Don’t Believe the Label

You're a Black woman who is an executive in tech and venture capital, two sectors where there are very few women and even far fewer women of color. What would you say that you've done differently in your rise in leadership positions that have enabled you to get there?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is not allowing the label that because I'm a woman, because I'm an African-American, that I can't be an executive, that I can't accomplish a great deal, that I can't realize my vision and my ambition. I think people put labels on others and sometimes we receive those labels, and we operate as if their opinion of us is more important than our own opinion of ourselves. And so I think setting the labels aside and believing that I could be something, that I could be the thing that I was hoping to be, I think was a huge part of it. A lot of it is just psychological, do you have confidence enough to believe that you can achieve? And then when you get to the point where you feel like I can achieve, then it's just -- it's work ethic. It's all about how much you're going to put into it to realize your dream, and you do have to sacrifice, and you do have to deal with people who are opposed to you achieving your objectives. There's all kinds of conflicts, there's all kinds of politics, and those things do happen. And you do have to be courageous, because you're going to face them. And if you're going to be discouraged because you've got some opposition, then you're not going to go very far. So the combination of believing that you can do it, being willing to put the work into it, and then not getting discouraged when you reach obstacles and you have opposition were huge, I think, in my career progression.