ATHLEISURE MAG #65 MAY 2021 | Change Agents Needed with Gurwin Singh Ahuja

This month, we talked with Gurwin Singh Ahuja whose career has included his public service in focusing on Civil Rights, working in the Obama Administration as well as being focused on the importance of sustainable access to cure issues such as Climate Change and being ready for how we go about our work as we continue to evolve.

Although Gurwin has worked in various political capacities, it's worth noting that he interned at the National Economic Council in the Executive Office of the President during the Obama Administration; he was a National Field Coordinator for the re-election campaign for President Barack Obama's 2nd term; he founded the Know Your Neighbor Coalition which partnered with the White House to enhance civil rights policies at the US Department of Justice, US Department of Homeland Security, US Department of Education, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; he also worked as a Special Assistant and later an Advisor to the Office of the United States Trade Representative in the Executive Office of the President during the Obama Administration to name a few. He also became the Co-Founder and Advisor to We Are Sikhs, an organization advocating what Sikhism stands for the equality of women and men and denounces any discrimination pertaining to gender, race, caste, creed, religion, or color.

In addition to being the Director of Strategic Communications at The Glover Park Group, a leading strategic communications and government affairs firm which was founded by former White House and Democratic campaign officials Carter Eskew, Michael Feldman, Joe Lockhart and Chip Smith, he continues to fight for change. He's focused on a sustainable marketplace he founded, Salvos which allows people to make conscious choice through their purchase power. We talk with him about his career, the importance of making an impact in order to make a change and what he wants his legacy to be seen as.

ATHLEISURE MAG: We were looking forward to this interview as you have covered a number of areas from your political involvement to launching Salvos, the sustainable marketplace, what did you think you were going to be when you were growing up?

GURWIN SINGH AHUJA: That’s a great question. I didn’t know really. If you had told me about the stuff that I did when I was a kid, I wouldn’t have believed you. I wouldn’t have thought that those things would have been possible for someone like myself. I was a fairly average student. I was a pretty confused kid. I didn’t really get it together until I was 19/20 years old.

AM: That response is surprising as I know you graduated from Ohio State and went to grad school at Columbia Business School!

GSA: Yeah, I didn’t go to Ohio State initially, I was rejected, I went to a community college at the University of Dayton and then I transferred to Ohio State. When I got there, I then excelled.

AM: Last fall, we had Kal Penn as a cover and some of our readers had no idea that he was involved in politics and served in the Obama Administration just like you, what made you interested in politics?

GSA: It was really Barack Obama to be honest with you, I was following the election closely as an 18 year old and I remember sitting in my US government class thinking that before I knew who Obama was, I thought, maybe there would be a Black president when I’m old. Given the trajectory of the progress of our social fabric of our country effectively, I watched him and it inspired me. You saw somebody and sometimes this trope is over used – but you saw somebody who was literally a person of color and at that time, it was very unique, there’s been many strides since then. As an 18 year old, I thought, if he can do it, maybe I can do it. If I work hard, apply myself and do the things that I’m supposed to do, that really helped to focus my attention and I wanted to get involved in politics because of him. I never would have guessed that I would actually end up working for him.

AM: As a Black Co-Founder of this media house, I remember seeing him and thinking that in my lifetime, I would never see a Black president and what that has created has been phenomenal. Historically, the different things that have taken place in this country, you never would have thought that something like that would happen. What was it like working with him to lend your voice, be in service and to make change happen?

GSA: To that point, I remember watching him get elected and I was sitting in my dorm room and 4 years later, I remember this very distinctly and I was in his boiler room on election day. The boiler room is kind of the place to be with all of the big people that are there – the campaign manager, the CEO of Google was a volunteer for the campaign, top White House staff – I’m sitting in that room 4 years later at 22 years old! It was wild to go from in a dorm room to that.

In working in his administration, it was what you would expect it to be. It was a very buttoned up operation, very professional operation and working in the administration actually generated hope for me. I was like, “wow this is how politics work and how politicians are.” We have learned that he is more of an aberration than a base case really. It was his personality that really permeated through the organization. I think that the fact that he was such an underdog made the people around him, we all became family.

AM: We enjoyed the We Are Sikhs Funny or Die video, Let's Talk About Turbans. The exchange that takes place as people are trying to communicate with those that come from a different background and making it so awkward as opposed to just saying it really resonated.

GSA: That was kind of the purpose of that. The subliminal message of that is that we’re all human beings and we should just treat each other as human beings as opposed to being avatars for the groups that we belong to.

AM: We believe that looking at someone from a particular race does not mean that they are the representative of that entire group – as they are not a monolith. Seeing that in that video and once again making that statement that one should ask about a person’s particulars and not making it an assumption for everyone was also a great message that you shared. As long as it’s respectfully done, you can just ask! How did you come up with We Are Sikhs? What’s the purpose of it and what’s behind it – what’s your involvement in it?

