Jagdeep Kaur
Across cultures, careers and the stories that shape us.
When I first stepped onto Dutch soil in 2010, I thought I was simply moving countries. What I didn’t know was that I was also moving into a new version of myself. My early years in the Netherlands were full of trials and small victories-navigating the language, embracing traditions, and making mistakes that often felt bigger than me. Some were funny, others life-changing, but each one became part of my journey.
Along the way, I moved through HR, entrepreneurship, recruitment, talent, and leadership development. Each chapter left me with stories, questions, and a deeper interest in how people grow.
Through Tulip Talks, I explore the human side of leadership and the lessons we learn when we step outside our comfort zone and into new possibilities or simply start again.
How Tulip Talks grew
What began as an expat blog became something more
Tulip Talks began with my early experiences in the Netherlands: trying to understand a new culture, making mistakes, finding humour in unfamiliar situations, and slowly learning what it meant to belong.
As my life changed, so did my writing.
I began to notice how much my personal journey was shaping the way I understood work. Starting again, changed how I saw careers. Recruitment changed how I listened to people. Entrepreneurship taught me about risk and failure. Leadership development made me curious about why some people grow through experience while others feel held back by it.
So, the conversations here became wider.
Today, I write about leadership and working life, but also about identity, culture, relationships, resilience, and the silent moments that change the way we see ourselves.
Not every story offers an answer. Sometimes reflecting honestly is enough.
Featured writing
Stories from work and life
The Human Cost of Dashboard Success
The numbers can look impressive while the people behind them quietly struggle. A story about performance, leadership, and what a dashboard cannot tell us.
Read the story
Starting Over
Moving to a new country meant stepping away from the career I knew. It also gave me the space to fail, rebuild, and think differently about success.
Read the story
Beyond the Deck: Don’t Just Train, Transform
Training may fill a room for a few hours. The real question is what people carry back into their work afterwards.
Read the story
The Emotional Translation Gap
We may speak the same language and still miss what another person is trying to say, especially when culture travels with every word.
Read the story
View all stories
Interviews
The stories people carry with them
Some of the most meaningful conversations begin when we move past the polished introduction.
In my interviews, I speak with people from different cultures, careers, and walks of life about the experiences that shaped them. I bring forward the choices they made, the difficulties they rarely talk about, and the places where they found courage, purpose, or belonging.
Their journeys are different from mine. Yet there is often a moment when something feels familiar.
Perhaps that is why we listen to other people’s stories not because they tell us what to do, but because they help us understand our own.
Meet the people behind the stories
A little about me
I’m Jagdeep Kaur, an HR, talent, and leadership professional based in Amsterdam.
My career has crossed countries and taken a few unexpected turns: from corporate HR in India and training in the United Kingdom to entrepreneurship, recruitment, and leadership development in the Netherlands.
It has not been a perfectly straight journey, and I no longer think it needed to be.
Tulip Talks is where I bring its different parts together: the professional and the personal, what went well and what did not, where I came from and who I am still becoming.
Read more about my journey
Thank you for being here
If a story makes you pause, reminds you of something you have lived through, or gives you a different way of seeing an ordinary experience, then Tulip Talks has done what I hoped it would do.
Jagdeep
