About Crystal Kadakia

My name is Crystal Kadakia, and I'm from the 2018 class, the Upsilon Prime cohort, and my current role is the owner of my own consulting firm Invati Consulting.

When I think about MSOD, it came at a time where I wasn't sure if I knew what I was doing. Even though I'd had this consulting firm for a few years, I felt like I was doing the work, but I didn't really know, "Hey, am I really grounded in something real?"

So when I found MSOD it was more for a practical experience, and what I got out of MSOD was that, and so much more. I think there's a lot of ... always more that you get from MSOD than than what you expect.

I could have spent 20, 30 years figuring this stuff out myself, my triggers, my past, how that shows up in the present, and this just short-cutted all of that and gave me the tools to keep on being resilient, and continuing that ongoing self awareness, self management, self-as-instrument work that we all do.

I think that the shortcut piece of it just really impacted me a lot. It made me more confident, coming back, but I think the resilience is really the piece that I really treasure from the MSOD program.

When it comes to my legacy, as I think about it now, I think there's two things that come to mind. One is, during the program I felt like there's a certain voice that I brought, in a very kind of diversity/inclusion kind of way. And I think that's continued to grow, as the legacy that I've been contributing to community, to clients.

I think this very multidisciplinary whole self, and being someone who had a background as an engineer, became a training manager, and then continued this journey into OD, it's a very broad span of things. And I think it creates this unique voice, as well as growing up both with the eastern philosophy and a western philosophy, and I just sometimes see myself as a really big blend of things.

And when I think about where we're headed, that blend, that ability to kind of flex from one point of view to the other, and do that in a very conscious, self-aware way, I really feel like that's something very important for me to contribute back.

So whether in my consulting practice, if I'm talking about digital and humanity, or if I'm talking about inclusion, or learning, I love playing at this point of intersections because I think it reflects very much my own personal experience. And it's a very, I think, very congruent way for me to bring self-as-instrument out there. And for that to be my legacy is always representing that multidisciplinary, that diverse whole self.

The contribution I'm longing to make is super audacious, I think. I tend to think very big, and then if you miss the big, no big deal, but at least you shot for it. So for me, I think this idea of shaping the future of OD, and what does that mean, what does that look like, who does that look like, who does it touch, how does it touch society, those types of questions. I'm longing to be a part of that conversation and do what I can, to really serve the community.

Not just OD, but really the external, outside of OD. Because I think we can play such a big role in the coming years, with a lot of the global challenges we're facing, a lot of the potential for humanity to backslide, and digress to maybe reptilian-brain type of qualities or decision making, or behaviors.

And I just feel like we play such a big role in that, and I want to be a part of that conversation in a very practical way. Like, "This is the global challenge we're facing. How can we as, OD, play a role in that?" So I think there's a longing for me to be seen by both of those communities in that bridge, of inside of OD, and outside of OD. Being in that bridge world.

I think what really strikes me about the application of OD in the real world is ... just things that really touch me is how things that people thought of, and were doing, 50, 60 years ago in this field are still so relevant. I'm very much someone who has a need to integrate the past, present, and future, and really treat all three as a both/and, and not as an either/or, or one ongoing spectrum.

And I think the thing about OD that no other field does is really look at all three of those in a very integrated way. We respect the past deeply. We really look at the relevance in the present, and then we have the power to dream that future. And so if there's one thing, when I think about this program, the community, it's just how things that people have thought of, people have been doing, it's still relevant today. And we have the potential to keep on applying it in bigger ... get more reach, continue to do those types of things.