There is a version of Urmi Hossain who spends her days deep in portfolio management, holding both a CFA and a CAIA charter, fluent in the language of markets and compliance. And there is another version who hosts a podcast about immigration, mentors women rebuilding their careers, and stands on stages she once found terrifying. Most people assume these two women have to take turns. Urmi decided a long time ago that they did not.

Born in Italy to Bengali parents who had immigrated from Bangladesh, and now based in Montreal, Urmi has spent her life moving between cultures, languages, and versions of herself. Rather than settle into one identity, she built a life that holds all of them at once: finance professional, Co-Chair of Women in Leadership Montreal, mentor with Dress for Success, self-published author, and host of the podcast Stories Beyond Borders.

On this episode of The AboutHer Show, she talked about the discipline that finance taught her, the self-doubt she still sees in the women she mentors, and the moment she realised her voice was not something to manage quietly. It was something to use.

Two Careers, One Person

Urmi did not wait to finish one chapter before starting the next. Her finance career gave her structure and discipline, and her creative life outside of it gave her a place to be expressive. She simply drew a boundary between the two and let both exist.

What sounds simple in hindsight took years to build. She moved through client support, into compliance, and eventually into portfolio management, picking up something different from each stop. Client support taught her how to work in a team. Compliance sharpened her analytical eye. Portfolio management taught her, of all things, how to listen better.

I remind to myself that I don’t need to shrink. I don’t need to be someone that I’m not. I just have to be myself and be my most authentic self.

Urmi Hossain

A Podcast Born From Her Parents’ Courage

Stories Beyond Borders exists because Urmi is an immigrant herself, but she is quick to point to a different story first: her parents’. They moved from Bangladesh to Italy with no connections, no shared language, and no roadmap. Urmi’s own move to Canada came later, with far more of a foundation already in place. She has never stopped seeing the difference between the two, and it is that difference that shaped the podcast.

Every episode is an interview with someone who has moved for a different reason: opportunity, love, sometimes war, sometimes no choice at all. Urmi built the show so people would have somewhere to put those stories down, and so listeners could see how many forms courage actually takes.

Owning Every Identity, Not Choosing Between Them

Growing up between Italian friends who treated her as one of them and Bengali parents who reminded her where she came from, Urmi spent years being pulled in two directions. The shift happened after she moved to Canada, when she realised she did not have to pick a side. She could be both, fully, without apology.

Also Read- She Sailed Into the Storm

Now she carries that decision into every room she walks into, including boardrooms. Her hand gestures, unmistakably Italian. Her jewellery and henna, unmistakably Bengali. She treats her identity the way she treats her career: as something to integrate, not divide.

Invest In Yourself, In Practice

Ask Urmi what “invest in yourself” actually looks like on an ordinary week, and she does not describe anything glamorous. It is reading, listening to a podcast, going for a run, journaling, showing up to an event where she knows no one because the discomfort itself is the point. She treats herself the way she would treat any asset worth growing: with regular, unglamorous attention.

We are our biggest assets. We need to nurture ourself. You have to water yourself so that you can grow and be the person that you are meant to be.

Urmi Hossain

What She Hears From Women, Again and Again

As Co-Chair of Women in Leadership Montreal, Urmi has sat through enough webinars and in-person events to see the pattern clearly. Younger women hold back in meetings, second-guessing whether their voice, or their accent, belongs in the room. Women well into their careers still battle imposter syndrome, even after twenty years of proving themselves.

At one event, someone asked the room a simple question: how many times did you want to say something but did not? Almost every hand went up.

Question was, how many times did you want to say something but you didn’t? And so many women just raised their hands.

Urmi Hossain

Mentorship Runs Both Ways

Urmi mentors young women through Dress for Success, but she is careful never to describe it as one-directional. She talks about a mentee who kept getting rejected in her job search and refused to stop trying, a persistence that reminded Urmi never to give up when things get hard herself. To Urmi, mentorship has nothing to do with age or title. It has everything to do with being willing to listen.

Mentorship is a two way street. It’s never one person learning. It’s the other person learning too.

Urmi Hossain

Building a Brand That Outlasts Any Job

Urmi is candid about why personal branding matters, especially in a field as unpredictable as finance. Jobs can be restructured or eliminated without warning. A personal brand cannot. It travels with you from company to company, and it is often the one thing that makes you memorable in a room full of people with similar résumés.

Finding Her Voice, Literally

Before joining Toastmasters, Urmi did not believe she was a good communicator. Public speaking, one of the most common fears there is, held her back for years. Joining changed how she thought about her own voice altogether. It was not just about speaking on stage. It was about showing up, writing, posting, being visible in whatever form that took.

My voice is my weapon. That’s how I can make a change. If I can use it to advocate for myself, if I can use it to advocate for other people, then I can change the world.

Urmi Hossain

Five Languages and a Career Nobody Predicted

Urmi speaks close to five languages, a skill she picked up without ever imagining where it would take her. English and French, learned in an Italian classroom, are now the languages of her daily working life in Montreal. She is currently learning Spanish. Her belief is simple: no language you learn is ever wasted, and knowing someone’s local language turns a polite exchange into a real connection.

Writing the Book She Needed

Inspired by another author navigating a similar in-between identity, Urmi wrote and self-published her own book in a matter of weeks, working chapter by chapter after work. She was not trying to write a perfect manuscript. She was trying to tell people who felt caught between cultures that they were not alone in it.

Advice for Her Younger Self

If she could go back, Urmi would tell her younger self one thing: network more, and stop going to events just for the free food. She used to attend and never speak to a single person, too afraid she had nothing worth saying. Now she knows the conversation does not need an agenda. It just needs to start.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

You do not have to choose one identity. Urmi holds her finance career and her creative life, her Italian side and her Bengali side, all at once, without shrinking any part of herself.

Self-investment is unglamorous and consistent. It looks like reading,
journaling, running, and doing one uncomfortable new thing a day, not a single dramatic leap.

Imposter syndrome does not expire. It shows up at the start of a career and
twenty years in. The way through it is conversation, community, and reframing what makes you different as a strength.

Mentorship is reciprocal. The mentor learns as much as the mentee does, and
titles have nothing to do with who gets to teach whom.

Your voice outlasts any job. Whether it is public speaking, writing, or simply showing up, using your voice is how you build something that stays with you even when a job does not.

About Urmi Hossain: Urmi is a finance professional holding the CFA and CAIA Charters, Co-Chair of Women in Leadership Montreal, a mentor with Dress for Success, an active Toastmasters member, a self-published author, and the host of the podcast Stories Beyond Borders.