I'm Maura Aronsmeli, and this is The Anxious Achiever.

We look at stories from business leaders who've dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges, how they fell down, how they pick themselves up, and how they hope workplaces can change.

What is useful work to be doing right now?

Today's guest asks herself this question.

It's a question so many of us are struggling with as the breadth of the world's need for change becomes overwhelming. The old ways of working aren't working. Everything is

different. And I think so many of us feel we've been thrown off a path that we've worked so

hard to get on. We're angry and we're confused and we're anxious.

What's next? And what matters anyway?

Arthi Shahani is a perfect translator for these tough questions.

Someone who when fate and the justice system took her off her path as a teenager and upended

her entire life, fought like hell, and eventually created her own

rich and important work. We talk about managing your anxiety and your internal drives when the

world doesn't seem to give you a choice about what you have to do. Imagine at a young age,

you're doing all the right things, you're bray. You're on the way to a good college.

You have dreams of achieving glory in Model UN. But then your life changes overnight and you're

quickly swept up in the world of false legal convictions and a broken immigration system.

That's what happened to today's guest, author and journalist

Artie Shahani, when she was still in her teens. Her father, an immigrant, on the advice of his

lawyer, pled guilty to a money laundering charge. This experience led Artie to dive deep into the

gross injustices in our criminal and immigration systems here in the U.S.

She then went on to become a reporter for NPR, you may have heard her,

and she wrote a book about her experience with her family called Here We Are, American Dreams, American Nightmares.

...