Season 3 - Episode 6
From Scared PhD Student to TEDx Speaker: What It Actually Takes
Jayanti arrived in Brisbane in July 2017 to start her PhD in biomaterials research. On her very first day in the research lab, she watched a fellow PhD student struggle through a presentation while a room full of academics fired questions at him. She sat there thinking: my God, what have I signed up for?
Nine years later, she's delivered a TEDx talk in front of 200 people, in her Indian accent, on her terms. This episode of Chinwag Tuesdays tells you how that happened.
Who Is Jayanti?
Jayanti is originally from Navi Mumbai and has lived in Brisbane since 2017. She completed her PhD in biomaterials research and found her way into science communication, the skill of explaining complex research to people outside your field, to investors, to school students, to the general public.
She's a Toastmasters regular, a TEDx speaker, and someone who has spent nearly a decade learning how to communicate across cultures in one of the world's most multicultural cities.
What Nobody Tells You About Arriving in Australia as an International Student
The multicultural reality nobody prepares you for
Most people expect to navigate the gap between their home culture and Australian culture. What surprises many migrants, including Jayanti, is that Australia is so multicultural that you're not just learning to communicate with Australians. You're learning to communicate with people from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and everywhere else, all in the same room.
Jayanti's research group included a Chinese supervisor, Indian students, European exchange students, and more. Understanding how each of those cultures communicated, not just Australian culture, was its own education.
The dry humour problem
Australian sarcastic humour catches a lot of migrants off guard. Jayanti's confirmation seminar panellist looked her in the eye after her presentation and said, "So, you failed, by the way." She nearly had a breakdown before he followed up with, "Just kidding."
The lesson she took from it: don't take things personally. It's easier said than done, especially when the stakes feel high. But in Australian workplace culture, sarcasm and dry wit are often a form of warmth, not cruelty.
The word "arvo" and other things nobody explains
Jayanti had a friend tell her she'd been called to meet at "the arvo," and spent real time wondering whether it was a pub or a cafe. It means the afternoon. Australian English has hundreds of these moments, and until you have them, you won't know they're coming.
At Aussie English with Amanda, this is exactly the territory we cover: the slang, the contractions, the rhythm of casual Aussie conversation that never appears in a grammar textbook.
How Jayanti Built Confidence as a Speaker in Australia
Toastmasters and incremental exposure
Jayanti's turning point came in 2019 when she joined Toastmasters with one goal: to become a TEDx speaker. Her first meeting had 10 or 12 people. Two months later, the club had grown to 30. That gradual increase in audience size gave her a scaffold to build on without having to jump from zero to a conference stage.
She gave speeches about the history of sushi. About random things she was interested in. The point was not to speak about something impressive. The point was to speak.
Diversifying your audience
Toastmasters was one part of her approach. The other was deliberately seeking out different types of audiences. Jayanti set up a microscopy stall at a university open day where she spoke to high school students and their parents, an audience she had no experience with and no obvious reason to feel comfortable in front of.
She did it anyway. And she found that the discomfort of a new audience is where real communication confidence gets built.
The value of sharing your failures
One of the most significant cultural shifts Jayanti describes is learning to talk openly about what went wrong. In India, the professional instinct is to highlight achievements and suppress failures. In Australian professional culture, especially in research, sharing your failures honestly is often what builds credibility.
At a microscopy conference recently, someone told Jayanti that the best part of her talk was that she owned the failures in her study. She presented a realistic view of how science actually works, rather than a polished success narrative.
For migrants in professional settings, this is worth sitting with: raising your hand in a meeting to ask a question, even from an inexperienced perspective, signals engagement. Nine times out of ten, other people in the room had the same question and didn't ask it.
Accent, Identity, and the Week Before Her TEDx Talk
About five or six years ago, Jayanti was dating someone of Indian descent who had been born and raised in Australia. On one of their early dates, he told her that when they'd first started talking, he hadn't felt attracted to her because of her Indian accent.
She never forgot it.
The week before her TEDx talk in front of 200 people, that comment came back. She found herself becoming self-conscious about her accent in a way she hadn't been for years.
What she decided: she would walk onto that stage looking and sounding as Indian as possible. Formal clothes, but the style of makeup that felt Indian to her. Her accent, exactly as it is.
Her advice to other migrants: your accent is part of who you are. Accepting it is not the same as refusing to grow. It means you are allowed to show up clearly, as yourself, and trust that if you speak clearly enough, people will follow.
That TEDx talk is one of the best days of her life.
What Jayanti Would Tell Her Younger Self
Don't take things personally.
Your accent is not a barrier you have to overcome before you can be taken seriously. It's part of how you communicate, and if you speak clearly and at a good pace, people will listen.
Give yourself time to find your hobbies. Australia has a strong culture of identity beyond your job or your degree, and building that into your life makes you easier to connect with and more fulfilled. And ask when you don't know a word. People are more than happy to explain.
Key Takeaways
• Confidence in speaking builds through incremental exposure, not sudden leaps. Start small and let the audience size grow naturally.
• Diversifying the type of audience you speak to is just as important as increasing the number of people. Different audiences demand different things from you.
• In Australian professional culture, sharing your failures can build more credibility than a polished success narrative. Raising your hand to ask a question signals engagement, not ignorance.
• Australian English is genuinely its own dialect, and the gaps (slang, dry humour, social norms around politeness) will keep appearing for years. Asking is always the right move.
• Your accent is part of your identity. Speaking clearly and at a considered pace is the real goal, not eliminating where you're from.
• Open your identity beyond your work or qualifications. Having hobbies and talking about them is how connection gets built in Australian social culture.
FAQ
How do you build confidence speaking English in Australia as a migrant?
Start with small, low-stakes environments and build up from there. Toastmasters is one option. Online speaking clubs are another. The goal is to get regular repetitions of speaking in front of people, increasing the audience size and audience type gradually. The discomfort doesn't go away, but your tolerance for it grows.
Is Toastmasters worth it for migrants who want to improve their communication in Australia?
Yes, particularly because it gives you structured, regular practice in front of a live audience. You don't have to speak about anything work-related. The value is in the practice of standing up and speaking, getting feedback, and returning the following week.
Does having an Indian accent affect career prospects in Australia?
Accent alone is rarely the barrier people fear it to be. Speaking clearly and at a pace your audience can follow matters more than accent neutrality. Jayanti delivered a TEDx talk in her Indian accent and describes it as one of the best days of her life. The preparation, clarity, and confidence she brought to that stage were built over years of deliberate practice, not accent elimination.
How do you deal with Australian dry humour as a migrant?
Mostly through experience, and accepting that you will misread it sometimes. The key insight Jayanti shares is not to take things personally. Australian sarcasm and dry wit are often a form of friendliness, not hostility. When in doubt, give it two seconds before reacting.
Want support building your spoken confidence in Australian professional settings? The Australian Pronunciation Studio is a six-month program designed for exactly this, covering connected speech, Australian pronunciation, and the communication skills that actually come up at work. Find out more here.
