Sunaina Khaylar: My story on International Women's Day

Paraplanner speaks out

clock • 3 min read

After paraplanner Sunaina Khaylar saw #mynameis trending on LinkedIn and after reading all the various posts from people with unique, non-anglicised names she said she had never read anything more relatable or felt more understood as a person. On International Women’s Day, with its #breakthebias theme, here she tells her story...

From as little as age three, I've been very aware of how ‘different' my name is to all my friends and the people around me. Except at that little age, I was very proud of my name, telling my nursery teacher, ‘My name isn't Sunaina, it's Sunaina Kaur Khaylar'. The sass. However, as I grew older, I began to notice how uncomfortable it was making me feel, anticipating people saying it wrong. Particularly at school when we would have a supply teacher, and the absolute dread that would come over me, thinking of them having to read my name out loud from the register, in front of the whole clas...

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