GSA: I’m the Co-Founder of that as there are other founders. The thing that motivated me and this goes back to the Obama campaign during 2012, there were a group of white supremacists that went into a Sikh Temple and started shooting people. 6 People died and 1 person was permanently paralyzed and it was kind of jarring. At that time, discussions about these kinds of ideologies and people were really not mainstream. The Sikh community, our core beliefs and organizing principles are: gender equality, racial equality, religious tolerance and the belief in one universal God. So very universal beliefs but because we have beards and turbans and we're from India but we look Middle Eastern in a post-911 world, there was a lot of confusion about who we were and what we stood for. I remember sitting there and thinking, if our community could just capture 1/100th of the magic of this campaign, maybe not for an attack of this degree – but the bullying and discrimination would die down. So basically, I got some of Obama’s top people like David Axelrod and his firm, people that really put together his message which has become famous of hope and change. I had them work with my community to put together a very comprehensive campaign that has become successful beyond my imagination. We had the opportunity to work with Funny or Die, Ben and Jerry’s, UFC, NBA and so many amazing organizations. We won a bunch of different industry awards like the Shorty Awards for the video. It’s been something else!

The Funny or Die video came about in an interesting way. When President Trump became president, there were a lot of racial tensions obviously and it was shocking for me and it kind of shook my beliefs in the country for a couple of months. Then once we started going out and talking to people, I noticed that there was a high capacity for people to learn, but there was this feeling that despite their political ideology – unless they were so out there, most people who don’t care about politics all that much, not as much as I did, I found that there was this wall of hesitancy to get engaged because they didn’t want to be called out or to be called a racist. I wanted people to ask questions because we were so different and the only way that they could gather information – because they wouldn’t learn it in school about our community. I wanted people to ask questions. I sensed this hesitancy. I know that when you establish that you’re willing to have a conversation and you can see that the other person is going to be respectful, a lot of dialogue is able to happen. I wanted to do it from that angle. I also took a lot of inspiration from The Office and funny enough, some of the people from that show has seen it like Rainn Wilson (plays Dwight Schrute) and a few others. None the less, the point was to create a common humanity.

AM: What is – whether it’s your platform or the organization’s platform coming off of a pandemic and an election, there is a whole social justice movement that took place last summer and now we’re focused on hate crimes happening to Asians, with your focus on civil rights and equality, how are you using your platform to lend your thoughts to these issues?

GSA: That’s a great question. I think about them everyday and I engage with people on it everyday in a variety of capacities. One thing that we did to give a larger voice to a large number of communities which started at the White House was a program called Know Your Neighbor. It was modeled after We are Sikhs – it hadn’t launched yet but there were sketches of that launch. We had a lot of polling that influenced the White House to start Know Your Neighbor which was helpful to spread awareness on a range of communities. There were 2 moments that influenced Know Your Neighbor and we renewed it under the Biden Administration. There was 1 more minor incident that people probably struggle to remember because it was in the news for only a day. There were some Muslim kids that were in a parking dispute and they were killed and the other one where there was a kid who was 18/19 who lost their life over an argument. Obviously, the more famous incident that people know more about, the shooting in South Carolina at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the kid went in, went to the prayer service and murdered everyone after. That was another influencing moment and we renewed this under the Biden Administration as the White House is partnered with us on that. It ended up changing a lot of policy in the Obama Administration and it’s just under way in the Biden Administration. Hopefully we can change more Civil Rights policy. Interestingly, all the people that helped form the program on the administration side are back in the same roles. So it makes it super easy!

AM: Do you have an official capacity under the Biden Administration?

GSA: I don’t have an official capacity under the Biden Administration, I’m a fan of the President and I do help the administration on a few things here and there.

AM: How are you able to manage all of these hats that you’re wearing with these organizations, you’re with the Glover Park Group as well as Salvos, your sustainable marketplace – how are you able to do that?

GSA: That’s a great question. I work a fuck ton! There’s absolutely no way around that. Another interesting thing is because we’re in a pandemic, it’s hard to socialize – it’s either that or I watch TV!

AM: How did you decide to create Salvos – there is a vast assortment.

GSA: We’re actually working to narrow it down to things that really sell well. You’ve structured this conversation kind of personally. My interest in climate change has really been driven from all of the social justice and equality work that I have been doing.

The bigger picture here is that climate change is going to be a very serious threat to the world. Obviously, we’re going to survive it, but it’s going to change a lot of things. When I say changes, I’m not just talking about the sea levels getting higher or the weather being crazier. It will fundamentally change where people live, how they grow food and there’s going to be hundreds of millions of people that can’t live where they are living and will have to leave. This will cause tensions in places where they are moving in. We’re worried about xenophobia today which is pretty modest in terms of immigration and refugees. I can only imagine when a solid percentage of the world has to migrate and that people will have to change the way that they work. Most of the world is still just farmers working on their own farm. Small farmers will not be able to work and will need things to do. We are already in a situation where the number of quality jobs are shrinking. My point in saying all of that is that we have this vision of the future that is always going to be more prosperous and just from the past. I think that climate change really creates a situation where the future may not be a more is more future – it may be more chaotic. We have to change our economy to mitigate these effects so that we can preserve all of these positive changes that we have been able to work towards for over a century!

