There is an astronomical difference between looking at a screen and sitting in a theatre, feeling the music shake your chest.
When I think of Bangkok’s International Festival of Dance & Music, my mind instantly goes back to the very first performance I ever watched as a wide-eyed 12-year-old: Swan Lake. I remember being utterly transfixed by the dancers who moved with an almost impossible, floating weightlessness.
But there is a famous paradox at the heart of that ballet. To the audience, swans are the ultimate image of effortless serenity. Beneath the surface, however, is a fierce, unyielding exertion keeping them afloat. The greater the illusion of poise, the harder the feet must paddle in the dark.
It feels entirely fitting, then, that Swan Lake also happens to be Rasina Uberoi Bajaj’s favorite production. Because sitting across from her, you realise she lives in that exact same paradox.
“In banking, you cannot be sloppy. In publishing, it is all about the deadline. But in the arts? It is ruthlessly detail-oriented. No matter what happens behind the scenes, the curtain has to go up.”
Rasina smiles, but there is an unmistakable steel underneath her warmth. As the Managing Director of Bangkok’s International Festival of Dance & Music, she occupies a rarefied space in the cultural landscape of Southeast Asia.
Heading an institution that has spent 28 years bringing world-class opera, dance, and symphonies to Thailand, Rasina is tasked with an enviable but arduous mission, preserving a monumental legacy built by her father while aggressively dragging it into the digital age.
Yet, if you ask her who she is, she will not start with her corporate title.
“I always say that I have three central roles in my life,” she shares at the start of our conversation. “I am a mother, a daughter, and a daughter-in-law. I am constantly juggling and integrating these truths into my daily life.”
She pauses, letting out an infectious laugh.
“Oh, and I forgot to say wife! Clearly, that role is not proving too demanding right now. None of them stress me out, honestly. They just flow in and out of my day.”
This fluid grace, the ability to navigate high-stakes pressure without breaking a sweat, is what stands out as the very essence of Rasina Uberoi Bajaj. In a world where leaders often wear their stress like a badge of honour, Rasina’s complete lack of anxiety is exactly what holds the room.
She moves with an unshakeable surety and a deep, natural gravitas. It is a commanding aura forged across three distinct chapters of a remarkable career spanning corporate banking, media empires, and now, the performing arts.
Long before she was steering major cultural productions, Rasina was redefining what it meant to be a commercial banker in Thailand.
“I do not even know how I did it, looking back,” she reminisces with a spark in her eye. “I tracked down the name of the hiring manager of Citibank in Singapore and cold-called her. I told her, ‘You need to hire me’.”
It was a masterclass in audacity. The manager flew to Bangkok, interviewed her, and hired her as if it were meant to be.
Within Citibank, Rasina brought a fierce, unconventional approach to an otherwise rigid system. At a time when commercial bankers traditionally sat back and waited to issue loans, she acted as a self-described “sales girl,” actively knocking on clients’ doors and aggressively seeking out business.
“My colleagues were so embarrassed to go out with me at first,” she laughs. “But then they realised that was where the money was, and I became quite popular. It was the exact same sales skill that got me the job in the first place.”
By the time she left Citibank after nine years, she was the youngest Vice President the Thai branch had ever seen, achieving the title just shy of her 29th birthday.
“I had to ask for every single promotion,” she says bluntly. “My boss told me early on that there is no such thing as ‘deserving’ anything; you have to earn it and demand it. It made me tough very early on. It gave me a structure and a sense of aggressive discipline that has gotten me to where I am today.”
Breaking barriers extended well beyond her corporate metrics. Coming from a household where her parents had moved to Thailand with no local extended family, marrying into her husband, Sunny Bajaj’s, large, established family presented a steep cultural shift.
In the traditional corners of the community at the time, social expectations for women were highly rigid. Convention dictated that women step into their husbands’ family enterprises or manage the domestic sphere entirely.
Rasina became a pioneer, navigating an intense, independent career at a global financial institution while balancing these traditional expectations.
“In those days, it was not the norm for a woman to work for an outside multinational corporation,” she reflects. “But I wanted to build my own path, and that required a thick skin.”
That same determination to forge her own path is woven directly into her personal life.
The story of her marriage reads like the script of a classic romantic comedy. Rasina and her husband Sunny graduated from the same high school class at International School Bangkok (ISB), but their dynamic back then gave zero indication of the future that awaited them.
“He was the cool popular guy, and I was the jock playing sports,” she reminisced. “I looked like a boy back then! I was a total sports geek. Our high school soccer coach actually looked at us one day and predicted we would end up married. We both thought it was completely impossible.”
