Ela PandyaI was born in India. My father was an educator and encouraged me for further education. I earned an MBA with a major in Marketing. I was hired by Gujarat State Financial Corporation right out of the school. My life was perfect. For the first time I hd money to spare since I was living with my parents and earning good money. My mother and I enjoyed splurging a little now and then. But then, suddenly my parents arranged my marriage to an Indian doctor who was doing surgery training in New York City's Bronx area. My marriage was arranged not forced. I had an option to say, "no," but I did not want to go through the process of being presented to many families for the purpose of arranging my marriage. The possibility of getting to know someone through the dating process was not there, and my father was determined to send me to America. So, once I realized some important criteria were met by the potential groom, I decided to say, "yes." My life changed suddenly where from being a most adored young woman to an ignored stranger in a foreign land. My husband did not have time for me. We were of totally different personalities and character, raised in two very different families. Although my father thought our horoscopes matched perfectly, we were not perfectly matched for each other. However, none of us knew what else to do but put up with each other. Frustrated, fighting to be the one of the five that would graduate out of twenty-five from the surgery program, he offered to send me home to India. But my father had assigned me a job of bringing my brother and his family to America. So, I refused to go back. Fast forward to today, we have resources that children of poor Brahmin families could not have imagined back in 1982 and are in a quiet disbelief about it. We have two amazing children. I found an avenue through which I could pursue my passion for gender equality on a global platform. We run a successful surgical practice as well as a surgery center. We are proud of what we have accomplished, Please read about my initial journey in this book. In the next two books I will share about coming into my own, raising children in a foreign culture, rising in the organization, Zonta International, that offered me opportunities to grow into the person I have become today. I describe how we helped both our families and faced challenges together. We are now actively working to grow our Pandya Family Foundation (www.pandya-family.org) which we started in 2007. And we are finally learning to enjoy our successes and our resources for ourselves. Read More Read Less