• Biography •

Seema was born in July 1967 in Lusaka, Zambia (Central Africa), to parents of Punjabi descent, Sneh and Jagdish Bahal, who had been born and brought up in Kenya. She is a third generation British Indian – her grandparents left the village of Ropar in the Punjab on a Dhow boat, in search of a better life in Africa, despite the fact that her great grandfather was a village clerk in a highly respected civil service post. She was brought up with an awareness of her cultural background, but concedes that although some of the traditions passed down by migrant generations are colonial or even archaic in modern India, they provide Indians abroad, especially those from previous generations, with security and a sense of identity.

Educated at the International School of Lusaka (ISL) until ‘O’ Level, then at Roedean School for Girls in Brighton for her ‘A’ Levels, Seema qualified as a dentist from Guys Hospital in 1989, and won several awards in the 90’s for the rapid growth of her dental practice in Docklands, citing receiving a business award from Richard Branson at the age of 28 as one of her most memorable career moments. She was featured in "Women of Substance - Profiles of Asian Women in the UK" by Pushpinder Chowdhry, in 1995.

Seema’s parents moved to Washington in the 90’s when her father moved from working with the Overseas Development Agency to the World Bank, to continue his work with housing and infrastructure projects in rural Africa. Her mother was a primary school teacher and her brother Anuj is a chartered accountant, working in the field of mergers and acquisitions in New York. 

Seema’s husband, Sanjay Sharma, is a Professor of Cardiology at St. George's University Hospital. He works closely with the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young, www.c-r-y.org.uk. They have two daughters and live in London. 

Seema believes her success has been due to hard work, luck and an element of being in the right place at the right time. She plans to continue her journey into her heritage, and to further her charity work with underprivileged communities in India and East London.