The shift happened years later when both returned to Bangkok after university.
It began with an old-fashioned phone call, in the era before mobile messaging, where landlines were constantly busy and mothers would call the office demanding to know why the home phone was off the hook for hours.
Their very first date was initiated over tea at Neil’s Tavern, a legendary, nostalgic Bangkok staple.
“It was all very classic,” Rasina recalls fondly. “We were always great friends in school, but navigating that transition into dating, and eventually marriage, surprised everyone we grew up with. When we connect with our high school friends now, they look at us and joke, saying, ‘These two got married? How did that happen?’”
Today, that shared history forms the backbone of their integrated life, allowing them to effortlessly blend their corporate demands with their personal travel, fine wine, and winter ski trips.
It also set off a remarkable family tradition. Both of their children went on to graduate from ISB as well, giving all four family members the exact same high school diploma.
After almost a decade in banking, Rasina returned to the family fold, spending 20 years helming their publishing business, Media Transasia Thailand Ltd.
But by the late 2010s, the media landscape faced an existential threat. Google and Facebook had arrived, and consumer attention was fracturing.
“The publishing business was on a decline, and it gave me a lot of insecurity,” Rasina admits with refreshing candour. “We were moving into social media, and I realized I was no longer relevant to my teams. I did not know about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I did not know how to write digital content. I was no longer the person who could lead and guide my team.”
When the family successfully sold their Indian media operations and wound down their magazines, her father stepped in.
He asked her a simple question: What are you going to do now?
Before she could answer, he provided the solution: We are going to do something for the arts. Come on.
Transitioning into an arts institution built by her father, Mr J.S. “Kuku” Uberoi, over a quarter of a century, was no easy feat.
Initially, he was fiercely protective of his creation. Rasina was kept mostly on sales duties while her dad analysed whether she could handle the delicate, high-protocol diplomacy required by the festival’s stakeholders.
“He was wary,” Rasina notes. “Could I deal with government agencies; with embassies, diplomats, and the royal household? This was a world he built meticulously over 25 years, and I protected the legacy he entrusted very intently.”
Slowly, the trust grew. Today, the dynamic has evolved into a harmonious partnership.
“He still loves programming, handling contracts, and booking flights. Whatever he loves doing, he does. I fill in all the gaps.”
Steering a massive, seasonal operation like the festival requires a highly calibrated leadership style.
Right now, Rasina’s days are consumed by the high-wire act of announcing the upcoming season, approving key visuals, fine-tuning marketing voices, and orchestrating massive international logistics.
When asked how she strikes a balance between building a high-level career and raising a family, Rasina rejects the premise entirely.
“Why does it have to be a balance? Why can it not be an integration?” she counters. “I love that word. Why can we not do it all? I find many of my friends feel guilt when they want a career or a business, as if they need permission. It should not be that way.”
For Rasina, life cannot be neatly slotted into corporate weekdays and family weekends.
“When you run your own business, you are operating 24/7. And how do you check out from being a mom or a wife? You do not.”
Instead, she blends the worlds together. She involves her husband in the creative choices of the festival throughout the year, just as he consults her on his hospitality projects.
Even on vacations, rather than resenting a necessary work call, she leans in, asking how the call went and making the family part of the conversation.
This philosophy of total inclusion mirrors how she views the festival’s community role, particularly through her continued partnership with her alma mater, ISB.
“What I love about ISB’s student outreach is that it is not exclusive,” she explains. “Some international schools build beautiful auditoriums but keep them closed off. ISB actively invites students from local Thai schools to join their arts, dance, and music programs. It is an inclusive community, and that is exactly how the arts should operate.”
Beyond just localized school programs, this commitment to inclusivity has blossomed into the festival’s own dedicated Student Outreach Programme.
Under Rasina’s direction, the festival pulls back the grand velvet curtain for a younger generation, inviting students behind the scenes to sit in on rehearsals, watch masterclasses, and interact directly with world-class performers.
When discussing the profound impact of this initiative, Rasina emphasises that exposure to the arts does far more than cultivate an aesthetic appreciation; it fundamentally shifts a young mind’s perspective.
She believes that standing in a theatre and witnessing the sheer, rigorous discipline required to pull off a flawless performance develops patient mastery in students.
It teaches them that results do not come overnight; they must work at things with discipline and consistency, giving them a tool that serves them long after the performance ends.
o run an operation of this magnitude, Rasina has historically relied on absolute, unyielding control.
“I am a very tough boss, and I have a short fuse if mistakes are continuously made,” she notes. “My team knows that if I ask for a change ten times, I expect it by the evening. I know exactly how far their elastic band can stretch.”
