Bhavya Diwakar, a Laidlaw Scholar at Cornell University, on asking deeper questions across cultures and finding strength in ambition shared with others.

For Bhavya Diwakar, living across India, the United States and Japan has made surface-level answers increasingly unsatisfying. The more perspectives she has encountered, the more interested she has become in what sits behind them and what we might miss when we assume we already understand.

In this week’s Scholars on Ambition feature, Bhavya, a Laidlaw Scholar at Cornell University, reflects on where that curiosity has taken her and why some ambitions become more powerful when they are no longer ours alone.

What does intellectual ambition mean to you, and how have you embodied it in your research or leadership?

For me, intellectual ambition is just always wanting to know why. Like, I can't do anything halfway. If something interests me, I need to actually understand it, not just know the surface level answer. Having lived in three countries now—India, the USA, and Japan—I've realized how important this is. I see the same problems show up differently depending on where you are, and if you're not actually curious about why, you miss everything.

This summer at Wake Up Japan, that curiosity became everything. I could have just shown up and facilitated dialogues about gender issues in Japan. But I kept asking myself deeper questions. Why do Japanese students actually feel powerless? What makes them think differently than students in the US or India where I've lived? What's actually going on culturally that creates that belief? Those questions led to real conversations, real insights about how people think about their own power. And honestly, that made the work actually matter instead of just going through motions.

That's what drives me forward. The ability to sit with people from different places and actually try to understand how they see the world, instead of assuming I already know. Because you don't. Not really.

Ambition can mean being driven by a core group mission alongside aligned values. Have you ever worked in a team guided by a shared purpose or mission to create positive change?

The thing that actually stuck with me about my time at Wake Up Japan wasn't something I did alone. It was how the whole team believed in the exact same thing. Yoichi and everyone there genuinely care about helping young people in Japan realize they have power to create change. Like, that's not a mission statement they put on a website. That's what they actually wake up thinking about.

With the Organization members of Wake Up Japan

What made it collective was that we all brought different things. I was facilitating dialogues with students. Yoichi was mentoring me and asking the hard questions behind the scenes. Other team members were organizing logistics, gathering feedback, figuring out what was actually working. But because we all cared about the same outcome, it didn't feel like separate tasks. We were all trying to solve the same problem together, just in different ways.

When everyone on your team genuinely believes in something, you can feel it. You work harder. You care more. You actually create something meaningful. That's what I felt at WUJ. It wasn't me grinding alone trying to make something happen. It was all of us deciding that this mattered and showing up for it in our own ways.

That's the difference between individual ambition and collective ambition. Alone, you can push yourself pretty far. But when multiple people genuinely believe in the same thing and actually work toward it together, that's when real change happens.

If you want to learn more about Bhavya's work, explore her research here and follow her on LinkedIn.  

 Previously in Scholars on Ambition

Naziba Sayem on ambition, adaptability and finding a way forward

What happens to ambition when carefully made plans change, and what can unexpected challenges teach us about moving forward?

Read Naziba’s reflection →