From advertising to adversities

Kunal Chakravarty

Director - Communications & Fundraising

AFAL

I spent 20 years as an advertising and marketing professional before deciding to take on the responsibilities of running a not-for-profit school.

When I told people what I was planning to do, they all either said I was mad or (which amounted to the same thing) brave. But jacking in a career like this to become run a school so late in life wasn’t brave – it was desperate. Though I didn’t admit it at the time, I was entirely burnt out – I had been in the same industry for 20-odd years – and was showing the classic symptoms. I was getting cynical about the value of what I did and of as a whole – what was all this crazy chasing of ephemera really for? 

It would have been much braver (and much madder) for me to quit at 27 when my financial liabilities were limited. Back then, I was still in thrall to the status of what I did (though at the time I would have denied that). The job in itself was part of my identity – it was the impressive part. I feared that without it people wouldn’t want to know me anymore. I wouldn’t be asked to do things. Three years on, the appeal of that status had worn very thin – I knew my close friends and family would like me for what I do.

Secondly, there was a huge financial sacrifice in quitting. My new salary would be barely a fifth of my old one, I had a home loan to pay and practically no savings even now for us a family unit or my child’s future.

My generation was brought up to think that we would do one thing and when we had made enough money or got tired of it, we would stop working altogether. Some of my professional contemporaries have started building portfolio existences and do a bit of this and a bit of that, but the more obvious route – an entirely new career – is still a rarity. This is not because people don’t want to start again, but because no one is showing them how.

Starting again turns out to be much easier, less stressful and less scary than starting out the first time. I often compare myself with my younger colleagues. It has occurred to me that I like my job more than they do, and I’m much less dragged down by it all. The reason is obvious: they need to climb the ladder, to make more money and to impress their managers. I don’t need to do any of these things.

In the end, leaving wasn’t hard. There was almost no jeopardy. The only risk was one I had manufactured myself: having set up a charity to lure others into helping the small non-profit school that I now run, I couldn’t leave if I didn’t like it.