Dear Women of Color in Tech…
Last month, the Career Communications Group and multiple fortune 500 companies like IBM, Abbott Labs, AT&T Inc., held the 25th Women of Color in Tech Conference to celebrate its newest awardees of the Women of Color (WOC) in STEM awards.
I happen to be one of them — I also happen to be an Asian Immigrant, Woman Engineer turned Management Consultant, and more recently, Strategy & Operations Leader in Technology.
Although, initially I felt a bit awkward seeing myself celebrated this way, I did eventually let just a bit of pride and ounces of gratitude creep into my being. Note: My family and colleagues’ unapologetic overtures of affirmation might have had something to do with it.
Through the virtual ceremonies, I reflected about what this award means to me, women awardees before me, and to those who will follow me.
First, it felt different and comforting to feel like I’m not the “Only…” — after years of being the “Only Daughter to Study Abroad”, “Only Immigrant Asian Woman Leader”, “Only 20/30 something year old in a room filled with executives”, “Only 30 year old unmarried career woman in in my community” (still partially true). There were, in fact, hundreds of me -- even more impressive than me. Which led me to consider — why are our collective yet singular challenges and triumphs — as Women of Color trying to make it in Tech — so under-examined?
Second, I remembered my first coding class “Intro to Python” at Georgia Tech. It was a large classroom with at least a hundred students. I looked around the sea of students, and quickly realized that I might be one of two women that day in class. The second woman was the professor. I still remember feeling a nauseating pit in my stomach that day — my intimidation compounded with my “fresh-off-the-boat” immigrant insecurities. Even though no one actively made me feel this way — being the “Only…” in that room spurred questions like: “Am I too different to succeed here?” or “Do I know what they know?” or “Do I belong?”
Fast forward a few years out — my reality is often still being the “Only…” in a white, male-dominated industry of technologists — except, I am actually being recognized for my contributions, along with several other women of color. I had an impulse to hop on a time machine and share all that I know now with my older self, and tell her how even bigger than my technical or analytical challenges, would be maneuvering my intrinsic as well as my environment’s extrinsic diversity and inclusion challenges.
So, what can I share today to help women of color aspiring for a career in STEM?
(1) Acknowledge your manifestation of Impostor Syndrome: those feelings I felt that first coding class, though varying over the years, haven’t yet completely gone away. Impostor Syndrome isn’t unique to women of color, and simply acknowledging and examining our fears, can separate those fears from a more balanced view of the value we can bring to new opportunities. The questions to ask are not: Am I skilled or smart enough? Will they laugh at this idea? Can I pull off this stretch project? Rather the questions to ask are: What perspective can I add to this decision? How can my unique set of values enhance the way a project will be run? Where can I complement the organization or solution with my set of experiences and skills? We must take responsibility to stare down at our inner shadows of doubt -- and as Saint Beyoncé would put it: go all-in and bet on ourselves.
(2) Embrace imperfection — in the system and ourselves: The reality that’s been so hard to accept for my systems engineering brain is that the world is unjust, biased, inefficient, irrational, and basically imperfect. So are we. Like many other Asian friends, I’ve grown up in a context where hard work, ambition, and excelling at academics was the way to win at being a kid. My work ethic and tenacity are gifts out of that childhood. My high standards and low tolerance for failure/imperfections in myself — not so much. I feel this tendency to aim for perfection, to have a low tolerance for failing repeatedly, closes my mind to “safe” explorations, deep learning of new (read: scary) skills, and embracing risks. It’s not surprising most work environments encouraged my tendency for perfection — and left very little room for experimentation, especially if I wanted to stay on the fast-track for leadership. Especially in a world where few managers get “radical candor” right, the wins feel ephemeral, and the misses, much more elaborate and deafening. While we might not always be able to control our work environments, it is possible to control (over time) how we treat ourselves. One way to do this could be getting to terms with where we’re OK with being giving 80% of our efforts versus which areas of our life or work we’re going to focus on giving a 100% — this can fluctuate through different periods in our lives
(3) Challenge the “Always a Good Soldier, Never a General” perception: It is time to rethink our identities as leaders and redefine the commonly accepted “good leader” prototype. This HBR article articulates this inconsistency well:
Eastern cultural norms encourage humility and deference to authority — but leaders in Western cultures are usually required to command authority and to promote themselves and their ideas. As Wesley Yang wrote in New York magazine, Western society teaches that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” while Eastern society teaches that” the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” More importantly, when Asians do act assertively, they may be penalized for violating the stereotype. This is similar to the double bind that women experience when ascending to leadership positions: competent and assertive women, who fail to meet the gender role expectation of being kind and empathetic, tend to be evaluated negatively.
I won’t forget this (paraphrased) piece of advice I received from a mentor: Identify what you stand for as a leader and let that voice shine through in how you choose to show up at work. That mentor is Ben John, CTO of Xandr (formerly AppNexus). In our pursuit of achievement, we must invest time to evaluate what success really means to us — in and out of the workplace — status is a basic need for all, but what success means to family, friends, neighbors, or our PTA nemesis — is often just a subset of what gets us out of bed. This leads me to my next point.
