Women of Ambition

The Women of Ambition Podcast is a place where we explore ambition - first, the radical act of acknowledging it within ourselves, second allowing space to explore what ambition means for each of us, and third moving forward with intention. Host Alyssa Calder Hulme navigates stories of women accepting and thriving in their ambition through guest interviews and reflections.

TOO AMBITIOUS: Challenging the Status Quo + Stephanie O'Connell Rodriguez 02/23/2024

TOO AMBITIOUS: Challenging the Status Quo + Stephanie O'Connell Rodriguez Welcome to the women of ambition podcast. I'm your host, Alyssa Calder Hume. And today we are going to look specifically at ambition for women as per normal, but we're going to be looking at it through the lens of culture and how religion and socialization and so many other factors come into play for women and how we are socialized to be able to exhibit or not exhibit ambition. And today my guest is Stephanie O'Connell Rodriguez, who is a fantastic journalist. Uh, Reporter. I don't know. How would you summarize what you do, Stephanie? I'll let you introduce yourself. Hi, thanks for having me here. And yeah, I feel bad because every time somebody asks my husband what I do, he has like the same very difficult task to summarize all of the different things. But basically, yeah, I'm a writer. I cover women, money, power, and ambition. And I've written in like the traditional journalistic. Fear. I hosted a money podcast for real simple magazine called the money confidential podcast. And I also have my own newsletter [00:01:00] called too ambitious, where I D dive deeper into the data around women and ambition, which is really what I do a lot on my Instagram, where I'm most active at Stephanie O'Connell. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, that is your Instagram is fantastic. I first saw it several months ago and I admit I was very jealous like immediately because I was like she is doing exactly what I want to do she's sharing the exact studies that I'm looking at she's doing it in such an efficient way like you make it so accessible which is hard because like we're talking about like social science literature that you're sharing Yes, it is very hard. I want everyone to know that as you think I sound really eloquent on Instagram, I promise you behind the scenes, it's hours, days, Google Docs upon Google Docs of deep research, not to mention the fact that I film forever. And I edit these videos, as you'll see on the podcast here, I have a tendency to be very rambly [00:02:00] because all these ideas are very interconnected. And one thing makes me think of another thing. And these are really complex things. One thing about Instagram that's cool is because you have only 90 seconds, you can only tackle one idea at a time. And that's a really powerful mechanism for getting to the heart of the point. I think that's why these messages have really resonated. Yeah. And you do it really, really well. Even, even just the, I think you said it's the name of your, uh, your newsletter, Too Ambitious. That is a phrase that comes up over and over and over again in the literature, even in non English speaking areas, which I think is so funny. Like even people who speak completely different languages are still using that phrase and they're Especially for women. Oh, she's too ambitious. She's more than me. I'm unattracted to her. I can't be her friend. It's really incredible. The consistency there is there. Yeah. It's almost mute. It's almost exclusively women who that phrase is applied to. What does it mean to be too [00:03:00] ambitious as a man? This is always, it's called the flip test, right? And you say this for another gender identity. Almost everything you say about women, like it's a red flag to be like, Oh, wow, saying this about a man would be ridiculous. There's no such thing. So, yeah, I think what inspired me with too ambitious to, to really claim that branding was not just the idea of always having felt Yeah. Thanks. Too ambitious for many of the people and interactions I've had in my life and having my ambition framed as a bad thing when my entire childhood, I was told it was a good thing, but also it was around the time of the last election and Kamala Harris was. Was, uh, being criticized for being too ambitious and, and that her ambition was considered disqualifying as a reason for her not to be considered a vice presidential nominee. And if there is anything that you need to run for political office, it is an [00:04:00] exclusive willingness to say, I want this thing. And yet we penalize women for saying, I want this thing. And that is the impossible catch 22 that informs my work. It's really interesting. I've been looking at the trends and trying to figure out like, why is ambition starting to become something that we're looking at as social scientists, in journalism, in media, especially like in feminist spaces. And I really do think it is connected to politics, especially like with Hillary Clinton, like that really, that really. And it's, it's just continued to go up. So I'm high profile, right? Anytime you get women entering spaces where they're challenging the status quo and the challenge and the status quo, it has been very largely white, straight, cisgender men for a very long time. And there really isn't. Much that's changed in leadership, the numbers of women's representation in politics or in [00:05:00] business are still very, very low. Actually, it hasn't changed much my entire lifetime, but because these are very high profile examples, it has become this kind of wedge issue and a way to kind of create this vilification of anything women do in previously male dominated. spaces such that there's no right way for them to be in that space and to criticize them into submission. It's, I mean, we can't do anything right, basically, in those spaces. And that's the framework that I want to take here is like, you are not the problem. The problem is the structure. And so I'm really excited to have you on today because I know that you get that and we can speak about that. And I've had so many conversations with women specifically who don't understand what they're up against or they feel it, but it's under the surface. And so they can't. See the gender bias. They can't see the misogyny. They can't see [00:06:00] the structural inequities that are inherent there. So I'm, I'm really excited to dig into that. Uh, so to the start, do you consider yourself to be ambitious? Yes, very much. So my whole life I've identified as ambitious and I still do. I know. Identifying as ambitious these days, not just for the gendered reasons, but just for, uh, the true criticism of capitalism has become less and less in fashion. And I get it. Like I understand why there's a lot of pushback against this idea of ambition, but I also think that's predicated on a misrepresentation of ambition. Um, and this conflation of ambition with hustle culture and productivity culture, I really don't think ambition isn't about. Any kind of corporate ladder exclusively. I don't think it's about an amount of hours worked or about a certain kind of productivity at all. I think for me, it's to be seen and valued for the things I see in value in myself. And [00:07:00] oftentimes that ambition has only been allowed to thrive for women in relationship to other people, as a wife, as a mother, de centering the self. And to be able to have ambition that is your own. Independently in the same way men have been able to have their ambitions independently is at the crux, I believe, of the crisis of ambition that I think sometimes gets overlooked when we, when we talk about the, the real criticisms of capitalism, which are fair, but this idea that somehow women just, this is only an issue for women and they're the ones who are disproportionately being marginalized from their own ambition to me. That's. Yeah. The fault of capitalism and patriarchy. This is not some kind of, um, I think, I think the flip side of the same coin is what I'm saying. Like ambition has been kind of cast as the villain. And I don't think that's the villain. The villain is that what it means to succeed is to be ambitious and [00:08:00] only this very narrow way that has been reserved for white men. Yeah. Thank you. That's like. That's like my whole goal here is to really complicate that idea of that ambition is climbing the corporate ladder. You have to be an asshole to do it. You have to climb on people to do it. It's about these outward markers of achievement and it's it's really not because Especially for women, because we haven't been socialized to be able to step into other spaces. And because we just hold so many roles in places that we exist in, like ambitious, like manifestation of ambition can be rest. It can be healing. It can be relationships. It can be doing lots of things. It can be so many things beyond those like