Yet, a profound internal evolution has begun to temper that corporate edge.
A single, transformative 45-minute coaching session completely reoriented her perspective on authority.
“She asked me about making breakfast for my kids when they were young, how it was always ‘Hurry up, eat, eat, eat!’ and sending them to school stressed,” Rasina reflects. “She told me, ‘The energy you send them should be strength and power. If you are strong, they will be strong.’”
“It made me realise: what was I getting out of losing my temper? It was just momentary gratification for me, but it made everyone else in the room unhappy. I am done with that.”
Now, she consciously practices restraint, intentionally delaying email responses to bypass an aggressive tone, and quickly apologising on the rare occasion she does snap.
Her ironclad discipline remains, but it has shifted inward.
She wakes early, meditates, drinks her water, and packs her gym clothes every single morning.
“I get antsy around noon if I do not go for a run or hit the gym,” she laughs, noting her office sits right next to her fitness space. “It is my outlet, and how I process sadness or disappointment without letting it turn into built-up anger or resentment.”
This blend of rigid structure and modern thinking shows up in her workflow, too.
She is highly progressive, openly embracing AI tools for strategy, though she warns her team that she uses the platforms enough to instantly spot when someone tries to pass off AI text as their own work.
“You cannot trick me,” she smiles.
Her leadership is blind to everything but excellence.
“If you get your job done, and done well, a true leader does not care who you are. We just want the job done to the highest standard in the quickest time possible.”
For all her administrative rigour, Rasina wears her heart directly on her sleeve, and around her neck.
Paired alongside her beautiful high-fashion wardrobe is a striking, undeniably plastic beaded necklace. It was a gift from her daughter 23 years ago, handed to her as a four-year-old’s good-luck charm before Rasina boarded a flight to New York for an InStyle magazine auction.
“She told me, ‘Mommy, if you ever remove it, you will get bad luck.’ I only take it off to sleep, shower, or go to the gym,” Rasina shares.
“Jewellery designer friends have begged me to let them encase it in gold for free because it irks them to see me in fine jewelry with this piece of plastic. I refuse. I have worn it to receive the King and Queen. It is a statement of what matters to me.”
For years, it lived alongside a diamond and pearl brooch belonging to her late mother, which Rasina wore on her left side, directly over her heart.
When she lost the brooch on an Australian beach a few months ago, she was devastated until her children reframed the loss.
“I had left it on planes before, lost it in department stores, and it always found its way back to me,” she says softly. “When it finally stayed lost, my kids said, ‘Mummy, it’s because Grandma is telling you it is time to let her go. You do not need to carry her physically every day.’”
“It taught me to look at life through a cyclical lens.”
This acute awareness of generational shifts directly informs her modern curation strategy.
To captivate a younger demographic that consumes life through fleeting digital snippets, Rasina actively scouts global talent from social media.
It was through a broadcast of the Paris Olympics that she spotted Sadeck Berrabah, a viral French choreographer with millions of Instagram followers known for the mesmerising geometric art of tutting.
“My biggest job right now is education,” Rasina says passionately. “I want to show Gen Z that there is an astronomical difference between looking at a screen and sitting in a theatre, feeling the music shake your chest. The memory you take with you from a live performance stays with you forever.”
As she looks toward the long-term future, her ultimate goal is to build an institutional infrastructure so robust that it transcends her own family entirely.
“I want to build parameters so secure that anyone could come in, take it over, and ensure it goes on for another 25 or 50 years,” Rasina says with fierce conviction.
“This cannot just be a family business. It needs to run the way the Edinburgh Fringe Festival or the Vienna Biennale happen every year, independent of who is at the helm.”
To achieve that, she knows the festival must belong fully to the community that keeps it alive.
“The festival is successful because of the people here. I always tell audiences in Bangkok that they need to give themselves a pat on the back. They have put this city on the global cultural map.”
“If they did not appreciate the art and fill the seats, we could not continue. We can drive the interest, but the public completes it. This is our festival, collectively.”
As the house lights dim and the orchestra begins to tune for a new season, Rasina Uberoi Bajaj remains anchored in the wings.
She is the quiet force directing the cue, ensuring that while the machinery behind the scenes moves with furious, disciplined precision, what the audience experiences is entirely flawless.
Like the swans she grew up loving on stage, she makes the heavy lifting look completely weightless.
The strategy is modern, the execution is disciplined, but the soul of the performance remains timeless.
And just as it did all those years ago when I sat in the audience for the first time, the curtain rises, and the magic begins.