by Priscilla | Jan 29, 2021 | AAPI, Politics/Policy, Public Service
Show Notes:
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have an international career in diplomacy?
On this episode, we hear from Sharlina Hussain-Morgan, a foreign service officer, who is also a child of immigrants from Bangladesh. Sharlina has a B.A. in Political Science from MIT, and a MA in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown. After working abroad in Egypt, she met a girlfriend who was a Foreign Service Officer and encouraged her to apply to become a Diplomat herself. Sharlina had never really imagined taking this path, but she took the steps and has now been in the field for nearly 10 years. Sharlina details what the process looks like to apply for the Foreign Service, what they’re looking for in applicants, and what are the glamorous and not-so-glamorous parts of the job. Sharlina’s story is a great reminder to pursue your passions despite parental pressure to take a more traditional path.
Links Mentioned In Episode:
Sponsor, The Art of Applying – Get $100 off a Quick Call if you mention the ECM Podcast
Critical Language Scholarship Program – A summer study abroad opportunity for American college and university students to learn languages essential to America’s engagement with the world, sponsored by the U.S. State Department.
Transcription:
TEASER
Sharlina: I was 25 and they looked at me and they’re like, “Wait, you’re here representing the United States Government?” They were just floored because they didn’t expect a 25-year-old Brown woman who actually spoke literally the same language as their own parents.
PODCAST INTRODUCTION
Priscilla: Welcome to the Early Career Moves Podcast, the show that highlights remarkable young professionals of color killing it on their career journeys. I’m your host Priscilla Esquivel Weninger – proud Texas Latina, daughter of immigrants, and lover of breakfast tacos. Meet me for a coffee chat each Friday, as we dive into a special guest’s story, and hear all about their challenges, milestones, and lessons learned. If you’re a young professional of color and you’re feeling lost in your career, or just need a dose of inspiration, you’re in the right place! Let’s get started.
GUEST INTRODUCTION
Priscilla: Hey, have you ever wondered what it would be like to have an international career that takes you all over the world? Well, on this episode, you get to hear from US Diplomat Sharlina Hussein Morgan, who breaks down what it means to be a diplomat, what it takes to succeed and what it’s been like to be a child of immigrants from Bangladesh, traveling abroad, and representing the US Government. Sharlina is an MIT and Georgetown grad, and she keeps it real on the glamorous and not so glamorous moments of working abroad.
Priscilla: Sharlina, welcome to the show. I’m so excited to have you here today.
Sharlina: Thank you so much for having me.
Priscilla: So today we’re going to be discussing the topic of what it’s like to be a US diplomat. So why don’t we just get started with you sharing a little bit about your personal background.
Sharlina: Thanks again for having me. My name is Sharlina Hussein Morgan. I was born and raised in New York. I grew up in Queens, New York City for the first 12 years of my life before we moved upstate to Upstate, New York. My parents are originally immigrants from a small country called Bangladesh, which is a little bit east to India. And they’ve been in the United States the longer they’ve been in Bangladesh. And I grew up with an older brother. And I guess, I don’t know if you could say a typical Asian or South Asian-American family, my parents are first-generation, my brother and I were the first in our family to go to college in the United States.
And it was very much of a working class immigrant story. My parents first started out when they first came to the United States, they were working in Burger King. And my parents scraped together money because my dad had a dream of having a small business in the US. So they finally were able to buy a small hotel in Upstate New York, which is where we settled when I was in my middle school years. And they put together enough money to put my brother and I through school. And my brother followed the immigrant parent expectations and became an engineer, but I was the black sheep and I was very interested in foreign affairs.
We’re a Muslim South Asian-American family. And I was in high school when 9/11 happened, which really was a formative experience for me. And so it really encouraged me to look more outside of the United States and think about what our relationship is with other countries around the world. So that’s where I landed to study for undergrad, political science, but at an atypical place, at MIT.
Priscilla: How did you end up at MIT?
Sharlina: Yeah, it’s really funny. A lot of people were like, “I didn’t even know that political science is a major offered at MIT.” And actually it’s one of the top 10 in the country. But I came from a very interesting perspective. My brother was an engineer. He really encouraged me to pursue my interest in math and science. I was really good in math and science when I was younger, but I didn’t like it as something that I wanted to pursue as a career. But so when it came time to apply to colleges, I kind of applied to MIT as a fluke, but I wanted to go somewhere that was diverse and wanted diverse experiences. And when I visited MIT, I was very impressed with how much the students got along with each other. And I didn’t want this super competitive environment. And so when I got accepted, I was just amazed and couldn’t believe it. And I think the entire four years at MIT, I was like, “Were they sure about accepting me?” But, you know, I think that comes with a lot of the experience as a first-generation, especially you doubt yourself and you’re not quite sure if they really meant to include you in the space, but it really was a great place. I was looking at other colleges that are typical for liberal arts, but honestly it was really a great place for me to go, even though not many diplomats really start out at MIT. It’s not a place where you learn about the foreign service. You spend a lot more time thinking quantitatively versus qualitatively about different topics and career ideas.
Priscilla: Cool. So when you were in college, did you start to think about becoming a US diplomat? When did that come onto your radar?
Sharlina: Yeah, it didn’t really come onto my radar that much. A lot of my colleagues telling me about their experiences about how long they applied and were tenacious in pursuing diplomacy as a career. And I applaud them for it. Just I didn’t really know that was a field for me to consider. And honestly still just fighting my parents’ expectations. My dad and my mom were like, “Okay. If you’re not going to become a doctor or an engineer, I think the one last option is lawyer.” And they were just still pushing me to do that. And it didn’t really come to fruition. And so I was fighting a lot of different things and I was interested in a lot of different things. And so when I left college, I was working in DC because I knew that’s where I wanted to be for policy, but I still was lost. There are so many people who learn early on that they want to become a diplomat. But for me, I was still very lost and I just knew I wanted to work in policy. I wanted to work in international affairs or domestic policy and how things work on the Hill. It took me a while to land to where I am now.
Priscilla: What was that first job for you in DC? And how did that take you to realizing, “Oh, diplomacy is something I might want to pursue”?
Sharlina: Yeah. I mean, I actually was working in consulting in Washington on education issues and it was paying the bills to be honest, but it wasn’t really speaking to my soul. And the good thing about landing in a place like Washington is that you are more aware of what other opportunities there are out there, especially in the policy realm. So I actually left my consulting gig for unpaid internships, which sadly until this day are really still very common in Washington, but they have become almost the expectation to pave your resume into something more settled. And I did two different unpaid internships to see what I was interested in. And one was on the Hill, to see how much I would be interested in working on international affairs on the Hill. And while it was interesting, it wasn’t the kind of stuff that was really keeping me excited.
And so I actually went to grad school at Georgetown and that’s when I started learning more about foreign service. I mean, Georgetown has a school of foreign service. I wasn’t at their school but I was at the school of government, and I was learning more and more about these options. But I still, to be very honest, I knew it was there but I didn’t really take it seriously as something that I could do, because I think I still had a lot of imposter syndrome and not thinking that I could be a diplomat.
And so when I graduated from Georgetown, once again, I was successful in getting a different scholarship, which anyone who’s interested in learning languages, it’s the critical language scholarship by the State Department. And I moved to Egypt to learn and participate in that program. And when it finished, I was at a crossroads where I had to decide what I wanted to do. And so I decided to stay. And I was working there as a consultant on gender issues and working on human rights issues, and a girlfriend of mine who was actually a foreign service officer, she told me, “Hey, why don’t you apply?” And I was like, “Why me?” She’s like, “Why not you?” And the great thing about the foreign service process is that it’s a very transparent and easy process. Easy not in the sense of getting in, but it’s not like a closed interview situation. It’s you have to take a test and then you keep progressing through that process. And then if you’re lucky, you make it all the way at the end.
Priscilla: So how long were you in Egypt?
Sharlina: I was in Egypt for almost a year. I was there right up until approximately six months before the Arab Springs. I was there from 2009 to 2010. And that was a really good experience for me. I mean, COVID times are a little different right now, but in a normal circumstance, I do recommend for folks who are interested in working in international affairs to dive in and get out there.
Priscilla: Do you feel like when you apply to become a US diplomat, your international experience factored into getting accepted or was that not really as much of a factor?
Sharlina: I think it was definitely a factor, but I say it with a disclaimer, to say that just because you don’t have international experience doesn’t mean you could not be selected. I think it was important for me because it was a formative experience for me. When you go through the foreign service officer process, they’re looking for a specific type of person. And to be able to demonstrate the skills that you need to not only succeed but thrive in a career like this, the kind of skills I got while I was in Egypt, I think, were really instrumental to show that I was ready for that.
Priscilla: For those who are listening and are wondering, well, what does a US diplomat actually do? What were you sort of imagining when you were applying? So before you became one.
Sharlina: Yeah. Honestly, I didn’t really know. My girlfriend who was there was already on her first assignment in Egypt as a diplomat. And she’s what we call a public diplomacy, ConEd officer. And I am also a public diplomacy ConEd officer. And in plain terms, you can come in to being a diplomat with different specialties, so you can work in public diplomacy, which is what I do, which is basically the public affairs arm of the US Government overseas. And you could be working on politics. You’ll be a political officer, which is looking at what are the political issues in the country you’re in economically. And then there are other types of specialties that you could work. And also, of course, last but very much not least, one of our most important types of officers are what we called consular officers, which is making sure that we can provide every service that an American citizen would need overseas. And as you can imagine, during COVID times, has been instrumental to make sure we can provide consular services to our American citizens when they’re in a moment of crisis outside of the United States. So those are the different types of officers, but at the end of the day, we could all be doing any type of that work, because we like to say that it’s what we — the term, the phrase is very well-known in our line of work is called the needs of the service. You sign up to be a diplomat because you’re signing up to help and represent not only United States but also to be there in a time of crisis for anything an American would need.
And so even if I’m a public diplomacy officer, if I’m overseas and my colleague asked me, “Hey, can you help with making sure that this American citizen is safe?” That is my job. And I make sure that I can assist with that. But in general on a day-to-day, it really looks very different every day. And I think that’s what intrigued so many of us to still stay in, even though it can be a hard lifestyle because it’s not the same every day, as you can imagine, not just COVID but there are crises and things that happen anytime and anywhere.
Once I joined the foreign service, I actually moved back to Egypt. That was my second assignment. But when I was there, it was during a time of protracted crisis after the Arab Spring. And any time you move somewhere, you may think that it will be the same every day, but it actually can be very different because of whatever is happening at that time. And so I think that for someone who’s interested in this line of work, you have to be willing to throw caution to the wind a little bit and be willing to fly by the seat of your pants sometimes, which to be very honest, I didn’t come in with that type of perspective. It’s really funny because so many of us are so type A and we like to have things controlled. And so I think that the funny thing is we hold on to and control the little things we can because everything else is so unpredictable, if that makes sense.
Priscilla: Yeah. And so you talked a little bit about how there’s this test and this process, what are they testing? Is it logic, aptitude? And then how long was that process for you?
Sharlina: So for me, apparently, it was not that long. It took me a little bit under a year, but I understand that the process has actually been truncated a little bit. So to answer your first part of the question, basic level of what issues may be occurring throughout the world. So whether it’s COVID or a health crisis, economic crisis, or nuclear weapons in the Korean peninsula, et cetera. So a little bit of aptitude, of course. But whenever I talk to mentees or others who are just interested in this type of work and they’re like, “What do I need to do to prepare for something like this?” All I say are a couple of things, you need to just be a regular reader of something like The Economist or the New York Times, and just brush up on your middle school slash high school civics or AP Government, because there is definitely a test of what was this amendment and basic elements of American civic background. So those are the two basic aspects of the things that you need.
And then, of course, something that is very crucial to this type of career, which is writing, and not writing long papers. So it’s not about writing long papers. And if anyone who’s interested in not just foreign affairs but just policy in general, I encourage them to think through how to write something short and succinct. So when we say, when you want to prepare for any type of interview, they ask you to prepare your elevator pitch, right? So elevator pitch, but the written style. If you had to be in the elevator, so to speak, but in a written form, how could you write in maybe even three sentences what are the most important aspects of X issue? And that is what they’re looking for also, your ability to in the very quick situation, how quickly can you synthesize information and then convey it to someone during a moment of crisis, which happens as you can imagine all the time.
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INTERVIEW CONT’D
Priscilla: So once you became a diplomat and it was official, what did you realize that you enjoyed the most about maybe your first assignment or maybe even your second assignment and what interested you about it?