capitalistic ideals. And I do come across that a lot in saying that word ambition to people because they're like, Oh, you're like this American who's like, You know, focused on these things, and it's like, actually, I see this as a personality trait that's [00:09:00] so much bigger, and then there's this socializing aspect to it, and there's this gendered aspect to it, and I think this is like, this is the scenario I tell people. It's like, okay, consider, um, like a pair, uh, some parents, and they're talking about their son, their daughter's new, Beyonce and they say, Oh, he's really ambitious. Everyone's like, Oh, that's awesome. Like, great. He's ambitious. Now consider if they're talking about their new daughter in law. Oh, she's really ambitious. Like that doesn't hold the same excitement or weight. It's like an asterisk. Like, Oh. So she doesn't want a family. Oh, like it implies so many things and it's like, Oh, it makes me itchy. Like I want to dig into that. Yeah. It's just such a negative connotation. And this is like the flip test. You can say the exact same phrase, but depending on who it's applied to, somehow it goes from being a positive to a negative. And that's the thing that I want to confront to your point, not. Like, I don't know [00:10:00] everything else. Sometimes I think some, the conversation gets so tried sidetracked by all of these different threads, but I really want to come back to this fundamental paradox of like, there is no right way to be an ambitious women in our world. And that's not fair. Mm hmm. Thank you. Okay, so now let's, let's go back to your childhood. Where do you see this, like, part of yourself exhibiting? And then what were your, like, your, your adult figures in your life, your socialization? Was this something that was nurtured? Was there shame involved? Tell us about that. I was always ambitious and unapologetically. So for a very, very long time, partly because I grew up in a house where my mom made more than my dad, both my parents worked full time. My mom made more than my dad. She was the decision maker about all things. And so for me, that was the way the world worked. And it was a rude awakening to become an adult. I will say. How nice. Honestly, like, I'm sorry that that was a rude [00:11:00] awakening, but how wonderful to be raised in a home with a strong female role model. Yes, it was nice, but I will say, I think even for a woman who did not have that experience, uh, it was also part of the zeitgeist of my childhood. I was born in the 80s, so my childhood was very 90s. Girl power. It was really defined by limited anthems of the spice girls and the stickers of like girls rule. And I was a gymnast. So there's like all the thing of like, I can do what boys can do. And that was the metric, right? I can do what boys can do. And. Why? Why is that the metric? Um, yes, I want to be able to do the same behavior without being penalized for things that boys are rewarded for. But like, there's a lot of things boys do, like their model of leadership that I'm not looking to emulate. And I don't think that's the ultimate goal, but I think all of these things of [00:12:00] the zeitgeist and the culture and the discourse around girl power that I was exposed to not only in my own home, but growing up culturally. At least, you know, in the United States, middle class, you know, very privileged life that I had was just totally failed to acknowledge the fact that none of these things that I was being told we're going to be rewarded when I actually put them into practice. And I think that's what freaked me out about becoming an adult was suddenly that. Everything I had been told to do to get the things I wanted and be competent and speak up and ask for more and demand what I deserve. All of that stuff. When you do it as a fully grown, independent adult women, you're far more likely to get backlash and be penalized for doing those very things that you've been told your whole life. Are the things you need to do to be as successful as your male colleagues. And yeah, I do think [00:13:00] those things are important, but this idea that. It was something that we could change through our behaviors as women, as opposed to simply interrogating the spaces and the workplaces and the structures and the policies and the relationships and the families and the culture that look at a woman who asks for more money and says, who is she to do this? And when the same thing is being told of a man of look at what a powerful bold leader he is, that's the stuff. Where that energy really needed to be and still needs to be and I think my disillusionment is something I've seen among many of my colleagues. What I have found consistently is like I'm in my late thirties now and My whole generation of girls who were raised in the era of girl power are coming into what is our peak earnings years, and we're pretty much [00:14:00] no better off than than the women who were our age when we were born, and that's pretty. Depressing. And I think a lot of that is because we've allowed this discourse to continue around ads, the next generation, or it's the, the behaviors of girls that are women that need to be modified when really it's the way that behavior is responded to in these systems that needs to be modified. Yeah, I think that's another interesting kind of twist on that American idealism where we. want to think of ourselves as independent agents that are in control of our future and can change things. Well, if I just say it in the best way, if I just manage this, I can take care of it. And I mean, I'm, I'm a similar age group to you and I'm, I'm the oldest girl of three girls. And so that's like even more heightened as like the oldest child is like, well, I can just manage this and get what I want. And then there is that disillusionment. There is that, that dissonance [00:15:00] and. In sociology, we call it, um, animy. It's that feeling of being socially deviant and being other, of not presenting in a way that is what people expect of us and being othered. And it, it's so confusing. It is. So thank you for speaking to that. One of the things people will often say in response to my videos about this will be like, well, you should just not care. You should just not care what other people think. And that is so disingenuous. First of all, it's just once again blaming women for their own oppression. But it's also, that's not how humanity works. Everything we do, as you know, is like about belonging and meaning and identity. And these social sanctions that are being put on only one group of people is like, The idea that we justify that or simply dismiss it as like, well, you should just [00:16:00] not care is not only like against humanity and the idea of community and belonging, but it's just like so disingenuous and gross. Like the fact that we're willing to accept and justify and purpose. That's what I think of when I hear stuff like that. It's like, oh, we want to excuse this behavior and allow it to continue rather than confront it and change the accountability mechanism. And that comes up so often in these conversations, whether it's about like just telling women more stuff they should be doing differently, or whether it's about perpetuating some of the myths that reinforce these unequal outcomes time and time again. Okay. So as we, as we dig into this a little bit deeper, um, tell us about those moments of that, like, That dissonance, that like shock that it's not working out. What, how has that marked your career path? How has that marked your personal path? Um, different [00:17:00] areas of your life. And then how have you handled those like shocking moments or, you know, the dissonance, I think the greatest moment of dissonance for me was when I got engaged, which was later in my life. I was already in my mid thirties by the time I got married. And what happened was this just. outpouring of love and celebration and support. And it was totally wild to me because I had never felt that in my entire career. When I started a business, when I wrote a book, when I did these really big things that really meant a lot to me and I really needed support for. And then there was just like this total shocking out. of community and love and what can I do to help? Nobody asked me what they could do to help me. Like when I'm starting a business, they look at you starting a business. They're like, [00:18:00] okay, good luck with that. I roll, right? You're too big for your britches. Like, I guess I wasn't totally surprised because basically my entire twenties people just wanted to know who I was dating and nobody ever asked me about my goals or what I was working on or what I was excited about. But I think the just total disproportionate scale of that love and support around getting married, which for me was like not a life goal. It's just something that I love being married. I think it's wonderful. Not against