Learning to trust the wings

From big insurance companies to the Paris Métro, from HEC lecture halls to the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres — Sumana has built one of the most quietly radical careers in the alumni community. With her debut full-length album The Flight landing this month, she speaks about reinvention, resilience, and the courage it takes to begin again.

“I thought it was spam,” she says, laughing softly, “I genuinely had no idea.” The message in question was from the French Ministry of Culture, informing Sumana that she had been named a Chevalière de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres — one of France’s most distinguished honours in the arts. The woman being recognised by the French state is the same woman who, barely a decade ago, was managing insurance solutions at Allianz and Swiss Re. The same woman who, one unremarkable afternoon, stopped in front of a stranger singing in the Paris Métro at Châtelet and felt something shift inside her that would never quite shift back.
That stranger was Vanupié, a Paris street musician of rare charisma. Sumana would return, day after day, to listen. Eventually, he became her guitar teacher. Eventually, the Métro became her stage. And eventually, one of the most unusual careers in the HEC alumni community was quietly, stubbornly, taking shape.

“I started organising my life around music without even questioning it — waking up at 5 a.m. to practise guitar or choosing to stay home to finish writing a song instead of going out with friends.”

Sumana’s last album, The Flight, dropped on all streaming platforms on May 14th. An album release concert at Le Zèbre de Belleville was organised on May 30th. Eleven tracks, recorded over a period she describes as marked by doubt and a desire to trust something larger than circumstance. The image at its centre: a little bird, hesitant at the edge of its nest, learning at last to open its wings.
It is, as metaphors go, rather autobiographical.

 

I. THREE WORLDS, ONE VOICE

Sumana was born into a life of migration. She grew up between Yemen and India, her childhood split between cultures, landscapes, languages — a plurality she describes not as displacement but as an extraordinary education in attention. “My exposure to such different environments at a young age heightened my awareness of small details,” she says. “The landscapes, the light, the sounds of the night, the smells of the streets, the languages around me, even the way people carry themselves. These contrasts quietly trained me to observe more attentively and to feel things more deeply.”
The year 1994 brought a rupture. Yemen’s civil war forced her family back to India. She was a child, suddenly re-rooted in a country she knew but did not entirely know — a country of enormous cultural diversity, from western pop to Carnatic classical traditions. The change in her lifestyle was shocking and unsettling. Music slowly became a refuge. “Music became a constant presence,” she says. “Almost like a close companion. The kind you can return to at any moment, whether in moments of joy, doubt, or reflection. And since those formative years, it has never really left my side.”
Her musical path moved across traditions: a year of Carnatic classical study, a year of Hindustani classical training, and later Western guitar and vocal instruction. That combination continues to inform her songwriting, shaping a sound where different musical languages intersect. She sings in English, French, and Hindi. Each language, she says, is a different way of being of service.

“I see music as a form of offering. I feel like I am of service to people when I sing for them.”

II. THE HEC CHAPTER

Sumana came to HEC Paris on scholarship — twice. She speaks of it with the kind of quiet pride that comes from knowing exactly what something costs and what it gave in return. “HEC provided me with a solid and invaluable foundation for starting my life in France,” she says. “Beyond the high-quality education, it was a place where I formed lifelong friendships I continue to cherish deeply.” What followed was a serious, well-constructed corporate career — insurance, Allianz, teams in India and France, innovative products & services around The Internet Of Things and professional growth. She was, by any conventional measure, succeeding. She was also, quietly, listening for something else.
“I genuinely enjoyed learning on the job, taking on challenges, working within teams to bring new ideas to the market,” she says. “One experience that marked me deeply was leading a team in India while being one of the youngest women managers on the shop floor at the time. It was both demanding and incredibly enriching.” But HEC, she reflects now, had also planted something harder to quantify. The institution’s motto — ‘Learn to dare’ — had lodged itself somewhere.“Being part of a highly diverse cohort in an intense MBA programme exposes you to a wide range of backgrounds, perspectives, and ways of thinking,” she says. “The programme encourages you to believe that many paths are possible. It gives you both the confidence and the framework to explore new directions, take risks, and embrace more non-linear trajectories.”

“‘Learn to dare’ says it all. The hardest part — and in many ways still is — has been learning to accept and embrace uncertainty.”

What she gained from those years, she is quick to add, was not discarded at the door when she entered the music world. It travels with her daily: budgeting, strategy, negotiation, marketing, relationship-building. Today, she uses the word she coined herself: artpreneur.