AM: Wow, that’s a thought. The more things change, our very way that we go about doing what we do will also be very different.

GSA: So, bringing it back to the business and bringing it more closer to Earth, we have this big problem – being sustainable is hard! I even have a hard time doing it! It’s hard because it’s unclear whether the products you’re getting are sustainable and if you’re being greenwashed. It’s hard to find them. We wanted to make a place, where people could make at least 1 change, find genuinely sustainable products in one place and we’re slowly building. We will narrow things down to focus more on home and bath because that is what has been selling well and that makes sense. We’re ultimately trying to provide credible products, to make one change to ultimately mitigate the effects that we talked about earlier.

AM: What is your criterion? Being someone who outside of Athleisure Mag. My career is rooted in fashion as a Celebrity Fashion Stylist and as an Accessory Expert. In the jewelry business for example, there is a whole issue with Blood Diamonds and knowing the supply chain from where it’s put together to how it comes forward so you know that you can identify where the problems are should a part of the chain not be in compliance. How are you doing that from your side in terms of onboarding those products and those brands?

GSA: That’s a great question! There’s 3 cases of the criteria. The first one is the material – is it a more sustainable material? Like it is made with bamboo instead of plastic, is the clothing made out of hemp as opposed to regular cotton. The second one is the actual use case. Is the use case actually sustainable? If it’s biodegradable is it living up to its claim? There is one product that exemplifies the use case methodology which is – we sell these phone cases by Pela, they make biodegradable phone cases. They’re basically big hunks of plastic and they work. If you dig it into the ground, within a few months, it's going to go away which is kind of crazy. I use it today and it’s one of the best sustainable products that I use and the case is just as good as a normal case. I don’t even know we have normal cases and I have dropped my phone a number of times and it’s super protective. I’m not sacrificing anything by using it and when it’s done, it will just got away as opposed to being here for thousands of years. Third, the most important one, like you said – the supply chain is super important. It’s very difficult to monitor it so the way that we hack it is the certifications that are out there that assesses companies and their products that are done by scientists that are far outside of our capabilities. So we look for products that have genuine eco-friendly certifications.

AM: I think it’s smart as I would do this when consulting with the retail industry that you do have to look at the numbers in order to hone in on the assortment and to do swingshops on the other items. To see everything there was interesting.

GSA: It’s hard, there are a lot of products with varying quality some are good and some aren’t – it’s just interesting as I dug into it, to see all the issues and successes of the industry.

AM: What other projects are you working on as you seem to be oscillating between a number of things. I’m sure like us, even when you’re relaxing, you’re thinking ahead to the next group of things that you want to embark on.

GSA: I know what you mean! I have made a vow to myself to take a breath and not to add more stuff. I’m finding that I have had a decade of craziness and doing a lot of stuff and sometimes doing a lot of stuff, doesn’t actually help in generating new ideas, sometimes it just makes you tired. So I don’t know – I’d be interesting to hear your experience on that. I’m trying to pause myself from doing more and more. The more I am going to do, the less I will be able to actually do it.

AM: I can agree with that. I also find that when people know you for certain things or they understand that you have an adjacency that works, it becomes very difficult. I have a 3 layered system – anything I take on, has to actively support what is already going on. If it’s reasonably adjacent, you’re not spitting yourself too much. But if you ask me if I want to go to Mars tomorrow, I wouldn’t see how that works well within what I am already doing. But if it’s reasonable, the timeline works, you find yourself saying ok – and then in the middle of the night you’re like ok that was a chunk right there.

The pandemic allowed us to hone in on things that maybe we wouldn’t have greenlit before because we were looking at being busy in other ways. We’ve been able to analyze and understand what we really want to do and to look at the resource allocation to see it in its proper light.

What do you want your legacy to be?

GSA: I think about it often. When I was in business school they made us think about this. I’m not sure if I want to be known as doing any one particular kind of thing or job per se. In some ways that’s outside of my hands as many things are out of my control. I think what is in my control for today and moving on with life, the thing that motivates me from all my projects is that we see each other as humans and as equal despite our differences. That’s what motivates me throughout all of these people and work. It motivated me to get involved in politics with Barack Obama because I saw myself and it motivated me as I saw us as equals, to do We Are Sikhs and Know Your Neighbor because I wanted other people to see each other as equals and it motivated me to do sustainability and climate change because I see that problem and that situation getting worse if we don’t handle this issue. That’s what motivates me and I hope that when my life is over and everything is done, I can be seen as somebody who helped to see one another’s common humanity.

@GurwinAhuja