it, but I think it just really upset me, the dissonance of like, I cannot believe how, how much of a different experience this is. And I think this is another way that sexism manifests in a way that is Benevolent. It's not a bad thing. It's not a malicious thing. The extent to which we don't show up for [00:19:00] people and for women's particularly when it comes to celebrating their ambitions and their things that they're working towards that they say they want for themselves versus these very Narrow ideas of what it means to be a good woman. Like the outside support you get for announcing an engagement or a pregnancy compared to material support for the lived experiences of your own ambitions, that's sexism. And I think I know it doesn't get framed that way, but I think we should be able to say that that's what it is because it's all this is about systems of incentives and disincentives. And when you're incentivizing women to become wives and mothers above all else. And you are disincentivizing them from pursuing their own ambitions by not providing support, by not celebrating or acknowledging or asking how you can help. That is the same mechanism that causes people to be able to lean into [00:20:00] something or lean away from it. I definitely see that. And it's been interesting because my own life path has looked very. Uh, gender role traditional, I got married young, I had kids young, I stayed at home with them, or at least it appeared that way. And now I'm in my mid thirties and I'm going to grad school and we're moving our family across country for my education. I am about to earn a lot of money and work outside the home and there, people are just baffled. They're just very, very confused as to why. I would do this because obviously I had it all. So why would I, why would I want something different? And then because my life looked a certain way, they're assumed my values and my goals were oriented to a certain direction. And this has always been the plan. It's always been the plan for me and my husband. We always knew this was going to be how it is, but everyone else is just, they [00:21:00] can't fathom it and they don't know how to ask questions. They're like, Oh, that's great. You got into a good school, but like, what would you do with that? And I'm like. Right, this is, again, this is the flip test, right? Nobody would say this to your spouse. Nobody would not it would be there would be zero questions. Why would you want to get a higher education at a at a world class school? I don't understand. Yes. Yeah, it's that's sexism. Right? And I think it's really easy to dismiss... /episode/index/show/womenofambitionpodcast/id/29888878

(Different) Models of Leadership + Nina Simons, Bioneer Co-Founder 02/16/2024

(Different) Models of Leadership + Nina Simons, Bioneer Co-Founder Alyssa Calder Hulme: [00:00:00] Welcome to the women of ambition podcast. I'm your host, Alyssa Culler Hume. And today we have a fantastic guest on our show. Nina Simons is co founder and chief relationship officer at Bioneers and leads it's every woman leadership program throughout her career, spanning the nonprofit, social entrepreneurship, corporate, and. Philanthropic sectors. Nina has worked with nearly a thousand diverse women leaders across disciplines, race, class, age, and orientation to create conditions for mutual learning, trust, and leadership development. She co edited Moonrise, The Power of Women Leading from the Heart and authored Nature, Culture, and the Sacred. A Woman Listens for Leadership, which is the book we're going to talk about here today, was released as a second edition in 2022 with an accompanying discussion guide and embodied. Practice. Nina received the Goy Peace Award with her husband and partner, Kenny Ausubel for pioneering work to promote nature inspired innovations for restoring the earth and our [00:01:00] human community, which is pretty incredible. So thank you so much for being here, Nina. Nina Simons: Thank you, Alyssa. It's great to be with you. Um, Alyssa Calder Hulme: this is your beautiful book. You can see it behind her if you're watching the video. Um, it's beautiful. This artwork is fantastic. Um, and I, I'll just start by saying that, you know, I, I get reached out to by a lot of PR teams and different people wanting me to promote the material. And, I'm really picky, but yours is the first one that I, I read and I really loved and am deciding to share it because, um, I think what your, your message here is, is really incredible. It's really holistic. And I think it's something that we really need to talk about. So thank you so much for, for me, for writing this book and publishing it. And. Talking about being like a feminist as a white woman who's trying to, um, decolonize perspectives, understand privilege, um, and also, [00:02:00] um, someone who's been in that space for so long. You have a lot of wisdom to share and a lot of experience. And I, I'm just really grateful that you're putting that out in the world and being vulnerable. So thank Nina Simons: you. Oh, it's my honor and privilege. I feel really grateful to get to do it. Thank you, Elisa. Okay, Alyssa Calder Hulme: so, I, so this book is about women's leadership, um, and you talk about it from your own personal experiences and then in working with other, with other leaders in, In lots of different communities, um, can we start maybe talking about, uh, what Bioneers is and where that word comes from, because I was really intrigued by that. Nina Simons: Sure. Sure. Well, the word was coined by my husband and partner because it's a contraction of biological pioneers. Okay. And the idea behind it was he started looking to find really innovative and effective [00:03:00] approaches. To healing our relationships with ourselves, each other and the earth and what he found was that some of the great innovators out there, many of them were looking to nature to heal nature and so there were nature sourced solutions and that's where the word Bioneers came from. But. Bioneers started as an annual gathering. Um, we started it in 1990 and over the years it has grown and grown and evolved tremendously so that now there is an annual face to face in person conference of about a year. 2500 or 3000 people, but there is also an incredible wealth of media that we put out. So we produce a radio series that wins awards many years and, um, a great newsletter and a lot of what motivated Bioneers in the first place was the recognition. [00:04:00] That the mainstream media tends to carry the bad news, but not the good news of the world. That's being born. And especially in this time when there's so much destruction and violence and coming apart, we all need to remember to give some of our time and energy to the world. That's being born because it's incredibly uplifting and inspiring and full of role models. And, and, um, that's what Pioneers is. And, um, what else did you ask me? I think that was the main question. No, Alyssa Calder Hulme: it, it was. Um, one of the things that you talk about in your book is the difference between a Bioneer and a Pioneer. And how as in the Bioneer space, you are looking to To create with the world instead of imagining it as a blank space that doesn't have, um, life already living and I don't know, I'm not articulating it very well. Your book says it so much more [00:05:00] beautifully, but, um, co creating in that world with indigenous people with local knowledge with local plants and flora and fauna and all of those things. You speak maybe a little bit. to that? And, and why is that a revolutionary concept to an American white person? Nina Simons: Oh, that's a great question. Well, and it's interesting as you frame it, it very much parallels my exploration with leadership because, um, what I've realized as a woman with all the privileges that having white skin gifts me in this country, um, and a fierce determination to become a better uh, anti racist, a better white ally, um, and to learn deeply what it means to do that. Um, part of what I've learned is that we actually need to invest in our own humility, and I think that's parallel to what you were asking because, um, [00:06:00] you know, Western civilization Tends to have us think of nature as resources and in fact an indigenous worldview thinks of nature as relatives And imagine how differently you would relate knowing that the trees and the Soil and the mycelium and the, you know, all of the elements are your relatives, rather than just resources to be mined or extracted or used. Um, so it really is about, you know, for me, what I've come to understand from all these years of immersing myself in both the challenges we face and. This amazing fount of solutions has been that, um, that the solutions we need are largely already in form all around us. And that what we need to do is quiet [00:07:00] our egos and our tendency toward hubris to learn from the allies that