(4) Selfishness is a virtue — My cultural context has drilled down a conditioning towards selflessness, and idolized sacrificing the needs of the self in favor of the greater good or community. I hold my community values strongly to this day — the goal here is not to lose sight of the “greater good”, but that adding a bit of selfishness to the equation, can actually serve that “greater good” in the long run. This means being able to constructively ask (persistently) for projects that are more closely aligned to your goals. These aren’t projects just about cleaning the big messes, or the “fixer uppers” and “backstage show runner” challenges. Those are important and fun problems to solve, jobs that need to be done, but need not be our only script — if interesting to you, unapologetically raise your hand for the roles that can put you closer to center stage, that make you a star of your trade, and involve creating something new.
Stereotypical perceptions of Asian-American leaders can also encourage unrealistically high expectations, and Asians are tapped to lead for their selflessness. As the article puts it, Asian Americans face an array of stereotypes. On the one hand, they’re associated with intelligence, hard work, and humility, but they’re also seen as shy, cold, and submissive. Compared to the prototypical business leader — sociable, bold, assertive — Asian Americans may seem like a mismatch, and workforce data show that Asian-American professionals are the least likely to be promoted into management.
Another valuable nugget for this theme comes from my father, Swarup Choudhury, an Indian executive who has led global multinational technology companies all his life, the likes of IBM, Thomson Reuters, and First Data. His coaching helped me see through my perfectionist and martyr-like “selfless” ways, and understand that if instead of giving my work deliverables a 120% output quality, I ruthlessly reallocate some of that time and energy to learn new skills, invest in strengthening my relationships, grow my network, and share my knowledge - those efforts can help me develop the influence I need to be a better leader and contributor to my company. This is advice from a man so passionate about learning, he’s now busy evangelizing AR/VR around the world, while many of his peers are still learning to tweet.
(5) Finally, a quick word on the business of Impression Management — I elaborated earlier on us embracing our own imperfections, what about the systems’ imperfections? There are biases — unconscious or not — and there are stereotypes. That’s just the reality. As Asian Women, we get the double whammy of facing both the “bamboo ceiling” and “glass ceiling”. Constant pressure to fit in with white Americans also takes a heavy toll on immigrants, who grew up outside of the U.S. A recent report on Silicon Valley from the Ascend Foundation revealed that Asians, though the largest racial cohort in the industry, are the racial group least likely to be promoted to manager and executive positions.
On the one hand, Asian-American women are seen as intelligent, hardworking, and technically proficient, but on the other, they are seen as modest, deferential, and low in social skills. If you’re perceived as passive, you’re not going to be groomed to be a leader. But if you’re perceived as too assertive, you can then alienate your colleagues.
It’s draining to constantly manage impressions of us. This takes away from energy spent more creatively. Hold closely learning opportunities to improve your influence on people from different cultures, but beyond a point recognize that “impression management” too has diminishing returns - and we end up losing our authentic leadership voice.
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My only goal from this post is to continue this conversation about ways we, as intersectional leaders - women of color - can more skillfully navigate our counter-productive inner hurdles, as well as a complex cultural and work landscape. No doubt I also hope this post will help managers with women of color on their teams. That said, I’m acknowledging that this post is a reflection and perhaps imperfect interpretation of my own experiences, and only one such story.
In conclusion, rolling credits to my mentors at Xandr: Ben John (CTO, Xandr), Theresa Vu (SVP Engineering, Xandr), Jennifer Leung (VP, Strategy & Operations at Xandr, AT&T), Ilona Jurkiewicz (Head of People, Xandr), and the entire Technology leadership team at Xandr for nominating me and championing an inclusive work environment.
Additionally, if you are looking for ways your workplace can further equity and inclusion in the workplace, recommend my friend and brilliant DE&I Consultant and Entrepreneur, Dorianne St Fleur.
Would love to hear about your thoughts in the comments section. Take a peek at comments from my fellow WOC awardees at Xandr, AT&T:
Don’t worry so much. Just listen to your heart and follow your passion. Everything else is going to fall in place (Mansi Nahar, Senior Software Engineer, Technology Rising Star Award)
Take a leap of faith in yourself (Mythili Maduraiveeran, Senior Software Engineer — Team Lead, Technology All Star Award)
I think women need to be more supportive of each other. How can we do this?
a) Recognizing the accomplishments of other women in our groups openly
b) Supporting them when they have an initiative and giving them an opportunity to show their skills and / or potential and last but not least, c) give honest and growth-oriented feedback (Katia Gutierrez-Ugarte, Engineering Manager, Technology All Star Award)
Written by Shikha Choudhury, Recipient of the 2020 Technology Rising Star Award by AT&T and the Career Communications Group