Sharlina: Yeah. I was incredibly lucky. My first assignment was in London in the United Kingdom. And as many people maybe already know, London is a really fantastic city, and I’m a New Yorker. So that’s really hard for me to admit. But it was incredible. I was there during the 2012 Olympics. One part of my portfolio in what we call our public diplomacy shop was cultural affairs. And cultural affairs, what does that mean? It’s like, how can we bridge the cultural divide between the US and whatever country you’re in? And so, of course, whoever’s listening will be like, “Okay. Who cares?” What kind of cultural divide is there between the US and the UK besides beer preferences, right? And that’s why it was actually interesting, when you get your first assignment, it’s this very momentous thing that we call flag day. And you get a flag for where you’re going and your family is there to support you and cheer you on because you don’t know where you’re going until that moment. And I got this flag for the United Kingdom. And I was like, ‘What? I thought I was going somewhere else. I don’t know, Cape Verde or something very different and new.” And so I was like, “Oh, this is going to be not so great.” But then I got there and I was like, “Wow, London is such an incredible city. And the UK is actually so diverse.” As you can imagine, London could be as diverse, if not more diverse than New York City. I actually don’t know the numbers. And so for me, actually, what was really interesting was that as a child of Bangladeshi immigrants, there are actually a lot of Bangladeshi and South Asian immigrants to the United Kingdom as well. And at that time, so this was 2011, I was also working on the 10th anniversary slash memorial for 9/11. And at that time, I don’t know if readers or listeners can remember, but we were still very much mired in foreign policy blunders in the Middle East. And so a lot of the immigrants to the United Kingdom took that very seriously and they actually harbored very serious anti-American sentiment. And so for me, my boss was great. He was just like, “You’re just going to go out and learn on the job.” And so he put me out, there was an opportunity to engage with the local university, with a lot of Bangladeshi- British students.
My first tour, I was 25 and they looked at me and they’re like, “Wait, you’re here representing the United States Government?” They were just floored because they didn’t expect a 25-year-old Brown woman who actually spoke literally the same language as their own parents. I grew up speaking Bangla in my house because my mother was like, “I refuse to let this language not get passed down to the next generation.” And so she made sure that we only spoke Bangla in our house growing up. And lo and behold, here I am on my first tour, and all of a sudden I had to flip from English to Bangla and speak about the war to these students as if their face had already not been amazed. And they were like, “Wait, she’s speaking Bangla to us and explaining the Iraq war to me.” And I was just like that to me was just incredible because I realized that I think it really hit home all of a sudden that I was this representative of the US Government, and I had this immense power to shape narratives and change how we talk about things. And I don’t want to say we change minds because I think public affairs means you’re trying to change the narrative or trying to change the opinions. And we can’t change the opinions of other citizens overnight, especially on some topics that are so, so complicated, the US involvement in the Middle East. But me speaking in Bangla as a 25-year-old Brown American diplomat, I think, was just a moment for them to realize that it’s really easy to vilify the US as this kind of amorphous thing that they read about in the paper. But when they see someone who looks just like them, who is able to become a diplomat in the United States, it just floored them that that could even be. And so I think that was a moment where I was like, “Not only do I have power, but look at what is possible in the United States that honestly is not possible in most parts of the world.” And so that time, it was kind of that amazing experience that I always look back at.
Priscilla: That’s so powerful. And it seems like it was like a full circle moment for you.
Sharlina: Yeah, absolutely. And there I was, I had no idea as a 25-year-old I could even have this power.
Priscilla: Very cool. So what were the most glamorous and then the not so glamorous parts of your job? If you had to keep it real with people, what are the parts that maybe are not so exciting or just more challenging? What would those be for you?
Sharlina: So there are definitely so many glamorous moments in the story I just told you. It doesn’t sound glamorous probably to the average person, but for me it was because I was like, “Wow, look at me being able to change opinions.” But there were definitely the ones I think a lot of people were like, “This is definitely glamorous.” So part of my cultural affairs job was, at that time, Sundance actually had not broken outside the United States yet. And we worked with Robert Redford’s team to get Sundance into the United Kingdom. That was really glamorous for me to meet him and to work with some of the stars and the film folks out of the US, who are coming to the United Kingdom.
And also, I’m a huge sports fan. I was a kid in New York City in the ’90s with my brother, so I love basketball. And so I was able to work with the NBA folks in the United Kingdom and help them during, of course, at that time 2012 during the Olympic year to work with all the amazing basketball players who came to London. I met Grant Hill for the first time as part of a sports diplomacy reception. And I was like, “Man, you really are tall in real life.” That was amazing as a kid who grew up in the ’90s. And so that was really fantastic.
But yes, there are definitely a lot more not glamorous moments. What the really not glamorous part is you’re moving every few years. You’re leaving and uprooting friends and/or family members, depending on where you are. And you’re living far away from the United States. You miss the holidays. You miss things like Trader Joe’s, which sounds super silly. But when you’re far away, all of a sudden you start to realize the random things that you miss. I’ve been working in Washington the last few years, so it’s been really great. The ability to just have a need and then just go out to Target five seconds later is amazing. You cannot do that in other countries. So I think it is important to remind others that whether you’re working in foreign affairs as a US Government person or just in general like you’re working overseas, there are many not glamorous moments.
And I think the other thing to say as a representative of the US Government, I think we are also people, right? So we all have our own perspectives. We all come in very informed and educated about a lot of different things and we have strong opinions. And at the end of the day, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the policy matches with your opinion everywhere you go. And so that is definitely the not glamorous part. And that has happened throughout my almost 10 years in this career anywhere I’ve been. You’re there to represent what the folks back in Washington deem as the essential part of our bilateral relationship between that country and the United States. So as long as we’re advancing our most important US interests, that’s what your job is. So I think that’s important to have that get checked as well.
Priscilla: Well, my last question for you, what’s the most fun story that you can tell about your time working abroad?
Sharlina: Well, a fun story is that when I was working in London on the Olympics, I was working with my colleagues. And keep in mind, this is my first tour. So I’m still very junior and I was working on a reception/an event, actually for, at that time, First Lady Michelle Obama. And we were working around the clock to make sure everything was set up right. All the athletes were coming in and the folks who were invited were coming in. And I was working with the First Lady’s team from the White House would come in to also work what we call their advance team.
So I was working with them and we’re all so exhausted. And I was just like, “Oh my God. I can’t believe this is happening. All these people are coming.” And I got chewed out by one of the folks from the White House team because they were like, “Does this podium look exactly right?” So in public affairs, right, we set up the events, we have to do all these things. We have to think through every possible scenario. And so we’re right off the podium, setting up all these things. And I was like, “Yeah, everything looks right. The flag is in the right place. Everything, the backdrop, et cetera.” And they’re like, “I don’t think this podium looks right for the First Lady.” And I was like, “What?” And they were like, “Do you know how tall she is?” And I was like, “No. I know she’s tall but I don’t know how tall.” And they’re like, “Oh, she’s this” — I don’t even remember anymore, but she’s this tall, and she likes to wear a kitten heels. So I had to lie down on the floor by the podium to make sure we had just the right level of what is it called? The risers so that someone can — so that the First Lady — and I was so nervous.
And so right when that event happened, and the First Lady who is by the way, one of the most kindest down to earth people I have ever met, she stood on that riser. And I don’t know if anyone around me noticed that I had a huge sigh of relief, but it was like just right. It was the first event that was launched to kick off the entire weekend of events for the First Lady for the Olympics. And so I was so worried and mortified, but then it all was fine. And in the end she was so thankful and gracious and so sweet that I was like, “Thank God that worked out,” but let’s hope that doesn’t happen again.
Priscilla: Oh, my God. Wow. That probably felt so high stakes too, even though it’s like a minor detail. Oh, my God.
Sharlina: Yeah. So minor, right? Especially for a junior officer, we were like, “Okay. This is a lot.” So it just goes to show that every little thing that you see has so many intricate details in the back that someone is doing. So now it’s funny whenever I look at any kind of event. I’m like, “Oh, who did that? Oh, who did the Twitter?” Who was actually running that Twitter because that was probably the staff member, and I think they did a really good job.
Priscilla: Very cool. Well, Sharlina, this has been such a great conversation. I’m excited for people that are interested in this career path to listen to your story and to feel encouraged because I loved what you said about not letting imposter syndrome get in the way of your dreams. And you went after it, and you’ve been living your dream. So really cool. Thank you.
Sharlina: Great. Thank you so much, Priscilla.
OUTRO
Priscilla: Thanks for tuning in to the Early Career Moves Podcast! Be sure to visit ECMPodcast.com to join the conversation, access the show notes, and become a part of our newsletter community. And if you loved this episode, head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. Talk to you next week.
by Priscilla | Jan 22, 2021 | Black, Business
Show Notes:
Have you ever considered saying goodbye to your “career identity”? Well, that’s exactly what Gbenoba Idah did in 2018, when he said goodbye to his 10-year career as an attorney. On this episode, hear directly from this gregarious Los-Angeles native who watched his parents struggle to keep their small business alive, thus impacting his own post-college career decisions. When being a lawyer became toxic to his mental and physical wellbeing, Gbenoba knew it was time to switch gears. This inspirational story will give you the courage to make your boldest career move yet.
Links Mentioned In Episode:
Sponsor, The Art of Applying – Get $100 off a Quick Call if you mention the ECM Podcast
Pay It Forward MBA Fund – Founded by Gbenoba in 2020
Transcription:
TEASER
Gbenoba: When I pass away, my gravestone is not going to say, you know,
“Gbenoba, Lawyer,” right? It’s going to have my name. And I realized I need to be happy. And if I’m happy, I can do things for more people. I can mentor more people as opposed to just mentoring people in the firm.
PODCAST INTRODUCTION
Priscilla: Welcome to the Early Career Moves Podcast, the show that highlights remarkable young professionals of color killing it on their career journeys. I’m your host Priscilla Esquivel Weninger – proud Texas Latina, daughter of immigrants, and lover of breakfast tacos. Meet me for a coffee chat each Friday, as we dive into a special guest’s story, and hear all about their challenges, milestones, and lessons learned. If you’re a young professional of color and you’re feeling lost in your career, or just need a dose of inspiration, you’re in the right place! Let’s get started.
GUEST INTRODUCTION
Priscilla: Hey, have you ever considered drastically changing your career path? I don’t just mean a small industry or function shift. I’m talking about leaving a complete identity behind. Well, that’s exactly what our guest today, Gbenoba Idah, did when he left his 10-year career as a litigator a few years back. On this episode, he tells us how growing up in LA, where he watched his family work hard to keep their small business afloat, impacted his career decisions, how he fought tooth and nail to get to Cornell and get his law degree. And then why he decided to choose happiness over status.
INTERVIEW
Priscilla: I’m so fortunate to have Gbenoba Idah on today’s episode. Gbenoba is a dear friend of mine. He was also my MBA classmate at UT Austin. And I would love to start in terms of just who is Gbenoba? What’s your personal background and where is home for you?
Gbenoba: Yeah. So I’m born and raised in Los Angeles, California. My dad’s a Nigerian immigrant. He came over to the States in the late ’70s, and went to graduate school in the Bay Area, and started working for telecom companies. And during that time is when he actually met my mom who’s from South Central Los Angeles. She’s African-American. They met in a nightclub and they hit it off. They got married, moved to Los Angeles, and then I was born. I’m very much an immigrant’s kid.
My parents are small business owners. Every day after school, from the time that I was young, we spent working the beauty supply that we had in South Central Los Angeles. And so I would stock the shelves. I would just be talking to the customers. And if you can imagine, you meet a lot of people, so you become a people person. And as a result of being small business owners, my parents struggled a lot from the time I was five till time I graduated from high school. I think we moved about 25 times. And so I’ve lived in all parts of LA, from downtown area to West LA to the beach area. And I think really a lot of the moves were driven by finance but they’re also driven by schools. Yeah, that’s my background. I’m an LA guy in true form.
Priscilla: Yeah. And so you watched your parents kind of grind it out, right. Did you imagine that you would also be a business owner?
Gbenoba: So my dad’s 1 of 10, my mom’s 1 of 5. On my dad’s side of the family, of the 10 siblings, 8 of them have their own business. And then on the mom’s side of the family, African-American side, everybody worked for the government pretty much. That’s all the jobs that you can get in the LA area as a Black person or Hispanic or minorities. And so I had two different sides of me that were always chiming in in terms of what would be appropriate for a career path.