surround us. And that actually includes, um, people of different backgrounds. People of different classes and ages and orientations that I think a lot of what we're facing right now is a need to transform our culture by shifting our culture within ourselves first so that we relate to difference as a virtue rather than as an obstacle to be overcome. Alyssa Calder Hulme: Yeah, I, I love that in your book, you talk about a shift in culture and cultural change from a me to a we, and I, I really, I think that's such a succinct, fantastic way to, to talk about that. Um, and so I want to talk now about. In your book, you talk about leadership and being labeled as a leader and kind of your initial, um, being repulsed by that title and kind of your [00:08:00] transformation through that. So I would love to, I'd love to dig into that and then how your position and privilege as a leader has allowed you to exercise that humility and grow and learn with other people with maybe less privilege. Um, so, so talk to us a little bit about. Um, that stigma of leadership and, and maybe in conjunction with ambition, because I think it's a very similar stigma when a woman is trying or is in that place. Nina Simons: I do too. And it's been interesting to think about in relation to your podcast and recognize that, you know, social scientists have long observed that in our culture, when we raise boys, we raise them to crow when they achieve something. Whereas when we raise girls, we tell them not to crow, we tell them to be silent, to hold it to themselves. And really the models of virtue that [00:09:00] boys and girls are raised with are very, very different. And what I found When I was first called a leader, um, I was about 40 years old and I, I really didn't like it. I knew I was supposed to be flattered, but really I felt like it painted a target on my back. It was not a title I had ever aspired to. And. I knew from Bioneers that the earth is calling us all to be leaders now. And so I had to figure out how to reconcile those two things. And as I started convening women leaders, they would all come together immediately disavowing that they ever thought of themselves as leaders. So I found that it was a bigger issue than just me. And I think, you know, it relates to the, what you were just citing of the transition from a me culture to a weak culture, because really, um, I've done two books [00:10:00] now exploring leadership and how we are all co inventing and co creating new models of leadership. And, you know, I did that First, by exploring all of the talks from all of the leaders I most admired at Bioneers, and then deconstructing them to find patterns of how were they similar, and how were they different than my mental model, and, uh, and what I found was that they were all motivated from the heart, not the head. They were motivated by an internal passion to serve or defend or protect something. And not by a title or a graduate degree, um, they were often people who stepped up to do something when they didn't even know exactly what they could do. And it wasn't until they were in it that it began to reveal. And, And they [00:11:00] were, they were also people who, whose concept of leadership was involved sharing authority and sharing power. And so, you know, increasingly, I came to appreciate the Gloria Steinem thing of leaders are those who lift each, who lift others up. No, and, and as I explored that, I realized how important it was to both have your own sense of dignity and self love, but to have that balanced with humility so that you can recognize the gifts and talents and those around you and generously support them without feeling Threatened by the zero sum game of patriarchy that if someone else is good at something it means you're not so uh So I mean this latest book is sort of the latest Evolution of my thinking about leadership. It also talks about a lot of the [00:12:00] data about Women throughout the world and how their leadership is affecting change And, and how much, um, the research is proving that when women lead, everything gets better, you know, and so I think of the old model of leadership as an I model because it was driven by ego and personal achievement, you know, and, and I think of the new model that we're all co creating as a we model. Yeah, Alyssa Calder Hulme: I love that. And that, I mean, it blends so well into my research on ambition, um, in terms of, you know, when we're looking at gender roles where men are socialized to be individualistic and to be competitive and to be climbing and, um, are expected to be in those leadership positions, but from that ego place and from that, um, Stamp of approval of a title or, uh, income or [00:13:00] education or whatever it is. And now women are, are exercising in these places, but we're showing up in new ways and we're showing up with different gifts and with different values and priorities. And then when we're given the title of leader, it doesn't sit right, or it feels wrong. Um, And I, and, or ambition, I ask people to be on the show and they're like, Oh, I'm not ambitious. I'm like, well, let's talk about it. Cause I think you might be. And I think that maybe what you're scared of is actually some of the values that people have linked with those words that, that don't fit. Um, yeah, I love, I, one of the things I love about your book is that you talk and cite so many different. Women and groups and, uh, people from all over the world and talk about how their collaborative community based relational practices and different values are really starting to change the world and how the power of the [00:14:00] grassroots movements across the world and how they are. Are changing our society. Um, how as a leader, uh, with a platform, um, I know you've done a lot of work to create leadership spaces, uh, that account for differences in, um, Class and race and lots of different perspectives and places like that. What was it like to start engaging in some of that work to try and make your spaces more equitable and accessible to people who have been systematically disenfranchised? Nina Simons: Well, you know, there was a pivotal moment in my learning about that, Alyssa, when I read a book by a woman named Linda Tar Whalen called Women Lead the Way, and what she cites in that book is that until any minority Has reached at least 30 percent in a group, they [00:15:00] don't feel flanked enough to fully show up. And that was revelatory to me and my co facilitators. And at that moment, we agreed that we would set a minimum of 30 percent women of color in our trainings and that we would have a woman of color on our facilitation team. So that one third of the facilitation team was, was a person of color and everything shifted dramatically as soon as we did that. Um, You know, I think in a nutshell, it was in some ways scary to me to embark on that steep learning curve, but in other ways I felt really compelled to do it, and in retrospect, I feel really proud of myself that I embraced it so fully, and that in fact, I've reached a point in my life where I have Profound friendships and [00:16:00] relationships with women from all walks of life, and I feel like it's gifted me, you know, one of the things I think, Elisa, about this work is that people often talk about how hard it is, but they don't often talk about how rewarding it is. And I have found it to be some of the most rewarding work in my life. And it's gifted me some opportunities to experience in an embodied way what Dr. Martin Luther King called Beloved Community. And there's nothing like it, you know. It also helped me to understand Why the patriarchy has been so invested in socializing us to be in competition with each other rather than an alliance with each other. Because I think one of the most powerful things in the world is women in deep intentional alliance who can grow each other's leadership, [00:17:00] um, faster, better, deeper than anything else I've ever seen. So that's, that's some conditioning to get over. Yeah, Alyssa Calder Hulme: absolutely. I know so many white feminist women of my generation are trying to, uh, be allies and do anti racism work, and there is so much, so much work left to be done. And then, you know, at some point, there comes a time when it's time to start actually enacting some of those things we're learning, and I, it's scary to move from a learning place to an action place, and then it's, I mean, Speaking for myself, like it's vulnerable to try and reach out and, and start that inclusive journey because it will most certainly involve some direct correction and education from the people around me. And, um, [00:18:00] I think what you're saying, it is a very vulnerable thing to, to learn something and then to try and change an organization and to, to make that big shift of who are we inviting and who are we putting in those positions of power and making those shifts. And I see it happening. And, you know, there are all kinds of companies with different quotas and they're trying to get certain rates of leadership in different areas. Um, it sounds like you did it. Fairly quickly and a steep learning curve, as you say, how did you, uh, so one of the phrases in your book is, uh, discomfort, resilience, learned, like that's part of that humility and letting go, um, allowing to be uncomfortable and to be educated and to continue to grow and listen to other people. What was that like? And, uh, you talk about. You know, getting feedback about cultural appropriation and, and [00:19:00] those types of things. Can you speak to that process and the humility or learning Nina Simons: curve? