Rashi Malik

Artist, Brainstormer, Educator/Teacher, Entrepreneur, Parent

I am a creative professional, entrepreneur, educator and research and resource facilitator, with a career that has moved through fashion, entrepreneurship, early childhood education and, today, school libraries and learning. While these may seem like very different worlds, I have always been drawn to the same thing: understanding people, noticing possibilities and turning ideas into experiences that connect. I began my professional journey in fashion after graduating from the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Bangalore, where I was awarded the Gold Medal for Best Academic Performance and the award for Most Creative Design Collection. I spent over a decade in design and product development, working across export and retail businesses and developing products for international brands including Diesel, French Connection, Next, Mexx, Armani Jeans, Banana Republic, Gap, Marks & Spencer, Monsoon and Sainsbury. It was here that I learnt to take an idea from concept to reality—balancing creativity with research, consumer needs, collaboration and the realities of execution. In 2013, I took a very different creative leap and founded Mum-entos, a venture that transforms children’s outgrown clothes into personalised keepsakes. What began as an idea rooted in memory and emotion grew into a business that has served more than 200 families. Building Mum-entos taught me that the most meaningful ideas are often those that connect with something deeply human: our memories, our relationships and our need to hold on to the stories that matter to us. My work with children began alongside my creative career. As a certified Music Together trainer, I worked with young children through an early-childhood music programme built around participation, exploration and joy. That experience reinforced my belief that some of the most powerful learning happens when we are given permission to explore rather than simply being told what to learn. Today, I work at Shiv Nadar School, Faridabad, as a Library Advisor and Research & Resource Facilitator. My understanding of a library extends far beyond books and reading. I see it as an invisible curriculum—a space where children can encounter ideas, ask questions, discover themselves and make connections across the world around them. Much of my work is about creating these moments of connection. I design reading experiences, research opportunities, author engagements and interdisciplinary programmes that encourage children to move from consumption to creation, from simply finding information to questioning it, and from reading a story to asking what it makes them think, feel or notice. I am also the creator of Battle of the Books, a reading initiative that brings together literature, collaboration, discussion and joyful intellectual challenge. Through my work, I am particularly interested in the power of stories to open conversations—to help us see perspectives beyond our own and to make ideas travel from one person to another. Looking back, I see a thread connecting everything I have done: I have always been interested in what makes people stop, look again and connect. Whether designing a garment, building a business around childhood memories, making music with young children or creating experiences around books, I have been drawn to the space where an idea becomes meaningful because it is shared. Today, I want to create more of those spaces—where stories are exchanged, questions are welcomed and ideas have the opportunity to travel far beyond where they began.

I am passionate about stories. Because what are we, really, but stories? Each of us is carrying one: a collection of beginnings and endings, triumphs and failures, people who changed us, places that shaped us, moments we remember and moments we are still trying to understand. And, in our own way, each of us is striving to be the hero of our story—to make meaning of what happens to us, to overcome something, to grow, and perhaps, in some small way, to become a legend in the lives of the people who know us. And what happens when stories are shared. A child finds a character who makes them feel less alone. A reader discovers a world they have never inhabited. Someone hears another person's experience and suddenly sees their own world differently. A story that belongs to one person becomes a bridge to another. Because stories don't just tell us about the world. They tell us who we are, who we have been, and who we might yet become.

We often talk about schools preparing children for the future. But perhaps one of the most important things we can give them is the ability to enter a space, encounter an unfamiliar idea, listen to another perspective, articulate their own thinking and remain curious enough to keep exploring - The Library That is what I want libraries to become. Not louder spaces. Braver spaces. Spaces where conversation is not a disruption to learning, but a part of it. Spaces where you are not judged by what you already know, but empowered by what you are willing to discover. Because perhaps the most powerful library is not the one where everyone is quietly reading the same thing. It is the one where someone says, “I found something. Come, let's talk about it.”

Fashion Design, Storytelling

I want to be part of TEDx because I believe a powerful idea should not end when the talk does. I want to bring stories and ideas to the stage that make people pause, question what they take for granted and perhaps see the world through a slightly different lens. For me, the real measure of an idea is not applause in an auditorium—it is whether it travels home. Does it become a conversation at the dinner table? Does it make someone ask a different question? Does it make us listen differently to another person? Does it change what we notice, what we discuss or what we choose to ignore? That is the kind of impact I want to create through TEDx: one story, one idea, one conversation at a time. Because when ideas travel, perspectives can shift. And when perspectives shift, even small changes can begin to change the world around us.

Reading between the lines. I notice the things that aren't said. I tend to pick up on the small cues that tell me what someone might be thinking, feeling or trying to say but hasn't quite found the words for yet.