I was really good at sports but I also was doing well in the classroom. So my parents were sort of pushing both. They were saying like, “Look, you can focus on sports, be good in school, and then pick a career.” And then they would also say, “Well, you can also just dump sports, focus on school, and then pick a career.” But in terms of being a business owner, the entrepreneurial route was amazing because you could see the money coming in. We would order the hair care stuff. I would unbox the products. My sister and I would put it on the shelf. We’d see the people come in, watch them pick it out off the shelf, put the money into the register. The money is going towards our food for that weekend or whatever. And so learn the value of the dollar, but then you also see how much people struggle.
I think reason why I never became an entrepreneur like my parents is because the struggle was real. It was rent or food. And then sometimes it was food, and so there are a number of times, for example, where we just were staying in hotels. I got my college admission stuff in a hotel. So it just, for me, I wanted stability. So that’s why I started to think about careers where I could be stable, but also have status, because I saw how hard my mom’s family worked and how they had good jobs but they couldn’t take vacation. And so that’s when I started to really think about, “Okay. What are the teachers talking about? Doctor, lawyer, engineer.” All these little buzzwords that I start to hear. And I would ask people about it as a young person, but I still couldn’t focus as much as the next kid. And it was just because I had learning issues and things like that that came out later in life. It’s a long answer to your short question, but that’s what I heard growing up.
Priscilla: Yeah. So it sounds like you developed this appreciation or desire to have financial stability in your future and not have to be worried what’s going to happen next. And entrepreneurs do take on so much risk. You ultimately went to Cornell for college. How did that happen? How did Cornell get on your radar?
Gbenoba: Sure. So I was a public school kid my entire life, jumped around schools in the LA school district, had a lot of positive influences. And my parents were trying to find the best school for my sister. In eighth grade, we had some soccer games against other middle schools, and I just had a good game. And one of the administrators from this private school came down to the field and asked me what my name was. And told me that he will want me to come to the school and visit and take a look. It’s a small private school. They have great athletics and education. And that sort of sparked and changed the direction of my life. I went from being in a difficult situation where the schools I was at in LA, they were just rough, things were happening on the fringes, where people were getting involved in gangs at the time. That was very much a difficult time to go to high school. And so my parents were trying to figure out ways in which they could get permits for me to go to a high school. And the way it works in LA is you get a permit to go to a school. So there are a lot of times you look at schools and, “Oh, this kid went to this school. How did they do it?” And it’s because they got a permit like you find a fake post office box or you set up a small business in that area, have the business certificate. You take it to the office, and you get registered to go to that better school.
And so my parents took this guy up on his offer for me to visit the school. And it was culture shock. I went from mostly Black and Hispanic classmates to walking around campus and not seeing any other Black faces for about an hour and a half. Chadwick is the name of the school I ended up going to for high school, and it’s a top 25 high school in the United States. It was originally a boarding school that turned into a day school. And so it’s like K through 12. At the time, the tuition for the school was about $14,000 a year, which my parents obviously couldn’t afford. I think now they’re charging around 40 and up per year.
And so I started studying for the test to get into the school. At first, I just bombed it. I had never really taken any standardized tests outside of regular tests they ask you to take. And yeah, that definitely catapulted my learning curve that there were kids out there who were doing better than me. I was the smartest kid in my classes, but coming to this private school or at least testing for it made me realize that I needed to grow and need to get better. And so I ended up making the move to the private school, got a scholarship to be there. I was the only Black male in my class. I would have been in a high school with 1,100 kids to a high school was 74 kids.
I didn’t, at that time, know that I would be able to make it to the Ivy leagues or make it even to UCLA, USC. But my parents really pushed me. I had a lot of people who were in my corner. And I got reinforcements from both sides. My dad would literally yell out the car every day when I would go to school as a freshman. And he would say, “You could beat them. You’re better than them.” And then when I would come home at night, my mom, after we’d be at the beauty supply until eight, nine o’clock at night, she’d be on me to make sure I finished my homework. And it was just that kind of push that I had. And so Cornell for me was like the crown jewel for my parents because it solidified their hard work. And like I said earlier, I got the college admissions when we were at a hotel with 9 other of my relatives, because there used to be 10 people in the house. Yeah. It was just a good moment. And Cornell, in and of itself, was another stepping stone. But high school for me at Chadwick was the most difficult time of my life because it was sink or swim. And yeah, it was surreal. I ended up getting into 22 of the 25 colleges that I applied to. I took Cornell because I got in for just academics, and that’s my journey to Cornell.
Priscilla: Wow. Gbenoba, that’s such a long road to get to Cornell. And unfortunately, I think your story is not uncommon. So many times people of color and parents have to fight so hard to get just the bare minimum when it comes to educational opportunities. So definitely understand, and I had a very similar story. So thanks for sharing that. So I’m really curious, when you did get to Cornell finally, I know that you decided to go the pre-law route and you went to law school after graduation straight through. So yeah, tell us about how did you decide to go down that path?
Gbenoba: I think the thing is there was a little bit of group think, right? They were probably 50 or so minority students that I was close with, where we all were in the minority undergraduate law society. And we just were trying to become lawyers. We didn’t even know what that meant. The only lawyers a lot of us knew were our professors. I had never met a lawyer in my life. And so there is the pressure that you feel because you come out of Cornell and people expect you to be in the C suite of Goldman Sachs, right? So the pressure that you feel is both from the school to do well and succeed, but then also from your family, because you can’t just go to Cornell and come back and be working at the cash register of your parents’ beauty supply.
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INTERVIEW, CONT’D
Gbenoba: With nobody to tell me, you’ll get these internships, work a summer for somebody else, do an unpaid internship, which to me sounded crazy. Like, all these things I just didn’t do. I was like, “Let me just stay in school longer. See if I can get a scholarship to be in law school. At least the end of result is being a lawyer.” So I went to University of New Mexico School of Law. It’s in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I took a scholarship to go there. And so I actually had a mentor by the name of Alfred Mathewson, who was the only Black male professor at the school at the time. And he let me be his research assistant. He took me under his wing and I, again, was the only Black male law student in my class. There were two Black female law students in my class. The other one is now a Court of Appeals judge in New Mexico. The other Black female is a professor in Belgium. I took the litigation route, where I was interested in corporate defense. I wanted to work for the big firms. I wanted the big money and the big hours, and it took a lot out of me. I graduated 23, passed the bar when I was about 24. I was probably working 7:00 to 7:00 in the office each day. And then I’ll go home and work until about 10:00. That was Monday through Friday. Saturdays, pretty much almost a full day, probably get in at 9:00, leave at 5:00, Sundays, half days. And I did that for about seven-and-a-half years. And I started to think about getting out because I had a couple of cases where I lost my sense of self. I lost my empathy for people. We were working on a case for a large company, people who were hurt as a result of the alleged incidents were in front of me and they would start crying. And I would just be like, “Next question.” It was at that moment that it was time for me to get out of the law.
Priscilla: After seven years! And 7 years plus, because it’s really like 10 years of law school and the whole thing.
Gbenoba: Yeah. It was the hardest decision I had to make, because everybody identified me as a lawyer. I had a stable career. I had 401(k)s. I had car payments. You know what I mean? I had everything all in, and I was tired of it. I felt I was starting to gain weight, starting to have health issues. I hadn’t taken a vacation in four years. I wasn’t able to have any sort of relationships that lasted. I was always stressed out. I just wasn’t myself. And I realized that something had to change and I believed in myself enough to do something different. I just didn’t know whether it would be to become a law school professor, to practice on my own, leave the big firm life, to do something completely different, or go back to school.
Priscilla: And how did you start to figure out that maybe the law wasn’t for you long-term? What were the moments that started to stir up something in you?
Gbenoba: You find yourself in these moments where you talk to other lawyers, and a lot of people don’t love being a lawyer, right? Like, even the older lawyers don’t love it, but it’s their job. And then you find out other people don’t like their jobs. And then you start to think, “Okay, that’s okay,” then it’s just a job. And so when you start to do a lawyer analysis, oh, okay. If other people are unhappy, it’s okay that I’m unhappy. And then you realize, no, everything you do revolves around conflict. You don’t take two-week vacations. The partners do. Even when you become partner, the partner still check their email for the first week of their vacation. These partners have been divorced, and these partners have been married a few times, and these partners have these. Like, you start to look at their personal lives and then you realize, I’m not a therapist. I don’t know what’s in this person’s mind. I can’t judge another attorney. Why am I judging them? And then you start to realize, okay, maybe it’s about me.
So you start to have all these mental health issues as a result of working in the law and working at big firms. And that’s why the attrition rate is so bad, really for people of color, because there aren’t any partners that look like us. And then the attrition rate for people of color in the first few years of law firm is huge because there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. And so when you start to judge other people, the people that you’re working for, and then you start to latch onto the ones that you like, and then it becomes about the person you’re working for more than about the law, then you realize, okay, this has to stop. I need to figure out what’s going to make me happy in life. And I also need to make some money because I have these degrees that people value.
Priscilla: So how did your friends and family react when you told them, “I think I’m going to leave the law”?
Gbenoba: That’s the million dollar question, Priscilla. (Laughs) That was the hardest conversation to have. My parents were cool. They were just like, “You’re going to be fine. You can succeed.” My sister was really supportive. It was the older relatives on both sides of the family, African-American and Nigerian, where there was no lawyers in the family, right? Like, a lawyer was a status for any community no matter what your color was, and that I shouldn’t be discouraged by the roadblocks ahead to becoming partner. At the time, I was a senior associate. I was up for partner in two years. And so they’re like, “Just become partner, just wait it out. Take a vacation. Take some time off or do a different kind of law or find another firm.” The older relatives really had a hard time, and I’m talking to them now, years later, after being in business school, it was them just more worried that I felt like the system had won, that somebody who was doing well, did good work, always got positive reviews, would be top five in billable hours. But yeah, it was hard for them for sure. But I actually felt more comfortable with the decision than I had with anything because I felt like at the very worst, I could come back and be a lawyer. It’s like a profession that you can always get back into. You just have to do some administrative stuff and find a firm that will take you back if you don’t have a book of business and. But your resume at that time speaks for itself. But the identity part of it was hardest, trying to explain to people, your peers that you’re done. And then you find out a lot of people are done, and a lot of people keep doing it just for a paycheck. And I felt like that’s not going to be my life. When I pass away, and my gravestone is not going to say, “Gbenoba, Lawyer,” right? It’s going to have my name. And I realized I need to be happy. And if I’m happy, I can do things for more people. I can mentor more people as opposed to just mentoring people in the firm. I can go out in the community and have time and not just attend some social justice events when I’m not working until 10:00 PM. It took much more of an understanding that the happiness is the goal, not the prestige and the status.
Priscilla: Yeah. And it’s really easy to get caught up in the prestige and status chasing because especially in communities of color and parents who are immigrants, they really value those degrees and they really value pursuing those paths. And that can be challenging for us when that’s not really what would make us most happy. And so did you really feel that pressure from the community?
Gbenoba: I used to think about it a lot, because the pressure that I felt later on wasn’t the pressure that I put on myself. It was societal pressure like, you’re the Black lawyer, don’t give up. Or I talked to my Hispanic colleagues. This is it. You’re the one. Because it’s a pipeline thing, and it’s a representation thing. I don’t know. It is definitely a status thing here in America. I think that people value lawyers as if we are better than other people, and that’s not the case. We just spent an extra three years at school. And there’s a lot of bad things that you find out about lawyers when you start practicing law, that they have the highest rate of alcoholism and things like that. And you find that, okay, this profession can be toxic if you don’t control it. So I think the times are changing whereby people are starting to understand, okay, being a lawyer isn’t like glittering gold, same way people are seeing now being a doctor isn’t all glitter and gold. And I think that as with more information, people can really see behind the curtain and realize, okay, it’s just like any other profession. The differences you have a little more job security because you can just work for yourself in a recession, for example. But yeah, I wish I knew it was a weird concept.
Priscilla: What soul-searching did you do when you decided to leave the law and how did you decide what to do next? And tell us what you’re doing now.