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think one of the things that it requires is really coming face to face with having been raised by a culture that is deeply embedded in white supremacy. And so, you know, when you face that, when I face that in myself, it causes me to look at the stereotypes I carry, you know, my assumptions that someone may know less than me because they have a different background or a different color of skin. Um, and in fact, The more that the doing has taught me, I mean, I think studying and learning with other white people is really important and really necessary, but also, um, I think it's taught me a kind of [00:20:00] humility to understand that, you know, I'll give you an example. Um, early in my women's leadership work, I remember saying to a room of mixed women that I was raised in a home where anger was not expressed. And as a result, I didn't really know how to have a healthy relationship to anger and that I suspected that that might be true for many or most women. And I had an African American woman immediately push back and say, Not true in our culture. You know, I, I was raised to express my anger in a great and healthy and strong and quick way. And I thought, Wow, okay. Well, that's something I have to learn from you, you know, that's great. Um, so I think Let's see I think the other thing about it that I want to say and I I write about this in a longer essay in the book is that it's one thing to [00:21:00] learn about white supremacy and the racist history of our nation from your head. And it's another thing to feel it in your heart. And some of the hardest anti racism training experiences I've ever had has been witnessing other white people only respond from their heads. And they either get defensive or they have a rationale or, but But the truth is, um, we are living among people who are experiencing painful events due to the racism deeply embedded in our culture every single day, many, many times a day, and sometimes it's it involves fear for the life of their Children, you know, um, and. And so it requires really extending your empathy to somebody else's experience, and similarly, [00:22:00] as I've learned about Indigenous peoples and the horrors that we have inflicted on them, that this nation has, um, I find myself having tremendous amounts of empathy and compassion, and And then the trick is, how do you turn that into some sort of action? Because knowing about it, thinking about it, talking about it doesn't mean squat until you do something about it. And that means helping in whatever way you can. But it also means not falling into the trap of becoming a white savior. Instead, coming in a humble way to say, I want to be of service. How can I help? Tell me how I can help you because only they know what they need really. And, um, and put me to work, you know, I'll wash dishes. I'll take out the trash. Tell me what you need. Um, So, I mean, I guess that's the [00:23:00] best I can do in a generalized form. Yeah. Alyssa Calder Hulme: So I want to mention today too, we are recording this on Memorial Day in the United States. The day that we remember people have passed away, our ancestors and our loved ones. And For me, a part of this process has been coming to terms with, with my own family history and the complicity in the settler colonizer state and in the patriarchy and, um, a lot of the contradictions that are there, that it's really tempting to paint a really pretty picture of pioneers or pilgrims, or, you know, the settlers that built this cabin and worked so hard to settle this area. And it's, It's, it's so many complicated overlapping truths of also, um, genocide and rape and, um. And land theft. And death and destruction. Yeah. Yeah. Land theft and, and continual [00:24:00] occupation. Here I am. Yeah. In Utah. I have no ancestors from Utah. And I'm still here. Yeah. And, um. It's, it's a paradox and it's hard and it's uncomfortable. Um, and I have children. So part of my work is to teach them about all of that and try and model how to continue to exist and then what to do next. Um,... /episode/index/show/womenofambitionpodcast/id/29887433

Impostures Syndrome and Black Ambition: DEI, Racial Capitalism, and the History of Policing in the US + Whitney Knox Lee, Esq. 02/10/2024

Impostures Syndrome and Black Ambition: DEI, Racial Capitalism, and the History of Policing in the US + Whitney Knox Lee, Esq. Alyssa Calder Hulme: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Women of Ambition podcast. I'm your host, Alyssa Calder Hume, and today we have Whitney Knox Lee. Whitney is a civil rights attorney, an equity and inclusion consultant, a mother and wife, and the host of the Empatrix podcast. Whitney Knox Lee, Esq.: Yes. Alyssa Calder Hulme: Thank you so much for being here, Whitney. Tell us a little bit about your podcast, because I think that encompasses a lot of these, uh, these different roles that you fulfill and passionately. Whitney Knox Lee, Esq.: It really, yeah. It does. So, um, Impostrix podcast, we are going to be affirming the lived experiences of professionals of color who navigate imposter syndrome, white dominant culture, and racial toxicity at work. Um, and so really what that means is we're going to be diving into all that it means to be a professional of color, um, acknowledging that we are working within systems that sometimes were created to exclude us. Um, so we're going to be talking about like, how do we identify when we're [00:01:00] working within these systems and if these systems are like actively working against us and we are being gaslit about that, then what do we do? How do we deal with those types of conversations? Um, we're going to talk about the historical context of race and racism, um, here in the United States. And what that has to do with where we are now, um, as folks of color who are working in professions. And then we're also going to talk about like the science behind how racial traumas. affect us, affect our brains, affect our bodies, and in turn affect how we show up to the workplace, and whether or not and when we might be triggered by circumstances that are happening around us, whether that's within our work environment. Or like for me, it's mostly, uh, external facing when I'm working. Um, so I work as a civil rights attorney in the South and I represent folks who are incarcerated. [00:02:00] And what that means on a day to day is that I'm constantly going to jails and prisons and seeing people who look like me, who are behind bars and living in cages. Um, and so this, the science component I really want to get into to better understand for myself. When I'm leaving these jails and prisons and I'm feeling triggered and worked up and having to, um, Utilize all of these tools to kind of bring myself back to safety, um, why I'm feeling that way. Mm hmm. Alyssa Calder Hulme: That sounds, I think that's so important that like, it sounds like you're talking about like embodiment, like mindfulness and being aware. And I would venture to say that no HR in America is set up to help people understand those. Pieces of themselves. Whitney Knox Lee, Esq.: No. And somebody recently asked me, we were talking about like the DEI profession. So diversity, equity, and inclusion. Sometimes there's a B at the end, which means belonging and [00:03:00] why that's important. And this was some, this was coming from a black woman who owned her own law firm. Um, and so she was asking really as an employer, like, why is this important? Why do we need this? Because these days, like. People aren't showing up to work and just being like overtly racist. And, you know, to answer that question, it's really about creating a community or a space within the workplace where we can feel like we belong, where we're seen and where it's psychologically safe for us to show up. And so if I am experiencing being triggered because of the work that I do, feeling safe. To talk about that, to raise that, um, and then having systems in play within our workplace that can support me in that, you know, it's, it's part of. The, the reason or the, the need for D E I B. Do you Alyssa Calder Hulme: [00:04:00] see, I I've heard a lot of different things about diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, um, and we'll get to ambition. I always get off track, but I really want to ask you, um, as you know, per the normal way it goes in America. A lot of the times, um, there's a lot of performativity, uh, within the workplace. Um, D I, um. Groups being formed within companies and not really being informed or not being led by the correct people or not being educated Do you are you seeing that trend and is this some is this a another thing? We need to abandon and start over with or is it something we can work with do you think Whitney Knox Lee, Esq.: I definitely think we can work? with it because Often what I see, so I work in the nonprofit world, um, and it may be different in the corporate world where theoretically there's more money. But what I see is often there are these like voluntary committees, like diversity committees, um, who are [00:05:00] tasked with doing this work. And oftentimes these committees are made of people of color. Who have other whole jobs within the organization and who are taking on this really emotion heavy, um, labor of trying to help this organization do whatever it is that the organization wants to do, whether that's be more inclusive, hire, um, from more diverse communities. Um, or, you know, whatever, whatever the goals are. And so I think it's a start, it's a start that people are talking about diversity or about equity or about inclusion. But I'd say two things. One, that these types of, um, movements within organizations need to be supported by power. Um, they need to be deputized. You know, they need to have resources to [00:06:00] actually be able to follow through with whatever the initiatives are that they're tasked with, I don't know, doing. Um, but also it needs to be supported by by the leadership. And so like they it needs money behind it. It needs recognition behind it. It needs support. So when I say support, I mean, like, I, I think executives We need to be lifting up the efforts of the DEI community or the DEI committee, attending the events, making things mandatory, um, you know, putting, walking the walk. We can't just say, okay, we're going to have a DEI committee, give them like a whole list of things to take care of, but then not give them any money, not give them the power to actually make the decisions. Like if you have a [00:07:00] committee and that committee makes a decision, but in order for the decision to actually be implemented within the organization, it has to go through two or three more layers of approval, then that's not actually giving that there should be no approval process. Exactly. Like that's not giving the committee the power to do anything because what's going to happen is it's going to come up against somebody, um, for approval who has not been a part of these conversations, who is not doing the work who might be removed from like. What the actual need is, um, who may not be a person of color and not saying that all people of color on the same page about this, but like it does require some internal personal work to be on this page of how do we make our environment more inclusive and how do we make our environment psychologically safe for folks of color to come to work here? Um, and then the last thing that I want to say about this is that. This work shouldn't [00:08:00] stop at diversity. Yeah, because it's not enough to have representation of people. And so when we talk about diversity, we're talking about quantity. We're talking about the number of people who are people of color or who are, um, gender non binary or who are LGBT or whatever, you know, the, the group. Um, it's not enough to just to have the numbers. If those numbers don't have any power and don't have any say within the organization. Um, so if. You're working at an organization that hires 50 percent folks of color, but all of those folks of color are in. Um, roles that are underpaid, um, overworked that, you know, maybe receptionists who have a lot of the front end kind of work load, but aren't really valued the same as. An attorney, you know, and in my [00:09:00] field, same as an attorney. So, um, then that's not, that's not inclusion. That's not equity. Um, it doesn't create an environment of belonging. All that you've done is created a diverse work environment. Yeah. Alyssa Calder Hulme: No, I think, thank you. That's a, that's a really great answer. Is there, is there like a, a place to go to vet different companies and like, does Glassdoor have a diversity, equity, inclusion, quality control element, or is this mostly word of mouth to try and find a good workplace? Whitney Knox Lee, Esq.: You know, I don't know the answer to that question. I think there may Is it indeed? It may be Glassdoor. One of these websites does have like a, where people who work there can provide feedback as to what the culture is like. And then they might say it's, you know, doing well or not doing well. Um, but honestly, you know, I think we learn this through our [00:10:00] interview process. Um, we learn it through our engagement with the organization that we're considering applying for or the company that we're considering applying for. Like what has their impact been on the community? Are they in the community or are they just like sucking resources from the community? Um, who are they hiring when we're talking to The receptionist like what do they look like? Yeah. Um, who are we seeing when we go into the building? Um, not just the website picture, right? Exactly Alyssa Calder Hulme: And it's hard with online hiring processes. Whitney Knox Lee, Esq.: It is it is and then asking questions It's totally okay to ask in your interview like So do you have any equity or inclusion initiatives or, you know, stuff like that, what are, what's the breakdown of, of, uh, races that work at your organization? I mean, figure out a nicer way to say it or like a less, I don't know, blunt way, because also [00:11:00] this type of stuff, these types of questions do come with risk. Um, and the risk is they're going to decide that. You care too much. Yeah. And that you're not a good, you know, fit, quote, unquote for the company. Um, and that's fine. Like that's when you know that you don't want to work there. Um, but if it's something where like you need income to support your family, and this is the only interview that you've gotten in three months and you really don't have the luxury or flexibility to not get this job. Um, then yeah, you may not want to ask those questions. Yeah. Alyssa Calder Hulme: Yeah, that's tough. Okay. Thank you for that. Um, let's shift now to ambition. Uh, we were talking a little bit before we started recording about your experiences with that word and your reflections on that word. Can you tell us a little bit about what that word means to you and what your thoughts, where they've led you? Whitney Knox Lee, Esq.: Yeah, um, I don't think I've [00:12:00] ever thought about that word prior to preparing for this interview, um, and well, and listening to your podcast. And the reason is. Um, I don't think that being ambitious as a black woman is safe. Um, for me, it hasn't been historically being ambitious, wanting to do more than maybe what's expected of me or wanting, um, more of myself. Uh, I don't think that that's safe, and so it's not necessarily that I am not ambitious or that folks of color are not ambitious, but we do what I do, um, consider it just a little bit differently, maybe, um, and I don't, I don't have. a name for it. Um, I know [00:13:00] that I'm somebody that is very mission based and value driven in all of the work that I do. And I know that I'm stubborn. Um, I know that if somebody tells me that I can't do something, then I most certainly will be doing that thing. Um, but when we think about the history of black folks in America, um, it's never been safe for us to do anything other than what we've been told to do. We have never had kind of full ownership over our physical bodies. And so doing things that are outside of what's been prescribed for us to do has. been a threat. Yeah, to white people and to the dominant culture, which is white, white dominant culture. Um, and [00:14:00] so I think culturally, um, like for me and my family, I come from a middle class black family. Um, I grew up in Seattle. My parents. Went to college. They also got, um, advanced degrees. So I'm not like a first generation of anything, really. Everything that I've done before my everything that I've done, my parents have also done. And what I was blessed with as far as my privilege of being a middle class growing up middle class, um, is that I grew up believing that I could do whatever I wanted to do. Um, and that to do whatever I wanted to do, it was going to take some work and some action behind it. Um, but I never, that was never kind of packaged as this idea of being ambitious. Interesting. Alyssa Calder Hulme: