Every time I hear someone say Palsa & Pulk or Nikander Holding out loud, I smile a little bit on the inside — but it is not because of the reasons that you might expect.
In a performance review at work many years ago, I was told that I needed to tone it down, because speaking in a distinctively American accent and then telling everyone I was “half Finnish and half German” was just too much. I was explicitly told that it would be better for my career, if I made more effort to blend in and just “be a bit more normal”.
Apparently, my personal “normal” of having been born to a Finnish-German family and raised in California for a part of my childhood was “not normal enough” for my colleagues. Apparently, it bothered them that there were so many things going on at once with my accent and nationality. And apparently, it also came across as slightly fake and over-the-top. In other words, I was being told that there was not only a “normaler normal” but even a “better normal” that I could and should be.
As someone who was raised surrounded by a lot of diversity, acceptance, and love, hearing this feedback not just once, but a whole series of times, made me feel pretty hurt and unseen — and frankly, it also made me want to quit.
At the time, I would often ask myself: “Why work at a place where you have to hide your heritage?” or “Why work somewhere where the way you were born and raised will never be accepted?”.
As the CEO of Palsa & Pulk and Nikander Holding, I still ask myself those very same questions today. My answer over the past two years has been building two companies where no one will hopefully ever have to ask themselves those very questions about their own work and workplace.
When I founded the companies, I therefore also made an active decision to embed intercultural diversity into the company names. I named Nikander Holding after my own intercultural family. For Palsa & Pulk, I picked two of the only Finnish loanwords in the English language and paired them together — for double the effect!
That means that every time you say one of the two company names, you are indirectly acknowledging that companies can be built by people whose normal may be different to yours.
Every time I now hear someone say Palsa & Pulk or Nikander Holding out loud, I heal a little bit on the inside — because I am reminded that companies can be a force for acceptance and inclusion if they choose to be so.
Exactly two years ago today, I made the final decision to start the incorporation process for both Palsa & Pulk and Nikander Holding. Two years into the journey, I can say with even more certainty that I know that I will be here pushing for business that is built on respect and creating more space and acceptance for diversity for as long as it takes — because honestly, there is nothing over-the-top about being the way you were born!
📷 Photo of one “normal” Finnish-German kid in California, happily sitting next to the Mendocino Tree.
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