Gbenoba: The soul-searching was a year-long process. I started to think about if things were to go wrong and I hit rock bottom, would I be okay with that? And once I became okay with that, then I just went full steam ahead and started looking at, okay, I could go do a different kind of law. And then I quickly gotten rid of that idea. Then I looked at starting started my own business. I was like, “I can’t do it, too much risk.” And then I looked at going to go start a firm with my classmates, my friends, people that I trusted. And then I was like, “Oh, I’d be right back where I am right now.” And then I was like, “Okay. The, law I’m out. Then let me look at business. Okay.” Every time I apply to companies, they’re going to think I’m a lawyer, right? They’re not going to consider me for these jobs because my skills, they’re all legal skills, right? So I could be like a legal affairs and business development person or business development person, or a contract, somebody that deals with contracts or partnerships, but I’m always going to be a lawyer. And so I was like, “Okay. Business right now is out.” And then I started looking at business school and just doing my research and realized that this is the way I can career switch and figure out what I want to do with my life. And I actually had a few projects with consultants. I was working for a large oil and gas client, and they were working through the implementation side of a transaction, and we were actually going to draft the documents and then help them with some pending litigation that they had. I saw how skilled the consultants were and I found out nobody on their team were lawyers. I was like, “Wow, this is impressive.” So I was like, “Let me look up into this consulting thing.” And so I started looking into consulting, found out a lot of people went to business school. There was some JD/MBA folks that were consultants. And to be frank, I applied twice to business schools. At first, I was doing the same thing I did in college, where I was like, “Okay, I’m going top 5, top 10, or whatever.” And then I got into one top 5 school, but I didn’t get any money. And so I was like, “I’m not going to do it. I can’t take that financial burden.” And so then I was like, “Why am I making the same mistakes that I’ve always done? Why don’t I just look for happiness?” And so I started looking at schools that were in progressive cities and large cities, not like little college towns, and where I would go visit and people would remember my name, and the admissions officers actually would follow up and care. That’s really what brought me to the University of Texas at Austin. And they were just outstanding in terms of the people of color were supportive and realized the risk that I was taking and wanting to help me get in, but then non people of color at McCombs were stellar. They took me for who I was like just this kind of oddball 34 year old at the time, a guy who wants to go back to school. They were like, “Wow, you sure?” Like, it wasn’t even a thing. So I was like, “Okay. I like these folks.” So yeah, that started my path to McCombs, and I ended up recruiting for consulting and I’ll be working at Ernst and Young Parthenon and the Private Equity Due Diligence Group starting in a few days here. And I’m just thankful for the ability to switch careers and start something new. The hours are going to be tough and it’s going to be hard work. But I think the skills that I’ve got from my past plus what I’ve gained in business school, coupled with what I’m about to do, will give me the chance to really do anything in life. But I think that if I were to be frank with you, anybody can do anything in life if you just put your mind to it.
Priscilla: Thank you for being an example of what’s possible in terms of, you know, changing your mind. We’re allowed to change our minds. And so thank you for being an example of that.
Gbenoba: Thank you, Priscilla, for having me. You inspired me more than I could tell you on his podcast. Thank you for the opportunity.
OUTRO
Priscilla: Thanks for tuning into the Early Career Moves Podcast! Be sure to visit ECMPodcast.com to join the conversation, access the show notes, and become a part of our newsletter community. And if you loved this episode, head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. Talk to you next week.
by Priscilla | Jan 15, 2021 | Latinx, STEM, Tech
Show Notes:
On this episode, you’ll hear from Diego Granados – a Mexico City native, Microsoft Product Manager and YouTuber. On this episode, Diego tells us exactly what it means to be a product manager in tech, how to break into this career path, and what it takes to be successful in the role. Diego reassures any aspiring product manager that you don’t need to have a “technical” background or MBA to break into this path – and his YouTube channel, PM Diego Granados, dives even deeper to help people pivot into this fulfilling and exciting career path.
Links Mentioned In Episode:
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PM Diego Granados – YouTube Channel
Transcription:
Diego: You have to be a good storyteller as a PM. As a CEO, yes, you have people reporting to you, but as a product manager, you don’t have anybody reporting to you. So you have to convince them. You have to influence them to make a product, to make changes, to change the priorities. And you do that through stories.
Priscilla: Welcome to the Early Career Moves Podcast, the show that highlights remarkable young professionals of color killin’ it on their career journeys. I’m your host Priscilla Esquivel Weninger – proud Texas Latina, daughter of immigrants, and lover of breakfast tacos. Meet me for a coffee chat each Friday, as we dive into a special guest’s story, and hear all about their challenges, milestones, and lessons learned. If you’re a young professional of color and you’re feeling lost in your career, or just need a dose of inspiration, you’re in the right place! Let’s get started.
Priscilla: Hey, have you ever thought about breaking into product management or wondered what a product manager in tech actually does? This is the perfect episode for you. Today I interview Diego Granados, who is a successful product manager at Microsoft, and he will break down exactly what it takes to break into this path no matter where you’re coming from. Diego is a Mexico native, he was a joy to talk to, he has an MBA from Duke Fuqua and he was originally trained as an engineer, but it turns out you don’t need either of those things to actually become a product manager. So tune in, and if you want to learn more, check the show notes on my website to make sure that you check out his YouTube channel, where he really goes in depth and helps people break into product management.
INTERVIEW
Priscilla: Hey Diego, welcome to the show!
Diego: Thank you so much Priscilla for inviting me. I’m super excited about this opportunity.
Priscilla: Of course, I’m super excited to dive into your path that led you to now be a Product Manager at Microsoft. So let’s dive in, and why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background really quickly?
Diego: Yeah, absolutely. Hello everyone. My name is Diego Granados and I am originally from Mexico City and I lived most of my life there, I studied electric engineering and I always thought that I was going to be working in building computers and new cell phones and video game consoles, but very fast I realized that it was not for me and I can tell you more about it, but all I can say is that now working as a PM, there is absolutely no traditional path to get into product management. And that’s one of the things that really excites me about this role.
Priscilla: Yeah. So why don’t we start with just defining product management? There seems to be lots of different terms for what it is to be a product manager. Can you tell us a little bit about these titles and what they mean?
Diego: There are different definitions to product management and depending on the book or the website that you cite, it’s going to be different yet similar in a way. But in that sense, if I can summarize what PM’s do…so, as a product manager, yes, you’ll be in the middle of technology and business and customers. And starting with the customers, PMs have to talk a lot with customers for many different reasons, right? Like from getting ideas and feedback all the way to testing or even to do a simple ideation phase where you run surveys and interview customers to figure out pain points. And that’s one of the beauties of being in product management is that you have all of this input from all these different customers. Then, product managers are also storytellers. And this is one of my favorite things that I keep talking about is you have to be a good storyteller as a PM. You have to make sure that the stories that you tell and how you convince people and how you write documents and product requirements or even presentations, they have to convey a story because like I was saying, as a CEO, yes, you have people reporting to you, but as a product manager, you don’t have anybody reporting to you. So you have to convince them, you have to influence them to make a product, to make changes, to change the priorities. And you do that through stories. And the stories are a combination of customer input feedback, data that you take and input from management and input from other teams. And you have to make a story out of all of this. So product managers are storytellers. And you also have to communicate in different languages. That’s another skill that PMs need to have. I’m not going to talk in the same way to engineering that I do to marketing or legal or finance. I have to constantly switch these quote-unquote languages so that I can be effective in meetings and be effective in the things that I write to convey that story. So we also have to understand and be empathic with not just customers, but with our different colleagues. We also have to talk about business, right? I think we always talk about improving products and having these successful features into the market, but we have to make money out of it. So you always have to think about the business and how are you going to price it and what’s the cost and is it going to be a bundle? Is it going to be attached to another license? And you have to deal with all of this ambiguity of the business itself. And finally people think that sometimes you do it alone, but in reality, it’s a dialogue or a conversation with your teammates and absorbing all the feedback from everyone and the customer. So you have to navigate in this ocean of ambiguity to basically in the end answer three big questions: What are we building? Why are we building it? And a combination of how and when is it going to be delivered? We could go into many more details, but I would say at a high level, this is what a product manager is. And just to finish answering your question, in general, the title is always, or almost always product management. There are a few exceptions, like for example, Microsoft still calls their product managers, program managers, but outside of Microsoft, I have not seen, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but I have not seen other companies mix those titles. And sometimes companies also just make it a little bit more specific by saying technical product manager versus business product manager, or just regular product manager. But that will be the only difference. Everything else, like project or program manager, again, except for Microsoft, it’s a very different role that sometimes gets confused with product manager and product owner, which is another title that is out there. But to summarize everything, I would say many companies are still confused on the title. Many companies still don’t adopt the product versus program manager like Microsoft, but in general, most of the time should just be product manager or technical product manager.
Priscilla: Yeah. And obviously the word product is pretty general, right? Like people could be working on a software or a hardware product, you know, what should people kind of be thinking about as they think about that role in choosing the product that they’re working on?
Diego: I would say search for the word technology on the internet and whatever pops out, I’m sure there’s a PM role for that. And it just doesn’t just extend to things like just hardware, software, or cloud. If it goes within industries, not the same to be a PM in a software business like Microsoft than to be a PM in the healthcare industry. That’s completely different in terms of the technology. The role might be similar, but the technology is going to be completely different. Right? And so, as you think of the PM role, the soft skills, you’re going to carry those with you along different products, different technologies and soft skills, again, being a storyteller and influencing others and all that. The technology, no ledge. It’s going to be easier to ramp up on that than the soft skills. So if you start to be in a hardware product, that’s a PM for manufacturing cars, that doesn’t mean that you can not end up in a hardware product in a software company like Google and working for Google home because you have that expertise of hardware and you also bring all the soft skills. So I think for aspiring PMs or for any PM in general, I think it’s about what is really exciting to you. What are the things you’d like to be working on? Do you like the B2B side of companies? Do you like business to consumer? Do you like products that are on a windows shop in retailers? Do you like medical devices? But there’s opportunities for it to be a PM in so many different technologies and products.
Priscilla: Yeah, definitely a lot to consider there. So in terms of qualifications, I know that you have an MBA, but have you seen that an MBA is necessary to become a product manager?
Diego: Not really. And that’s one of the things that I mentioned earlier, which is, I love the fact that to become a product manager, there are so many paths to get into this. Most of the PMs that you see out there, like me, have an MBA, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only path to get into product management. It’s just one way to get into PM.
Priscilla: Got it. So from the product managers that you’ve known and worked with, what do their backgrounds usually look like?
Diego: Honestly, it’s all over the place. I have friends who used to be in the army. I have friends who used to be architects, or friends also in sales or in finance. So really there is no traditional path. I think we call it a traditional background when we say a tech background or an engineering background, but really again, it’s just one way to become a PM. There are so many product managers that don’t have a technical or an engineering background. And that’s, again, one thing that I really like about this role, because it’s about what can you bring to the table? How can you help the team and that diversity of thought and backgrounds. I think it makes it a very rich and unique role. And yeah, there’s no traditional way. Having an MBA is just one way to do it. Having an engineering background is just one way to do it, but there are other ways to get into product management.
Priscilla: That’s really good to know, and really encouraging for people who are really interested in breaking into product management. So from what you’ve seen, what are some of the traits that the most successful Product Managers have in common?
Diego: Communication is key. Like I was saying before, we speak different languages, but the way you write your emails or text messages or user stories or product requirements, communication is super important for product management, because you are going to be talking all the time to different stakeholders, not necessarily in the meeting, but constantly talking to others. So that’s one thing. Leadership is definitely another important one. You are going to be leading without any authority. You have to influence, like you were saying, and that you have to make sure that your leadership style is helping the team. You don’t have anybody reporting to you. So how you, through your leadership, influence others. Dealing with ambiguity is a big one. Since day one that you join any company as a product manager, there’s going to be ambiguity. Tons of it. And you have to make sense out of that ambiguity and it’s your role to help the team understand the ambiguity on requirements, customer feedback, what’s the roadmap, what are we launching in the next two, three, five, six months, one year. Being a storyteller like I was mentioning before, it’s not just how you write an email, but it’s what message are you conveying to the team and how you’re communicating with these customers. And empathy. Empathy with customers, empathy with teams, understanding motivations and incentives. These characteristics are super important to product managers to make sure that it’s successful. And there are many others like being able to listen and presentation skills and how you’re going to put a presentation together. All of these, it’s important, but in general, the ones that I mentioned, like communication, leadership, dealing with ambiguity, storyteller, customer empathy, I would say those are big for a PM to have.
Priscilla: Yeah, so let’s transition a little bit to your own story and how you broke into product management. I know that you started out your career as an engineer at IBM, and then you moved into business intelligence consulting for five years. Tell me about why you decided to leave consulting to then get your MBA at Duke.