So, [00:15:00] um, in our last episode, I talked to Natalie, who's a Latina woman, um, and talked a lot about how she was brought up to also believe that she could do anything she wanted, but then when she, like, really was a teenager and becoming an adult and was confronted with a lot of the xenophobia and racism things, that was surprising to her, and she's had to work a lot to overcome that, and so she was frustrated that she hadn't been prepared better for that as a child. It sounds like you had some level of preparation and you knew a little bit more about what you were getting yourself into. Is that accurate? Yeah. Whitney Knox Lee, Esq.: So I do think, yes. Yeah. I think that's accurate as a black person. I don't know how to say this. The experience of black folks and Latinx folks is very different. Obviously, you know, I mean, I'm not telling you anything new, but one of the things I just had a conversation for Impostrix podcast with someone who identifies as Mexican who grew up [00:16:00] here in the United States. And what's clear to me is that for some, uh, Latinx folks, culture, there's almost like a bubble of culture, um, that they may be living within. For black people, for myself, I'll speak for myself only, it wasn't necessarily that. Um, our culture in my family is not very removed from white culture. We do not have. centuries of knowledge of our ancestry. So like, as far as I'm concerned, my family starts. In, you know, two or three generations ago in South Mississippi, I don't know where our family came from. So by the time my parents came of age and had us the culture that I was raised within was this white culture and it was a very, [00:17:00] um, like I knew that I was black. I knew what black people were up against. Um, but I also knew that my parents were able to overcome what they experienced, the racism that they experienced, um, to find what they considered to be success. And so I knew that it would be available to me, but that there were going to be challenges that I would face that white folks might not face. Alyssa Calder Hulme: Yeah, the Black parents I've spoken with talk a lot about the burden and the absolute essential nature of preparing their children for the world. Walking down the street, going to school, getting jobs, getting pulled over. All of these things that many of us who might live in a bubble or who are part of the dominant culture just have no clue about. Um, so it sounds like survival and, and thriving with an asterisk is, is something that you were prepared to do, um, or, or set [00:18:00] up to do from your upbringing. Whitney Knox Lee, Esq.: Um, yeah, I would say to some extent, I mean, I do, we're going to get into this, but you know, when thinking about imposter syndrome, I think part of the reason why I experience imposter syndrome and this feeling of not belonging or of being a fake or intellectual phony is because although I knew a little bit of what to expect. I still I look different than the people that I'm interacting with on a daily basis who have power like the ones that aren't behind bars. Yeah. Um, but also I don't have the, um, family history within the institutions that I think that some of. My white colleagues and counterparts have so I don't have that very kind of ingrained culture of privilege that [00:19:00] a lot of a lot of people. Yeah, right, grow up with. Yeah. And so I think to some extent like that still is still surprising to me that I'm still dealing with imposter syndrome when I'm 10 years. into lawyering. Alyssa Calder Hulme: Okay. So, so from, from the lawyer's perspective, you say you work in these prisons. Um, are you able to speak a little bit about the history of policing and the jailing system? And, you know, we're talking about where belonging and imposter syndrome, like a lot of those institutions were established to capture, recapture enslaved people to make sure that they were staying where they are. Like that is the system that was really built for. Black people that the lawyer world being behind the desk rather than behind the bars like no wonder there's imposter syndrome Because it's literally not Structured for you. Can you do you have more to add to that or I don't know Whitney Knox Lee, Esq.: Yes, I mean that's the perfect example, right? I mean this is this is like the [00:20:00] conflict that I live with like this is the purpose for imposter X podcast because I It's bizarre. It's a bizarre reality to be for me, for me to be someone that literally all it took was a little bit of luck and like not getting caught doing something that somebody else thought. Might be illegal. Otherwise I could be on the other side of those bars, you know, it's, it's that easy. And so to, to your question about like the history of policing, I mean, you're totally right. So our, um, legal system and our policing system is all based on the recapture. Of enslaved persons, as you said, um, it was never meant to provide safety for black folks.[00:21:00] It was never meant to be fair for black folks. Um, Alyssa Calder Hulme: it was about protecting white property, right? Whether that's human people or, you know, shipping things down at the docks, right? Whitney Knox Lee, Esq.: And that's. You know, our constitution and the, our, our constitutional rights. The right to due process, the right to equal protection under the law, all of these things were never meant for black people. And it took going to court to enforce these rights, to get recognition. And not just black people, it wasn't meant for anybody other than white Europeans. You know, because through the years, there have also been Supreme Court cases where Japanese people are having to establish their citizenship or their right to be here. Um, of course, Native Americans still, you know, are [00:22:00] not afforded all of the rights that Alyssa Calder Hulme: Others are, um, people that live in a category. They are a, what do they call them? A legal, a legal group organization. Whitney Knox Lee, Esq.: Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, people that live in our territories, Puerto Ricans don't have the same rights as people that live in mainland United States. Um, and so this system was never meant to benefit people that look like me. It was always meant to protect white. Um, and it's also this system that created what we know today as these racial categories of, you know, white, black, um, Asian, because before that, like it was just, we were living in our countries just being people. But then in 1619 with the start of the slave trade and the [00:23:00] start, well, not the start, but the start of people coming to what's now the United States. is when white settlers had to create distance. from the dark skinned people that were getting off the boat. And they needed to do that, not only for themselves as the ruling class, but for white indentured servants as well. They needed to create like the upper class, the middle class, who are like the overseers, the slave overseers. And then the lower class, the people that weren't people, you know, the people that counted... /episode/index/show/womenofambitionpodcast/id/29886633

Becoming a Good Ancestor: Family, Joy, and Decolonization + Miyamoto Loretta Jensen, the Polynesian Genealogist 06/08/2023

Chicana/x and Latina/X Feminisms: PostPod + Citations 04/30/2023

Chicana/x and Latina/X Feminisms: PostPod + Citations Alyssa: [00:00:00] Hello everybody and welcome to the Women of Ambition podcast. I'm your host, Alyssa Calder Hulme, and today we're gonna do something that we haven't done for a little while now, and that is a PostPod, and this is where we. Look at the last podcast that got published and digested a little bit, talk about it, contextualize some things. We had such a fantastic time tracking together, Natalie and I, and there just really wasn't time to dig into some of the more complex ideas and some of the sources that we were drawing on, or, or I was drawing on really in my questioning. So I wanted to share some of those today because these authors and these people that we're drawing from, especially in looking at Latina ambition, are really incredible Chicano feminists. That I've really enjoyed learning and studying with. So I'm gonna share some of those citations today and discuss a little bit more about some of the vocabulary and some of the themes that are used there, because I think it's useful and really helpful to hear the voices [00:01:00] of the people that are coming up with these theories and these ideas to describe the experience of so many people. So here's a little synopsis of. Four different texts that have been really helpful for me. Okay. So the first text that I wanna look at is called Methodology of the Oppressed, and that's by Chela Sandoval. And this is a really interesting mapping that Sandoval does of us feminism's feminists of color, and she shows this differential mode of consciousness that she shows is located in these women of color and that their unique positions and perspectives and abilities and experiences as women of color in the United States gives them this really unique angle and existence in these in-between spaces. And she says that the, these perspectives are so essential and she, and she shows it like this is. She proves it in this essay. It's really fantastic. But we need these [00:02:00] perspectives of women of color because they live in these liminal spaces and they, out of necessity and out of creativity and out of survival, end up what, this is a quote, weaving between and among oppositional idol ideologies. And it's. I love that concept and that like visual of weaving in-between spaces and things to kind of create like a new tapestry of color and meaning and blending things together that other people who don't have that perspective wouldn't be able to do and create. And it's a very heavy text. Like it, it's a very technical, but it's really it felt really inspiring to me because it's showing how. Feminism can be done with an intersectional lens and how it can be a place of creation and insight and hope in a way that like white feminisms in the United States really can't do.