 

III. THE MÉTRO AND THE LEAP

The turning point, when it came, arrived less dramatically than one might imagine. There was no single moment of revelation, but rather an accumulation — and then a structural shock. A sudden, unconsulted change of management created what she calls “a rupture” in what she’d known. The catalyst, not the cause. “Looking back, it felt less like a single dramatic decision,” she says. “An ongoing inner shift was already happening. An external event made the change tangible.”
In 2016, she became a Paris Métro musician. She describes it as a simple decision on paper, and an enormous one in practice — a step into complete uncertainty, in one of the world’s most demanding and indifferent performance environments. Busking taught her things no structured career could: that effort and outcome are not a linear equation; that rejection is information, not verdict; that someone can hear your voice from the far end of a corridor and follow it toward you out of nothing but curiosity. “Those experiences stayed with me,” she says. “They made me realise that presence and quality matter even when you think you are performing in the ‘shadows.’ You never really know who is listening, or how far your music can travel in a space.”
There was also something she didn’t expect: the Métro, as a woman performing alone in a public space, felt safe. Free. She speaks of the freedom of those platforms without sentimentality, but with unmistakeable gratitude.

“I felt a sense of freedom, safety, and respect as a woman performing in public — something I do not take for granted. That freedom created the conditions for me to build my foundation there.”

IV. THE ART OF UNLEARNING

Reinvention, she is careful to clarify, is not erasure. “When you start over, it’s not like you’re leaving the previous version of yourself behind,” she says. “You’re just adding on top of what you were already.” But it does require certain kinds of unlearning. She had to unlearn the idea of fitting a predefined mould. She had to unlearn the external definition of success — the stability metrics, the status markers. Most of all, she had to unlearn the instinct to seek certainty.
“In the arts, nothing is ever guaranteed,” she says. “One day you can be performing to a sold-out audience, and the next to just a few people in a small venue. The rhythm is unpredictable, and the path is rarely linear. Over time, I am learning to see that unpredictability not as something to resist, but as an inherent part of the journey.” Her music reflects this navigation. Her songs orbit around themes of presence and impermanence — ‘Slow Down,’ ‘Easy,’ ‘Lived My Life,’ ‘The Flight’ — and also around love, loss, and a frank awareness of mortality. She describes herself as “frightfully aware of the impermanence of this life.” It is not morbidity. It is attentiveness.

“I had to unlearn the definition of success. For me today, success is much more internal: the freedom to make choices aligned with who I am, the peace that comes with those decisions, and the positive impact I hope to have through my work.”

V. THE FLIGHT

The new album was written, she says, during a time of doubt. Eleven tracks. Voice and guitar at the centre, and around them the careful, patient architecture of a fully independent production. The title track, inspired by an image of a bird at the edge of a nest, hesitant, then airborne — gives the record its emotional spine. While just one piece of the larger album, ‘The Things You Can’t Control’ is one of the album’s standout tracks, with a self-produced and self-directed animated music video she spent extensive time developing. It captures the emotional ups and downs of life as an independent artist.
The album’s emotional arc moves through vulnerability and strength, discovery and freedom. It reflects many real aspects of this path — the uncertainty, the resilience, and the constant need to adapt while continuing to move forward, the faith in something ‘bigger’ that keeps us going…It is, she says, “really for anyone who feels a calling within themselves but hesitates to take that first step.” A gentle reminder, she adds, to trust what is already inside you. This is what she hopes audiences carry with them from Le Zèbre de Belleville on May 30th 2026. Not facts. Not technical impressions. The feeling.

“We often forget specific details over time, but we remember how certain moments made us feel. If the concert creates one of those moments, that would mean a lot to me.”

VI. WHAT SHE WOULD SAY

What would she tell HEC alumni about creativity and reinvention? She thinks for a moment. Her answer is neither a formula nor a reassurance. It is something more honest than either. “Life is made up of different chapters. Nothing is ever truly static, and change is a constant part of our journey,” she says. “As we move through different stages of life, our desires, interests, and dreams naturally evolve. I think it is important not to be afraid of those new — sometimes unfamiliar — callings, but rather to make space for them.”
“With thoughtful preparation — mental, practical, and financial — and with a willingness to start again, to learn, to work hard, and to dare, it is entirely possible to reinvent oneself and to build multiple meaningful lives within one lifetime.” She pauses. Smiles. “My corporate experience and my studies at HEC gave me tools to approach my music as a long-term project. To understand responsibility, budgeting, strategy, relationships — while still keeping the artistic core at the centre.” And the Chevalière de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres? She remains insistent that it did not change her sense of direction — only offered a rare moment of pause — a chance to look back at a journey mostly lived in forward motion, and notice how far the bird has already flown.
“We often focus on what still lies ahead and rarely stop to recognise how far we have already come,” she says. “More than a destination, I see it as an encouragement to continue exploring, creating, and evolving.”