Diego: One thing to know about the consulting life is that in most cases, not all the time, but in most cases you finish a project, you give the project to the customer and that’s it. Then you start another project. And having that closure, I always felt like I needed to see what’s next. What happens next? Having that next set of next steps was missing for me. And. It was always interesting to learn from different customers, but at the same time, at some point it got repetitive. It was look at the data, understand the problem and figure out how best to represent and give them insights and then start all over again. So I was looking for what is next? What’s the next step for me?I knew that I wanted to change jobs, but I wasn’t sure exactly what type of job I wanted. And after debating, whether I wanted to simply switch to another company or maybe doing a master’s degree in the end, after talking to both people in different industries and alumni from MBAs, I realized that the potential for a master’s degree was beyond just switching a job. It was actually learning many more things about, for example, marketing and strategy and finance and all these other things that, as an engineer, I never had a formal education of those. And that’s what led me to start thinking about, okay it’s time to do an MBA.
Priscilla: So when you got to Duke, did you start off knowing you wanted to do product management or did you explore other options?
Diego: When I joined, I said, I know about consulting, why not be in a top consulting firm? I want to be in McKinsey, Bain, BCG. I want to be a management consultant. And it sounded really exciting and I put that in all the papers that I sent to Duke. And then the second day of classes, I realized that consulting was not for me. I was always thinking about my own experience as a consultant. And I said, no, I want something different. I want that closure. I want to be able to launch the products, but I didn’t know what kind of role will help me with that. So I went through the obvious ones, like marketing or operations. I was like, maybe this can help me. That was until I joined the tech club. And we started hearing from our second years who came back from their internships and they started talking about product management. And that was the moment when I realized that the role existed before that I had no clue that product management was a thing.
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Priscilla: So during your business school experience, you got to intern as a product manager. Tell us about that experience and what was it like?
Diego: My first product manager role was my internship at Cisco in California. I was super excited. It was sort of a nontraditional Cisco role. So I was not working on routers or switches or access points. I was actually hired for my internship to do sort of like a business case around a new product that was cooking at the time. We know that through the network that Cisco deploys, the wireless network, we can detect phones, tablets, computers, anything that is connected to wifi. How do we make a product that helps customers think of a hospital? How do we help them to track where phones are or wheelchairs or anything that is connected to the network? A lot of equipment is very expensive and so how do we help them with that? Since we already had the infrastructure, we can build a platform for it. And so that’s what I was working on, the business case I was working on for my summer internship.
Priscilla: Very cool. So what was the hardest thing for you to adjust to as you were trying out this product manager role for the first time?
Diego: I joined and my manager and the senior PM that I was working with at the time were like, well, so here’s the idea and we need to find out if it’s feasible, if we can do it, if we’re going to make business out of it. So yeah, we need you to give us an answer. And it was overwhelming. It was exciting at the time too, because it was like this huge problem and there was no clear structure or no clear way to perceive. And it was part of my job to figure that out and talking to customers and talking to partners and talking to other parts of Cisco, just to make sense out of the, hey, should we build this or not? And that was super exciting, but super challenging too. What made me comfortable was that I was always uncomfortable because I thought I was not making progress, but the more I talked to people, the more the engineering thing asked me questions and I was able to solve them. I realized that I actually was making progress. I was actually able to answer their questions in meetings where managers would say, hey, do you have data to back up our assumption then I’ll be like, well, I’m not sure if this is enough data, but here’s what three or four customers said. Here’s the survey that we run. Here’s the studies that I found online. Here’s the competitors. So I would just be putting this data together, but it was the first business case that I would do in that sense. I was always not sure if it was the right way to do it. And in the end, what would happen at the end of my summer internship was that I left Cisco to go back to school. And then I got the offer to come back full time. And when I accepted my offer to start at Cisco after graduation, one of the PMs that was close to my team said, Hey, by the way, just so you know, they took your business case and they made a product out of it and they started building it. And then now you’re going to go back and continue working on the project. So even though I felt that I didn’t have the confidence where I was unsure all the time in the end, it was a great experience for me.
Priscilla: Yeah. That’s really cool because it goes back to what you were saying around consulting, not being able to see the final product from your work. And it looks like you really got that even through your internship, which is pretty rare I would say for a lot of interns to come back a year later and see that your project is being implemented. So that’s pretty amazing.
Diego: Yes and it was super exciting to see how something that I built, a presentation because in the end, that was my deliverable. It was super fun to see, oh, actually they did something with it and I’m going to go back and continue working on it.
Priscilla: So how did you make the jump to Microsoft from Cisco?
Diego: After two years at Cisco, I was still working on the same product. We were still making it bigger and launching new features, so I had the opportunity to see the whole spectrum of PM from ideation, all the way to launching a product. It was very fun and very exciting. But I realized that if I wanted to continue growing at Cisco, I had to start thinking of taking a more traditional path in the company. What I mean by that is that I had to understand the trends of Cisco. Like for example, routing, switching, and access points or wireless, were kind of the bread and butter for the company and I had to transition into those products for me to learn more about the company and continue growing. But being a young millennial PM, I was not very excited about those products and I had to be honest with myself and say, yes, I could learn a ton of it, but I was just not very excited about it. So I started to plan, okay, what’s next in my career and the one thing that I decided to do was I was not just going to leave Cisco for the sake of leaving Cisco. I was going to leave Cisco to another company that was really exciting for me, that I could work on products that I could be excited for and I could show it to the world, to my family, to friends and be like, yes, that’s the thing that I’m building. And I started my research and after interviewing with different companies like Amazon and Microsoft and Google, the one that was really exciting to me and I love the team and I love the culture of the company was Microsoft. And I’m a huge gamer. And I love new technologies like AR and VR. And at a company like Microsoft, what I’m working on today, even three years or five years, I want to switch to another place that gives me that opportunity to test really cool things, Microsoft is a place for that and that’s part of why I’ve decided to join Microsoft in the end.
Priscilla: That’s a really good point. And I think it’s great that you were able to be reflective and figure out which kind of product would get you really excited. So tell us what excites you the most about what you do today at Microsoft?
Diego: I work mostly as a technical PM, not fully technical, not fully just business, sort of in the middle, working on AI and machine learning. So what I do is I work with my AI team on building machine learning features that go into other Microsoft products. So we work closely within dynamics 365, the B2B product family of Microsoft. There’s one product called customer insights and they do have some AI capabilities and my role is to help bring those capabilities to life. I work on machine learning predictions and how we put those as features into that customer insights product. And I have to say before that I knew nothing about machine learning, so it’s also been really exciting from a learning perspective. It’s definitely a new world to me and it’s something that once you are working on it and you see the possibilities and even the challenges it’s really exciting to work in AI and machine learning.
Priscilla: Amazing. Amazing. So, Diego, will you tell us a little bit about your YouTube channel and the work that you’re doing to help people break into product management?
Diego: Yes. So when I was in business school, I would buy, you know, any book that was out there at the time or watch videos or read articles about how cool it was to be a PM. And the books were mostly about interviews, right, and they would give you like, oh, here’s a question and here’s a simple answer. And I would read those and I was like, that’s so cool. That’s a great answer. I have no idea how to get from where I am to that great answer. Like how did they come up with that? So after graduation and after working as a PM and after interviewing a lot of folks to get into product management at Cisco, and now at Microsoft, I started understanding more about the interview process, the things that we look for in candidates, and also just by listening to so many answers from candidates, it led me to realize that. A lot of them were having the same issues that I had, which is yes, that was a great answer in that book. But when you are in real life and in an interview, it’s hard to craft that answer. So I started helping some folks online with one-on-one sessions, especially through LinkedIn. And at some point it was impossible for me to keep up. Besides working in Microsoft, I’m also studying a second master’s degree and I just didn’t have the time to meet with as many as I wanted to help them through creating resumes and preparing for interviews. So I started thinking what’s the best way to help them. And that’s how I started with my YouTube channel. And I want to focus my channel on helping people to first of all, understand more about PM and second help them de-mystify the steps to get into product management and that is breaking down here’s what a great answer looks like and here’s how you build to that answer. And that’s why I created my YouTube channel.
Priscilla: Great. So last question. What advice do you have for aspiring product managers, other than checking out your invaluable YouTube resources?
Diego: There are many ways to get into PM and I’ll try to summarize it super fast in this answer, but essentially you have to understand that if you’re trying to go from your current role into a new company, as a PM, it can be really tricky because you’re changing probably industry, you’re changing role and company. The more variables you’re trying to change, the harder it becomes. So one way to get into product management is change the company. Like for example, if you’re interested in Google or Microsoft or Amazon or Apple or any company you want, try to change to that company in a role that you are doing today and then navigate your way into product management by networking and building side projects. But that’s one option. Another option is if you want to do it in your same company, networking with product managers and see how you can help them. That’s a second way to transition into PM. A third one is if you don’t have PMs in your company and you’re struggling to prove that you have the PM value, and this applies to both working, uh, you know, professionals and students, start building side projects. For the engineers out there, it’s not about just coding. For the non-engineers out there, it’s not about coding. It’s about thinking like a PM, building the business case, interacting with users, building a portfolio and showing to the world, hey, I can be a PM. I built this project from scratch and here’s how I would approach it if I were a PM. All of those are going to be just extra points in your resume and through the interviews. And finally, I would say, courses are going to help you understand more about the PM world, but there’s no certification, at least not today, there is no certification that is going to prove to the world that you can be a PM because certifications are not about proving the skills, it’s about proving the knowledge and PM is about skills. So the more you do versus learning and getting the certifications, the more you do, the better or the easier it’ll be to talk to recruiters or other PMs about yes, you can be a PM. So in summary don’t feel overwhelmed by the fact that you’re not getting a PM role today. There are so many paths to get into product management and reach out. There’s always somebody to help to get you into product management.
Priscilla: Diego. This was so helpful. Thank you so much for being with us today.
Diego: Thank you, Priscilla. This was awesome. I really enjoyed it. And for anybody out there struggling, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn or my YouTube channel. I’m here to help you guys. I was struggling like you a few years ago, I broke into PM, and now what I’m trying to do is really demystify the process of getting into product management.
Priscilla: Thanks for tuning into the Early Career Moves Podcast! Be sure to visit ECMPodcast.com to join the conversation, access the show notes, and become a part of our newsletter community! And if you loved this episode, head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. Have a great week!
by Priscilla | Jan 8, 2021 | Latinx, Politics/Policy, Public Service
Show Notes:
On this episode, you’ll hear from Isabel Longoria, a French-Mexican-American policy and public affairs professional from Houston, Texas. Isabel, a queer Latina, ran against an incumbent on the Houston City Council in 2019 and narrowly lost by only 16 votes. Isabel shares what the experience was like, what she learned, and how she’s pivoted into a new exciting role leading voter innovation in Harris County.
Check out the Highlights:
2:09 – Isabel’s personal background and influences
3:26 – How Isabel got involved in Texas politics back in 2011
6:10 – How Isabel began to consider running for office herself
8:10 – What to keep in mind when deciding where and how to run for office
10:58 – How being gay impacted Isabel’s experience running for City Council
14:07- Isabel takes us back to the 2019 City Council race and loss aftermath
17:56 – How Isabel got help launching her campaign as a new-comer with no name recognition
19:37 – The hardest parts about running a campaign
22:43- Isabel’s advice to anyone interested in running for office
25:24- Isabel’s take on career strategy using design think principles
Links Mentioned In Episode:
Sponsor, The Art of Applying – Get $100 off a Quick Call if you mention the ECM Podcast
Latino Texas PAC
Isabel’s LinkedIn – Reach out to her if you’re a young BIPOC interested in running for office!
Transcription:
Isabel: It’s tough to take on an incumbent and every single incumbent in Houston won, but I am proud to say that all of the incumbents who ran in the Houston City Council elections last time won by 55, 60 or greater percent. And so, I’m the only one that got close, 0.02% close, to taking out an incumbent. And I’m pretty dang proud of that.
Priscilla: Welcome to the Early Career Moves Podcast, the show that highlights remarkable young professionals of color killin it on their career journeys. I’m your host Priscilla Esquivel Weninger – proud Texas Latina, daughter of immigrants, and lover of breakfast tacos. Meet me for a coffee chat each Friday, as we dive into a special guest’s story, and hear all about their challenges, milestones, and lessons learned. If you’re a young professional of color and you’re feeling lost in your career, or just need a dose of inspiration, you’re in the right place! Let’s get started.
Priscilla: Hey everyone! Today you get to hear from the amazing Isabel Longoria, a Mexican-French-American and proud Houstonian who is also a policy and public affairs professional. Isabel has been heavily involved in politics & policy in Texas for over 10 years, and in 2019, she ran against an incumbent for a Houston City Council position and lost narrowly by only 16 votes. In 2020, she led voting innovation for Harris County during the election, and shortly after was sworn in as their first-ever Elections Administrator. This interview did take place before we found out the results from the 2020 election, so just keep that in mind as you listen…She is such a wonderful example of resilience, true public service, and paying it forward to queer communities and communities of color who are interested in running for office. If that is you, make sure you hit her up on LinkedIn as she is very open to helping people fo’ free.
