Once just a dream, now Prachi has run the DHL Race with Danske Bank twice. This year, as one of the team leaders for Asset Management.
Prachi Abhyankar arrived in Denmark with a strong education, professional experience and confidence in what she could do. What she didn’t expect was how hard it would be to get others to see it.
Before Prachi had a Danish workplace of her own, she sometimes joined her husband at the DHL Relay Race. She watched him and his colleagues in their company T-shirts, running, cheering each other on, having a barbecue and a drink afterwards.
It looked like fun. But to Prachi, it represented something bigger.
“I felt a little like the ugly duckling watching the others play. I wanted to be part of the team.”
It was not where she had expected to find herself. Prachi came to Denmark from India with a bachelor’s degree in tech and a master’s in design from a highly selective institution. She had grown up in a family that expected its daughters to stand their ground. Her grandmother was a doctor, her mother taught physics for 23 years, and Prachi had built a career and financial independence of her own.
So she arrived with confidence: “I was sure I would find something.”
300 applications. 300 rejections.
Denmark delivered much of what Prachi and her husband had hoped for: clean air and water, safety and a better work-life balance. But professionally, things were very different.
Prachi rewrote her CV again and again and applied for around 300 jobs. Sometimes the rejection arrived in her inbox just ten minutes after she had sent the application. She began to feel that employers were not seeing her experience or education. They were seeing someone who looked like many other applicants from India.
“I just wanted the opportunity to present myself. To show them: This is who I am.”
The repeated rejection slowly changed her. “I had become a shell of my usual funny, bright self. I started questioning myself and my professional values.”
Stop editing yourself
Prachi had known about ReDI School even before moving to Denmark. At first, she did not think it was for her. She already had a strong education and a background in tech.
“After 300 applications, I had to realise that maybe I wasn’t as privileged in this context as I thought I was.”
She joined ReDI School for two semesters. The technical courses were useful, but something else turned out to matter more. Prachi had been trying hard to understand Denmark – and to adapt. How should she behave? What should she say? How much space should she take up?
At ReDI, teachers and mentors helped her turn that question around.
“I realised that I didn’t have to edit myself. I had to be more of who I was.”
She began attending ReDI’s career events and approaching recruiters directly. Instead of hoping that somebody would discover her skills in a pile of CVs, she started saying: See me. Listen to me. This is what I can do.
Her efforts eventually led to a fellowship at Danske Bank and later to a permanent position. Today, Prachi works as a Senior Business Analyst.
Prachi has recently been selected as Asset Management’s GenAI Super Champion – part of a group of 50 people across Danske Bank who will help colleagues use AI efficiently and responsibly. It is a role that recognises her technical skills, but also her ability to share them with others.
Oh, I thought you were my cleaning lady
Having a job has not made every assumption disappear. Recently, a man passed Prachi in the street, smiled and said hello. She hesitated, wondering whether she knew him.
Then he explained: “Oh, I thought you were my cleaning lady.”
Prachi laughs when she tells the story, but it stayed with her.
“My first thought was: Wasn’t I dressed nicely enough? And then I thought: Wait a minute. Do I always have to look like I’m on my way to my job at the bank?”
It was just one encounter, but it reminded her how quickly we place people in categories – and how little those categories may tell us about the person in front of us.
For Prachi, being seen is still important. Not just as an Indian woman, an international employee or someone who once struggled to enter the Danish labour market. But as herself – and what she can contribute.
Now she wears the T-shirt
Years ago, Prachi attended a ReDI career event at Danske Bank’s new headquarters. Standing inside the building, she remembers thinking: I want to work right here!
And she had a very specific image in her head. One day, she wanted to be the one wearing a Danske Bank T-shirt at the DHL Relay Race. Today she is.
Prachi has run the race with Danske Bank twice. This year, she was one of the team leaders for Asset Management. The woman who once stood on the sidelines watching her husband and his colleagues is now organising a team herself.
“I feel like myself again. For a long time, I felt like I was standing beside myself. Now I have the same confidence and the same way of working that I would have had back home.”
Perhaps that is also why her advice to others trying to find their place in a new country is so concrete: Visualise the life you want – and go for it.
“The job is part of it, but it’s also about the rest of your life. Lock down on it. Focus on the goal and go for it.”
This is something Prachi says she learned at ReDI. And, looking back at the image she once had of herself in that Danske Bank T-shirt, it seems she took her own advice.
Prachi is now working full time in Danske Bank. At Internationals Day at the bank, she wore a saree her mom used to wear in her office in India
