, though, is a genuine appetite for that labour. I find culture fascinating to decode. But I’m also clear-eyed about what it costs and that awareness makes me a sharper strategist, because I never forget that for a significant slice of any audience, the “universal” reference isn’t universal at all.
9. What advice would you give to someone starting out who feels like they don’t fit in?
I never had any colour awakening until I came to Australia, and mind you I had travelled and lived in four different countries and continents before sashaying my way Down Under.
The ‘fitting-in’ mental load here is real. Code switching between the 3-5 languages you speak in your brain before you translate it into English is real.
Feeling like your wardrobe is not monochromatic enough in colour is real.
Feeling like the person in front of you doesn’t understand half the things you say is real, they don’t and are often too polite to admit it.
It’s all real, don’t gaslight yourself into thinking that somehow you are the ugly duckling. You aren’t. And reach out, happy to chat.
10. What do you wish more people understood about cultural diversity and why do you believe it’s important in leadership teams?
That it’s more often than not about the little things: have we made good provisions for the vegetarians or are there halal or kosher options? Have we taken into account that non-alcoholic options are plentiful? Do we have flexibility to exchange Christmas holidays with other holidays?
When we think of people of colour, we tend to put them under a broad painting brush as well. But a person of colour who is Australian, brought up with a western ecosystem is different from someone who comes to the industry as a fresh expat and they require different levels of assimilations.
It’s easier for ‘people of no colour’ to accommodate ‘coconuts’, less so brown people from origin countries for example. Having that sensitivity is important.
Check out recent Smelly Lunch Stories: Brendan Willenberg, Berlian Adyuda, Andie Potter, Marcelle Hoyek
If you have a Smelly Lunch Story you would like to share, please email: [email protected]