Priscilla: Hey, everyone. I’m really excited to have Isabel Longoria on today’s episode to talk about her career in public service. Thank you so much, Isabel, for being with us.
Isabel: I’m excited.
Priscilla: Yeah. So why don’t you kick us off by telling us a little bit about yourself?
Isabel: So I am Houston born and raised. I’ve loved Houston ever since I was born. My dad’s a Mexican immigrant and my mom is a French immigrant. So I’m a first generation Houstonian along with my brother, and, yeah, we’ve got an interesting dynamic of being the epitome of that melting pot here in Houston, different cultures, different regions of the world, but always, always feeling like I’ve had a place in Houston. Yeah. I’m a big nerd for pretty much anything public service, talking about urban policy, and I think that comes from growing up in Houston and my dad being an architect….it really helped frame for me growing up how we design communities and what it means to build up that environment and how communities interact in spaces big and large. And one thing I like to point out too, is that both of them, that French and Mexican side, my grandparents, my uncles, were all part of city council in their cities, ran for state legislature and were heavily involved in politics. But no one knows that for me here in Houston, and it doesn’t apply, (laughs), once you actually get to the city you love and end up growing up in and living in.
Priscilla: Yeah. So before we get into that, I want to hear a little bit about what your experience was like at UT Austin LBJ School of Public Affairs. How did you use those two years? What did you get involved in?
Isabel: I ended up working at the legislature. So I first started checking mail for a state representative and she said, “Hey, the legislature’s coming up in Texas. Do you want to work to get extra credits while you’re at policy school?” I said, cool, why not? I’ll make a couple extra bucks. And it was the 2011 legislative session. I was working for the head of the democratic caucus, Jessica Farrar, and I fell in love with it. I was Head of Redistricting for her, I worked on the Democratic Women’s Caucus and every day was an exciting adventure in new policy and new things to do. You could do education and transportation and women’s health and all of these things. And I actually started specializing in a way that maybe some of the folks at LBJ had more of that consultant or non-profit kind of real-world business experience, I now had that political experience.
Priscilla: Where did life lead you after graduation from LBJ? What did you do next, and how did you figure that out?
Isabel: It was just a natural progression. So after having worked at the legislature, I developed those contacts of people who were in the Democratic Party. And when I graduated LBJ that summer, I got a job working on Democratic campaigns, right? Those were my contacts. Seemed like an easy enough thing. And I always thought campaigns would be for me, just something I did until I found my real job. (Laughs.) So I started working on Democratic politics in South Texas and Houston, because that’s where my family’s from. And then, you get to know more people, and through that, I always told two of my contacts that I wanted to get back to Houston. And so there was a special election for Senator Sylvia Garcia in Houston. Jumped back on that race. It was a quick two month race. She won and I ended up working for her. And so then became my cycle of working at the state legislature doing policy work, and then in the interim, working in Houston on the community organizing and district office side, and through that always kind of political campaigns in the background, because I just started getting that specialty. I mean, that’s, that’s what I know. That’s where I have my contacts and I’ve really developed a strategic mind for it.
Priscilla: How many campaigns did you work on for, for Sylvia Garcia?
Isabel: So I worked on Jessica Farrar, Sylvia Garcia, twice. But in South Texas, I worked on two House races. In Houston, I worked on the Ann Johnson race, the first time against Sarah Davis. And now she’s back running against Sarah Davis. So that’s five. I’ve also advised on the Wendy Davis campaign for governor and various races here in Houston. And I’ve actually, I don’t charge to work on these races in Houston, especially if it’s for young progressives or young people of color. I love, love, love, breaking that barrier, and getting away from paid consultants and saying, “Hey, here’s my advice. Here’s what I would do. Let me connect you to the people who can help you”, because I want to break down that barrier of entry for anyone interested in running for office, and for too long, quite frankly, it’s been a good old boys club, even on the Democratic side in Texas. And it’s great, I know some of those people, I know they do great work, but I still want to break down that barrier. I still want to give radical access rights to the kind of information that can help people run for office.
Priscilla: During this time, while you were running all these campaigns, did you ever imagine that you yourself would be running for office? How did that idea come into play?
Isabel: Yeah, I started seeing people doing it more and more, and I realized that elected officials are just human beings, just like the rest of us and that they had the same passion for public service. And I think for me it helped demystify it that it wasn’t, it wasn’t something where you had to be born a Kennedy and you get to be part of a special family that does this, especially when you’ve listened to Senator or, now Congresswoman, Sylvia Garcia’s story, where she grew up on a farming family just outside of Corpus. That she worked her way up by going through law school and then becoming a municipal judge through networking here in Houston, that she’s now a Congresswoman. And I think for me, it really put it into perspective that what is more important for an elected official is to have that passion and then to have the skills of being able to talk to people, policy analysis, strategic negotiation…which are all things that I’ve developed in my time at LBJ and in my other jobs. And then, being able to watch it in action so many times at different legislative sessions started putting in my head that, yeah, hey, I think I have the skills to do it. And now the question and the question always for me was, where can I be an authentic community leader? So it’s not about moving into a neighborhood and six months later running to say that I’m running…Where’s my place, where’s my city, right? Where’s my group that I really want to defend and take care of? And then how can I work to really earn the respect of that community to serve them and to represent all of us in office?
Priscilla: Yeah, I respect that so much about you because you’re right, I think that people can be strategic sometimes about, “Oh, there’s a seat, an opportunity that can be flipped. I’m going to move there.” That kind of thing. But I think you’ve been intentional about slowly building the community, like from the ground up.
Isabel: I can’t reiterate it enough. Even coming back to Houston and running for office later in city council, I’ve always gotten the message of, “Hey, you’re great, but we don’t know your family, right? You’re not one of the Garcia’s or Ninfa Laurenzo’s, right?” Or one of those families that have been in Houston, Mexican-American, for decades and decades that has the family that everyone knows. And so it’s interesting because I try to share my story of, “Hey, if you go to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, people know my family, we ran for mayor. My great grandfather was head of the, essentially the state’s legislature in Tamaulipas. You go to Northern France, people know my grandparents as running on city councils. So I have that legacy, but it doesn’t translate here. And so then it was even more important…and there is some strategy, right, of who I was working for, of being with Sylvia Garcia and taking on the jobs in her office that weren’t necessarily glamorous, but they put me in front of a lot of people, like being her driver. You get to meet everyone that she’s meeting when you’re the driver. And then later on really thinking about the civic clubs and wanting to be involved in and making sure I led with service. So it wasn’t just, “Go and run to be treasurer of whatever civic club”, it was, “How can I be going to the community garden day? How can I be going to the house building day? How can I be going to every single civic club meeting?” So I learn what’s going on and I integrate myself into the community because I don’t have that name to fall back on.
Priscilla: Wow. That’s so interesting. I’m from Houston and I really hadn’t even thought about how there are these families that you really need to get to know to be able to play in that space.
Isabel: Oh yeah…Like, here in Houston, there’s the Treviños, the Morenos, there’s even people who’ve become activists lately who I deeply respect and who would become my mentors, but there’s families that you have to fight against and there’s families whose rings you have to kiss. And so I don’t want to…pretend like there isn’t any strategy. I think that you have to be thoughtful about what you’re doing and who you’re connecting with…But for me, it’s always been, I’m going to be thoughtful. I’m going to connect with people, but I’m going to make sure to check my bias. And this is big for me…I’m going to try and read the signs when people are telling me that I’m not the person to run for office, because I think that’s a mistake other people make. And if they’re saying don’t run for office, why? Is it because truly they’re saying you don’t have the experience? We don’t trust you? You’re not getting invited to things? You don’t get invited to speak at things or be part of things? That’s a big sign that people don’t want you around. But if the pushback you’re getting is, “Oh, well, you’re young”…Age is a number, right? “Oh, well, there’s been other families here.” Good and great. Are they running? I don’t know. I think that’s the hardest part quite frankly, of running for office is listening to that community feedback and deciding what’s accurate feedback, what’s an accurate assessment and what’s just people projecting their own fear of the unknown.
Priscilla: When you were thinking about running, did you think a lot about being a woman and do you feel like that held you back in any way?
Isabel: I thought a lot more about being gay. I’m gay. I present very masculine for being a woman. And I don’t look Hispanic enough. So I used to love to say on the campaign trail “Soy Guera, pero no Gringa.” (English Translation: I may look light-skinned, but I’m not Caucasian). I don’t know, getting in that I can speak Spanish, that I have this Mexican background. It’s not necessarily Mexican-American, which, I think actually, was an interesting challenge as well. No, I thought a lot more about being gay. And I know for a fact that later running for city council, it came down to 0.02% difference, 0.02% difference between me and the incumbent city council member who won. And I know without a shadow of a doubt, it was a 16 vote difference, that being gay played into it. And I just adopted very early on, this is who I am. I would hate myself more for trying to put myself in a closet or play it down. And quite honestly, I think it would be disingenuous. I think people have the right to know who they are electing into office and they expect and should expect a certain integrity of authenticity of who you are. I dressed in my jeans and my blazer, and I never hid that I was gay. I put it on all of my literature and material. I had some abuelitas, and abuelitos, more than anything, who weren’t excited about that. And I left it up to them. If that’s something that was going to prevent them from voting for me, they have every right to do that. And that speaks more about what we need to work on in a society, right, than about me and my ability to represent.
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INTERVIEW CONT’D
Isabel: But I got to 50/50. I mean, I got to…I think it was 49.98 to 50.02 or something like that.
Priscilla: Yeah, so that’s the perfect segway, Isabel, tell us about your city council race in 2019.
Isabel: So, I took on a city council incumbent, who was a Houston transplant who had run already in the scene in the head for four years. She was running again. She’s a very nice woman. She actually used to babysit me when I was younger and she was friends with my father. Her husband is an architect, so she knew my family and she just wasn’t as proactive and is not as proactive as I would like to see, and that’s why I took her on. It was tough. It’s tough to take on an incumbent and every single incumbent in Houston won, but I am proud to say that all of the incumbents who ran in the Houston City Council elections last time won by 55, 60 or greater percent. And so I’m the only one that got close, 0.02% close, to taking out an incumbent. And I’m pretty dang proud of that.
Priscilla: I guess, the aftermath. What was that day like when you realized how close you were and how did you process it in the days and weeks to come?
Isabel: (Deep sigh and long pause)…At the time that it was happening, it was happening very quickly. And there were things I needed to do as far as the provisional votes that come in and the final canvas, because at first, the night, the election night, we were only a 12 vote difference. And so my campaign manager and I had decided that after the provisional ballots came in, if we brought it down to 10 votes or less, that we would ask for a recount, because that was statistically so close and 10 is important. In every other recount that’s happened in Harris County, the most votes that have ever been overturned is 10. And so for us, that, that was our marker. And so there was a lot of strategy there and still a lot of attention to, what do we do? How do we get people out? Is there anything we can do? And then, once it was 16 votes ahead, a lot of people wanted me to push to do a recount, regardless, because…right now in City Council, of the 17 members, and that includes the mayor, there’s only one Hispanic person, Robert Gallegos. He is now the only LGBT representative as well, I believe. And so there was a lot of people asking me to do a recount regardless because they wanted another Hispanic person and another LGBT representative on council. And, quite honestly Priscilla, that was the toughest decision of the entire campaign is do I do a recount or not? And we had the money, we had the backing and all I could think is, do I want to put the city through that? What does it mean then to just, like, inflate this drama knowing statistically, we probably won’t close that 16 vote difference? And so it was more important for me at the time to be gracious in that loss and to hopefully use my race then as motivation for why we needed to do more in the future to work beforehand, to help people of color and LGBT representatives run for office than to try fighting over the breadcrumbs at the end. And I say that because several LGBT elected officials decided to stay out of the race or remain neutral or had picked the incumbent side, or mine came back and said, “you know what? I made a mistake. Had I known it would be that close. I would have backed you. I just didn’t think anyone could take on an incumbent.” And that is that’s the one I struggle with the most. Shouldn’t you back who you believe in shouldn’t you back the change that you want to see in the world? And I do hope, and I do think quite frankly, that for at least a couple of years, people will point to my race as a reason why there needs to be more, more access and more resources for people of color, especially Hispanic and LGBT members early on, because there is a possibility if you have good candidates and progressive candidates who run great races to take on incumbents.
Priscilla: When you were running your campaign, were there any PACs or any organizations that really helped you launch this campaign?
Isabel: Yeah. I, I think again, having been in the Democratic politics for a while, right? Most of the biggest strategists in the city, county and state, were my friends, my best friends. So I was really lucky in that they all came to help free of charge. I would say organization-wise Latino Texas PAC, based here out of Houston, came on early and hard and they gave me, I think, towards the end, nearly $10,000 over the run and the runoff, ‘cause there was a runoff, to beat this incumbent. And it was that seed money that helped me make the pitch to unions, that helped me make the pitch to the LGBT caucus that I was viable, that I could raise money and that I had people behind me. So that was fantastic and I give them a lot of credit and honestly, Sylvia Garcia, who I worked with, she came out for me early and said, I know it’s tough taking on an incumbent, we’re cordial, she mentioned that she didn’t think that particular incumbent was doing a good job either, and she wanted to see more Hispanic representation. So she backed me early and that did send a signal to the other elected officials that this is something you should jump in on and they made their decisions as they needed to strategically. So I’m very grateful for those two entities, Sylvia Garcia and Latino Texas PAC.
Priscilla: So I assume that speaking in front of crowds and building relationships comes very naturally to you. What were the parts from the campaign that were a little more challenging or just harder for you?
Isabel: Yeah, so you’re right, speaking publicly – I loved it. I get a big energy kick out of that, and debates were fun. Being on the quote-unquote campaign trail didn’t feel like a campaign trail ‘cause it was all my friends, right? Like I said, it was all the people I’d been shoulder to shoulder with working at civic clubs and doing all this great work. So there were no real new introductions I needed to make. The hardest part was every day I was pretty much alone. You do so much alone on a campaign. I wasn’t a big fancy campaign that had a dozen staff members. I had me and my campaign manager, Rob, who’s my dear friend, almost brother now, who was volunteering, but he had his own family. I had a communications consultant, Ben Hernandez and then I had a field consultant and strategist, Delilah, but basically every day was me alone in my house. I would pick my block walking packet. I would go block, walk alone. And I would come back to the house and do my thank you notes or do some social media, but it’s a lonely thing. A campaign can be a lonely thing. It’s a lot of you on the trail, especially when you’re starting off the first time, a lot of friends coming over late in the night, if they need to help you after work. But the days can be very long. I had to quit my job at AARP to run. So I quit. I saved up a bunch of money knowing I wanted to do that for at least two years. And then it was that for six months, me living off my savings and I had plenty of savings, but I didn’t have health insurance either, and that got very scary. At one point from block-walking so much, half of my right foot went numb and I could not feel it and I couldn’t go access health care. And quite frankly, I didn’t want to, because I didn’t want someone telling me that I had to stop because that wasn’t going to be an option when it’s me just block walking every day. There’s no option to stop. So there were some very scary moments physically of being able to push myself to finish the campaign.
Priscilla: Have you thought about whether you would re-run for City Council or have you thought about maybe even pulling an AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and running for Congresswoman right away?
Isabel: Yeah, I’d love to. I would love….I do. I want to be an elected official and be part of that public service. City Council? I don’t know. The reason I ran last time was because there was an incumbent, I didn’t think she would do a great job and everyone else was too scared to run against her because incumbents always have so much money in momentum against them. So there was a clear person who needed to be challenged, even if I didn’t win. And there was always that possibility. I wanted her to go challenged so that we could bring up as a community the other things we wanted to see done. So now I’m looking at, okay, let’s see how the City Council does the next four years, who is doing their job well and who isn’t and what openings are there? I thought about running for County Clerk, that came open in May. It didn’t work out because of where I was financially and COVID-19, but my, my great friend, Chris Hollins won, and he actually brought me on to the office. So now I’m working for him in the County Clerk’s office on elections doing special projects, that’s been fantastic. Had I not run for office I don’t actually know if he would have pulled me in. And then looking ahead….heck yeah. My passion is always getting back to the state level somehow, whether it be state house representative, senator, secretary of state, Lieutenant Governor, I’d love to do the state stuff, but for me, like I said, and what I’ve always started with is, where can I be helpful? and what is the job I’m passionate about doing? Not, what is the job that happens to be open, and so I’m going to do it just to say, I am an elected official. I, I will never be that person.
Priscilla: What would you tell someone like a younger person who was interested in running for office? What are like some lessons or some tips that you would give that person?
Isabel: Absolutely. I tell them to get involved and not just, “Oh, go register to vote or volunteer with the League of Women Voters one night”, truly, get a job working for an elected official at any level, because you learn so much about what the different levels of government do. And one thing I actually challenge young people who say they want to be in a certain level of government, they usually say, every one, I kid you not, if you took a poll, everyone would say they’re passionate about education or transportation. And you say great, why? And they may or may not be able to tell you. And then I say, great, what level of government do you think affects that most? And they will always say Congressperson, and that is always wrong. If you want to do anything with education funding specifically, or education policy, it’s usually at the state level or the school district level. And I know, Priscilla, you know way more about education than I do. If it’s transportation, it’s absolutely at the state or County level. So that’s why I encourage younger folks to actually get a job, an internship, whatever it may be, no matter how quote-unquote menial it may sound, get your foot in the door right now, while you can, while you’re okay living off that $30 or $40,000 a year salary to start off with. So that you see what’s happening, you network, and you get it on your resume right now. Unfortunately, I think people want to wait until later to get those glamorous jobs of chief of staff or head of policy and all those people who are chief of staff or head of policy are people who started off first as a district assistant, talking to constituents, or campaign field block walker. It is an industry that is very hierarchical in that way, so getting in early helps.
Priscilla: Tell us a little bit about what you’re doing now at the County, especially as we get ready for the 2020 election
Isabel: I’m pumped. I am working on special projects for Harris County. So you might’ve heard, we now have 24 hour voting. We have drive-through voting. We’ve changed how we do mail ballots so that they are more easily read by voters, for example, and easier to use. We’ve done some innovation work on the inside and how we perform our analytics and how we actually track our progress. And I think we’ve done an even better job of changing things on the exterior, like the hours and the locations and how we communicate to people. We’re excited! Now I’m at like the heart of democracy running an election, and I’m really excited to be doing that at Harris County and fixing things from the inside out.
Priscilla: I’m really curious. What would you say is your approach to figuring out your career moves?
Isabel: I was listening to a podcast, incidentally, once about design think. So you design something, you put it out in the world, the world tears it all up, right? So, you say this works, this doesn’t work, great. You keep going through the prototyping phase until you find something. Instead of saying, “where am I now, what is my ultimate dream job, how do I get there, and everything that deviates from that path is a failure”….How can I then apply design think and say, “What if everything I do in life is just prototyping and trying new things?” And that completely changed how I thought about my life, is not, “Am I getting to my dream destination fast enough?”, is, “Oh, here’s a fun and interesting job…here’s a place where I can learn new skills, right? How can I go along with this prototype, learn what I need to do, and then essentially either when it’s been fixed or not fixed or when it’s broken or when I’m bored or whatever, how can I say “Good, this has been a wonderful path. And now it’s time for me to prototype something different, right? Or bring something new into my life, or look for that new adventure.” That is something I’d love to share, is like releasing you from this idea that your life is one path and any deviation from it is a failure.
Priscilla: That’s such a cool way to think about our careers. So thank you, Isabelle, for sharing that. Isabel, I have enjoyed this conversation so much…thank you so much for being here with us today. I’m so excited to see what you do next.
Isabel: Yeah. And I always offer, if you find me online anywhere, I always always offer any information or advice for anyone interested in running for office or getting into public policy like us, absolutely for free. Like I started off this podcast, my goal is to break down the barriers for people of color like ourselves and queer people to find their passion and get engaged in politics. So please hit me up and I would be happy to share my connections with you and get you on your next adventure.
Priscilla: Thanks for tuning into the Early Career Moves podcast! Be sure to visit ECMPodcast.com to join the conversation, access the show notes, and become a part of our newsletter community! And if you loved this episode, head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. Have a great week!
by Priscilla | Jan 8, 2021 | Black, Finance
Show Notes:
After graduating from Morehouse College in 2014, Nate Jones only spent a couple of years working in the financial services industry before deciding to merge his passion for improving the socioeconomic status quo for low-income neighborhoods with his financial and analytical skillset. Nate went on to co-found the Village Microfund, a social impact fund empowering entrepreneurs in Metro Atlanta by providing access to capital, business education, and a “Village” of support. In 2020, Nate was named one of HBCUVC’s “31 under 31” emerging leaders in venture capital. On this episode, he talks candidly about his early career experiences and decisions, while inspiring us all to stay motivated and make the world a better place.
Check out the Highlights:
1:44- How Nate decided to pursue investment banking and finance
3:51- Nate talks about struggling in his first job out of college in Atlanta, but how it strengthened him in the end
5:38- Nate joins Center for Civic Innovation in Atlanta, and begins to flex his entrepreneurial muscles
8:41- Starting Village Microfund, and what that was like
10:16- Nate talks about his “why” and what drove him to start this fund
14:22 – Why Nate decided to go get his MBA
16:07- Nate reflects on what it’s like to be recognized for his work in venture capital
18:28 – Navigating the venture capital space while Black, and what that means to Nate
Links Mentioned In Episode:
Sponsor, The Art of Applying – Get $100 off a Quick Call if you mention the ECM Podcast
Village Microfund
Transcription:
Nate: I actually ended up sneaking into the Goldman Sachs dinner that was on Spelman’s campus that was adjacent to Morehouse’s campus and ended up hitting it off really well with one of the partners, and, I ended up getting two interviews, and, the first one I completely bombed because I didn’t even know what investment banking was…(laughs).
Priscilla: Welcome to the Early Career Moves Podcast, the show that highlights remarkable young professionals of color killin it on their career journeys. I’m your host Priscilla Esquivel Weninger – proud Texas Latina, daughter of immigrants, and lover of breakfast tacos. Meet me for a coffee chat each Friday, as we dive into a special guest’s story, and hear all about their challenges, milestones, and lessons learned. If you’re a young professional of color and you’re feeling lost in your career, or just need a dose of inspiration, you’re in the right place! Let’s get started.
Priscilla: On this episode, you get to hear from Nate Jones, who graduated from Morehouse College in 2014 and is co-founder of the Village Microfund out of Atlanta. In 2020, Nate was named one of HBCUVC’s 31 under 31 future leaders in venture capital. He talks about his first job challenges, what drove him to co-found the Village Microfund, and what it’s like to navigate the venture capital space as a Black man.
Priscilla: Well, hey Nate! Welcome to the show! I’m so excited to have you on today.
Nate: Yeah. Thanks for asking me on.
Priscilla: Of course. So let’s start with your Morehouse chapter. I know you were an econ sociology double major. Around that time, what were you thinking about in terms of career interests and then what did you end up doing after graduation?
Nate: I had a, I guess a mentor kind of family friend of sorts that used to be an investment banker, back in his day. And, I got a chance to spend two weeks with him or something. And, he had a really nice house and a really nice car. And I was like, I was like, yo, I was like, what do you do? And he was like, yeah, no, I used to be an investment banker. And I was like, all right, that’s what I want to do. Yeah, to be honest with you, I just, that’s the only thing I was shooting at when I was in, in undergrad. When I was, I dunno, freshman, sophomore year, I had decent grades, but not, 3.7+ by any means. And, didn’t really understand that, you needed to be like, top of the class and all the professors have to love you, and the career services office, like needs to vouch for you. When the banks came to campus, I didn’t really get the initial nod, one, because I was an econ and those things went to the finance majors, but, two, I just wasn’t super aware of what was happening, nor did I really understand much about finance at the time. I just knew they made a lot of money. But, so I actually ended up sneaking into the Goldman Sachs dinner that was on Spelman’s campus that was adjacent to Morehouse’s campus and ended up hitting it off really well with one of the partners, who actually got his PhD in educational economics. So the stuff that I was beginning to explore was stuff that he was really excited to talk about. And, I ended up getting two interviews, super days and like interview requests and, the first one I completely bombed because I didn’t even know what investment banking was…(laughs). And then I was super nervous and then the second one, I had a, a free trial if you will. And I did well on that one. And, so I ended up doing my two summers in undergrad at Goldman and, joined for a small bit after I graduated and then, ended up leaving and moving back to Atlanta to work on some entrepreneurial projects.
Priscilla: Very cool, which we’ll get to in a second, but tell us a little bit about that job that you had once you moved to Atlanta. I remember you told me it was a little challenging, what was challenging about it and what did you get out of it?
Nate: It was a cool role. I was on an investment team at a private credit fund in Atlanta. And, I was an analyst under an associate senior associate type of guy. And, really all we did all day was try to buy portfolios of debt. And, I was in Excel all day and trying to brush up on my analytical skills and understand what an analytical skill was. And, the experience was good because I learned how to illustrate a problem in Excel mathematically, but that was a really rough ride to get there. I didn’t know how to communicate with my boss. Didn’t really know how to communicate my work style. Like I didn’t know how to set boundaries, I just thought, if I work hard and do my thing, everything will work out. I stayed there for maybe, I don’t know, maybe 11 to 12 months at most. And, eventually left and joined a spot called Center for Civic Innovation, which was social entrepreneurship plus policy. And that was stuff that I was far more into. Those skills I learned there, it’s probably one of the most important and impactful experiences that I’ve, really ever had because it was just hardcore math, excel analytics. And, that was a skill set that, the folks that, that I was beginning to work with, didn’t really have. And, it was a blessing in disguise.
Priscilla: Definitely, yeah, I would say that there’s a season for everything. Even the work that can be really challenging can end up serving us so well in the future and it sounds like the quantitative skill set that you built really helped you in your next chapter at CCI in something that was a lot more exciting for you. So tell us about CCI. What did you do there?
Nate: Yeah, so CCI, stands for Center for Civic Innovation, is an organization that kind of spun out of the city of Atlanta. The city of Atlanta used to have an innovation office. And, my boss at the time, a guy named Rohit, he’s from Atlanta and convinced the city to let him take over this innovation office. And basically what he was trying to prove was that charity work should be viewed as economic development work, not as philanthropy. And, so we were looking to find, train and invest in entrepreneurs that were solving social problems in their neighborhoods. There was a barber, a guy named Latif, and he was doing kind of mental health training at his barbershop while he was cutting hair. And, In a perfect world, we should be able to tie some of those social improvements to things that mean dollars and cents. So I guess a quick tangent: there’s a thing called a social impact bond. And basically it’s like nonprofits and foundations that are investing in nonprofits, instead of giving them a grant, they might give them a loan or structural way that they can get their money back. And, the nonprofit will do work to cause some type of cost savings for a city. For example, if the police department spends $20 million in overtime fees to police officers to transport homeless folks to a facility or to a home, you should probably just invest in a nonprofit that does homeless work. And that could cause you know, this $20 million expense to maybe be $10 million in one year and then $5 million in the next year. There’s some value that can be created from typically what we consider charity work. So you know, the job was really to try to find those types of entrepreneurs and help them build better businesses.
Priscilla: Yeah, that sounds super exciting. What kind of boxes did that job check for you in terms of career fulfillment at the time?
Nate: Yeah, at first I wanted to get out of a computer all day…(laughs). So that was cool. I think I’m a pretty social person and I think I do my best work when I’m in community and able to talk to folks and try to solve problems and that role was really cool. It was a super cool office space, smart people that I was around. And, I was really into, trying to, understand more about, selfishly even my own interests. I had always been interested in things like finance and culture and Sociology stuff. And, this role was able to connect the dots on those two things. So it was a really fun experience there.
Priscilla: Yeah! And this whole time you started working on those entrepreneurial projects that you mentioned, namely Village Microfund. So tell us a little bit about what Village Microfund is because it’s still in existence, and what did that look like for you while you were working full-time?
Nate: Village is an impact fund that tries to train and invest in entrepreneurs in low-income neighborhoods. And, the way that we do that is through debt and equity based crowdfunding. So the first business that we invested in was a pizza shop. They had an oven that wasn’t putting out pizzas very fast. And they weren’t able to go to Bank of America or Chase to go get a small business loan. One because the loan size was very small, and two, because Chase and Bank of America just aren’t in low-income neighborhoods because it doesn’t make sense for their business model. You end up with this issue where you have entrepreneurs, customers, and citizens in neighborhoods that are engineered out of the capital market. So they’re not able to raise money to get their business going or anything like that. That was Village and, in those early days, it was crazy. I left New York to start that and it was just a lot of me putting 11 to 12:30 lunch meetings on my calendar and flying all across the city and trying to take meetings and trying to get back to work super quickly. And, that definitely got me in trouble a few times…(laughs). But, that’s kinda what it was. It was nights, weekends and crazy lunch meetings and breakfast meetings and stuff. So yeah. Labor of love.
Priscilla: What was really driving you when you were working on this, when you were running around town and trying to take these meetings and balancing your full-time job? I’m sure you had a strong “why”, so what was that “why” for you?
Nate: Yeah. I think the big driving factor was my experiences in DeSoto and Dallas. My folks live on the South side of Dallas in DeSoto, which is like a South suburb, maybe 10, 15 minutes south of the city. And my mom worked on the north side of the city and I would drive with her sometimes from the south side to the north side and, just see, like why is there a Chipotle on the north side? And we don’t have any restaurants on the south side? Like, why are the homes on the south side boarded up and the ones on the north side look super duper nice, or, I remember I was driving through this super nice neighborhood with my mom once. And, there were toys, in the middle of, the lawn, the front lawn. And I was like, okay, did they not think those are going to get stolen? Like, why are these out here like this? (laughs) And, very early experiences to understand that problems around economic development aren’t just, there’s no silver bullet for it. Public health issues impact health which impact your ability to get jobs and, funding for education and housing taxes and infrastructure and transportation to be able to get to your job. All of those issues are interconnected and, really, I started village with the thought to do something to try to solve that. Even at the very beginning, it was just like a passion project where we were just thinking through stuff, the ultimate goal is to try to create some type of infrastructure that can help neighborhoods across the country. So that’s kinda, what was the driving force behind it.
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Priscilla: Yeah. So you ended up deciding to go to business school to get your MBA. Tell me why you decided to get your MBA, like, what happened? Why didn’t you keep going with the Village Microfund?
Nate: Yeah. Two big things. One, this pizza shop that we’d invested in, and another restaurant, this lady named Miss D, she had a cafe that was next to the Westview Pizza Cafe. And, the neighborhood that we were working in, which was called Westview, which is West Atlanta. Basically, an investor came in and bought the building where those two entrepreneurs worked and eventually kicked both of them out. And, while we had trained a bunch of entrepreneurs, it was far more difficult then to try to raise capital to invest in them. And those two businesses were our shiny projects that we were able to fundraise around and get people excited around. And, over the course of a month or two, they just weren’t there anymore. And a few things we were starting to think about is like, how can we do bigger projects? How can we buy real estate? How can we really give people catalytic money instead of $15, $20,000 financing, like how can we do a hundred, 200, 300, a million dollars, and try to really make a real difference for them. And, I was like, okay, I probably need to go to school and get some other experiences to understand how to do this. So that was one and two, to be honest with you, I was just burnt out. Like I had, at that point, four or five years of running ragged and just being dirt broke and I was just like, I wanted to see some other cities outside of Atlanta and live in some new places and it ended up being a good break to go to school and get some other experiences and stuff.
Priscilla: And do you think that the MBA was worth it for you, especially thinking about all the success that you were having that summer before you went to business school? I know that you raised a tremendous amount of money. So, how do you now think about whether or not that MBA was worth it?
Nate: That was really a catalytic summer. That summer before we went to business school because we ended up raising like $400,000 and we’ve now gone to raise three or four times that, as the organization has gone forward. And, I don’t know. I think that experience in business school, like I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I learned so much and met so many people and really feel like…I feel like I have a power suit on now. Everything just makes more sense now. On the other side of that, I’ll always think about what would have happened if I would have stayed on as the executive director at Village and taken that capital and used it under my, my own leadership, my own discretion. And, my co-founder did a spectacular job and he’s a killer for real. You always think about the “what if’s” of the world. So I don’t know. I think all things happen for a reason and, that’s kinda where I stand on it, but, I dunno in the middle there on that question.
Priscilla: Yeah. So Nate, you’ve been really involved in the venture capital space during graduate school. And recently you were on HBCUVC’s, “31 under 31” list, which is a huge accomplishment. Congrats. What is it like to take a step back and see the success in this recognition happen for you?
Nate: I don’t know, it’s, I’m happy. Like I’m overjoyed that things worked out this way and it certainly hasn’t been very linear and, I took on a ton of risk to…I don’t know…get to where I am now. I have to give so much thanks to my folks for sending me like $200, $300 every now and then, and one of the entrepreneurs that we invested in had a second home that a relative of theirs gave to them in Atlanta and she let us stay there for almost a year rent free. And, it was basically just “continue doing your work.” And, if those two things wouldn’t have happened, like this just wouldn’t have happened, there was just no way that would’ve been possible. And, I don’t know, it’s definitely a strange place to navigate. Building an organization, building whatever, entrepreneur, like having ownership of a project and then being recognized for it, definitely gives you, or I guess like seeing the thing do well when you’re not there anymore, it’s definitely exciting. It’s fun. I don’t know, at least recently I’ve been thinking through, “how do you move forward?” It’s a strange experience, having a feeling and starting a business off of an idea that you had from, just being super excited and interested in something to go into a space where you’re not an entrepreneur anymore, I think I used to make all of my feelings from off of instinct and off of, how fast my heart would beat when someone would tell me about a problem that they were facing. And, I would just will my way to a solution and just be working through the night and trying to read things and just figure stuff out and, transitioning from that type of thinking to something that’s far more like process driven like venture capital and, in many instances, I feel like I’m relearning or, learning how that stuff works, every day.
Priscilla: Sure. And we know that there’s so little representation of black, Latinx, people of color investors working in the venture capital space. And you get to be one of those pioneering leaders. What is it like to navigate this space as a Black man in 2020? What are things that you have to keep in mind?
Nate: Navigating that, as a Black man, it’s strange, it’s hard to tell how you should move and how much do you know what you want to say? And what to post and what to be interested in? It certainly always feels there are eyes on you watching your movements and, in a lot of instances, it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is that, all of this stuff, wouldn’t be possible, If I were my dad’s age, for example, right? Like there’s an entire, multiple generations, but, with respect to the question, this previous generation of people that you know, were born in like the late fifties and sixties that, really bore the brunt of, systemic racism…is still a thing and will for the foreseeable future be a thing. We’re in a place now where an organization like HBCUVC can exist and have programming and have a list of 30 Black people that are in venture capital and create pathways for young folks that are coming out of college to get introduced to venture capital and entrepreneurship. And those things just would have been completely not in the picture, even 10 years ago. It’s a strange place, but I’m taking it day by day and I think we’ve all had an understanding recently that the world changes every day and it’s the world changing in front of our eyes. I’m optimistic about where we’re going, but, you’ve just gotta be hypersensitive to how you move when you’re in the space and you’re Black, or you’re just a person of color, just any person except for, a white man, really. You just gotta be more sensitive to how you move. Yeah.
Priscilla: And that is on 100, I one hundred percent agree with that. So my last question for you is what would you tell younger Nate, maybe back when you were starting out your first job, like, what is a piece of advice that you would give your younger self, before going on this journey, or maybe just to someone who’s trying to make it in finance, VC, or investing?
Nate: Yup. Stay motivated, things aren’t always linear, stay really inquisitive and follow up with folks and show them that you’re passionate or, you’ve got energy around, what you want to get accomplished. And don’t feel like you have to check all the boxes before you feel qualified to submit an application or having to have a conversation with folks. I think one of the things that really helped me out super early, was probably sending emails to folks that I probably shouldn’t have been sending emails to. And then following up and saying, “Hey, just want to follow up on this, following up on this, following up on this.” And eventually they’re going to be like, damn, I wish this person would stop emailing me….(laughs) And, you might get a call or, or, be able to do a lunch or breakfast that really changes your viewpoint on stuff. And I know that was certainly the case for me, so yeah. Stay energetic, stay inquisitive, stay motivated. Life is not easy and a lot of stuff gets thrown at you and you just gotta take it on the chin, figure out a way to stay mentally healthy and motivated and don’t give up.
Priscilla: Yes, and that last part on keeping mentally healthy is so key so thanks for bringing that up and thank you so much for being with us today, Nate, it has been such a joy to be able to chat with you.
Priscilla: Thanks for tuning into the Early Career Moves podcast! Be sure to visit ECMPodcast.com to join the conversation, access the show notes, and become a part of our newsletter community! And if you loved this episode, head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate, and leave a review. Have a great week!