[00:03:00] It really does take all of us to have quality and to have. You know, have everybody's needs met. We have to have all the different perspectives and these feminists, women of color, how this really unique perspective is being some of the most disenfranchised populations in the United States, where their ideas and their perspectives are really going to make it better for everybody. The next text that I wanna look at is called Monstrosity in Everyday Life, Theories in Flesh and Transformational Politics. And that's written by Robert, Robert Gutierrez-Perez. And this is another one of these really cool concepts nepantleras. And remember, my accent is awful. I haven't spoken Spanish out loud in like a decade. They are the people that dwell in that in between space. And Robert goes into detail about how they mediate the borderlands and the borderlands is kind of the topic of our [00:04:00] last episode with Natalie. So. Mediate the borderlands, and that is in the physical spaces that they live in. And having borders of countries cross through spaces where people are living and people are forced to literally cross a border. But also that metaphorical border that we talked about that is navigating different spaces. And then, Robert goes into de detail about how nepantleras have to live with contradiction and how they choose to be bridge makers in a way that is subversive. It's a, it's a method for survival, but it's also a way that deconstructs a lot of the imposed limits of, of like western colonization capitalism, all these things that try and put people in a box. And nepantleras are people that hold intersectional identities. Can cross these different spaces and can [00:05:00] be viewed as monsters for doing this crossing spaces, but can take that identity to then make it something that is empowering and transformative. And a way that, again, is that like subversive method for existing in the world and, and making it better. Okay, the next text, we're gonna go through these real quick cuz they're so great. And they are, they are dense, but I really think it's important to share them. This is Borderlands/ La Frontera: the New Mestiza, and it's by Gloria Anzaldúa, who is another fantastic Latina feminist author. Highly, highly recommend And in this text Anzaldúa talks about borderland dwellers and how they hone what we referenced in the podcast as a sixth sense, and she calls it La Facultad. And that is that awareness of the social context that [00:06:00] develops throughout the life of Latina women as a means of self-preservation. And. In that process, she goes into kind of the, the darker side of that. We've, we talked a lot about the positive side of that with Natalie. The humor, the creativity, the bonding, the community B making that can be there. Anzaldua talks though about what can be lost in that cultivation cuz it is kind of a forced cultivation. I would almost say the way that the Anzaldua talks about it at least is kind of like a, a trauma response is how I would describe it. So Anzaldua says that what is lost in the cultivation of lafa is our innocence, our knowing ways, and our safe and easy ignorance. And so having to develop that sixth sense, that awareness is what keeps in, in Anzaldua eyes Latinas safe and gives them that superpower that we talked about. But it also comes at a cost that can be really heavy [00:07:00] but. As we heard in our last episode, it can be a place of hope and creation and of new thoughts, and that's where this idea of US women of color, feminisms being able to come in and show us things that maybe I wouldn't be able to see based on my social location and my level of privilege. And so it can be this really positive building thing and it can also be this really, really heavy thing. And I think what Natalie was saying is that's where community comes in. That's really, really important, especially in the Latinx community. Having each other and having people that can kind of lean on each other with that. And that's where. In terms of like ambition, because this is, is a podcast on ambition. All of those different social locations and identities and like abilities can. Come together in really beautiful ways, but they can also be locations of disenfranchisement and struggle and imposed and [00:08:00] contradictory expectations and can then pose more obstacles in maybe presenting. A way that is considered to be more masculine or to be outside of the cultural norm or to be transgressive of crossing those borderlands if you consider gender stereotypes and gender roles, and if you're crossing that one way or another you're gonna be. It's gonna be rough. There's gonna be resistance to that. And it can also be this place of incredible creation and growth. The last text I wanna talk about, we didn't really go into it a lot, but we kind of referenced this population, and I'm still kind of chewing with this idea because there is a lot of. Disagreement about this term and it, it's not, not necessarily a new term, but it's still being discussed. Next text I wanna look at is Chicana Latina [00:09:00] political mouthful. And that is by Dolores Delgado Bernal. Rebecca Burciaga, Judith Flores Carmona. And this was published in 2017 and it's a response to another author Spivak, who coined the term subaltern. And that Subaltern is one who the dominant powers have rendered as a person who doesn't matter, isn't worth listening to. And as they're not being understood, one who does not have a platform to speak from. And originally, Spivak said that the subaltern are these people that cannot be heard or really. My interpretation is that they're saying things all the time, but the dominant society, the people with power are not listening. So these people who are not being heard and understood. Are stuck until they are given a platform. And even that term given is problematic until they can make their voice heard, they are disenfranchised. But what Bernal et al., all those [00:10:00] authors, that's what at all means. What all they responded with is that even when Chicana and Latina scholars are in the academia, are in the public eye, that because of their social location that they are continually not understood and not listened to and not heard Thus, They are still subaltern and even when they technically have a platform or they are published or whatever it is, and so it's another example of this like really complex identity of not being seen, not being heard, not being taken seriously. Maybe it is because people don't know what to do with you because you inhabit multiple locations or maybe just what you're saying. Comes from such a unique positionality, and it is looking in places that most people aren't seeing that we don't want to hear. And so these are some of the, the different ideas I've been thinking with and looking at the really innovative ways that Chicana feminists and Latinas are [00:11:00] showing up in the world and exhibiting ambition in ways that maybe the rest of us. Aren't ready for. And you know what? We need to get ready for it. And we need to be supporting everybody who wants to be doing awesome things, even if it's in ways that are surprising to us. Even if it, they are weaving things together in ways that we don't expect, even if they're bringing a perspective to the surface that has been in the shadows for our, our own lived experience. And those, those borderland dwellers that can live with contradiction and can be the bridge makers are the people that make. Subaltern people legible and create themselves as legible people. And so when we are doing whatever work we're doing, whether it's in the government, whether it's in our homes, in our communities we need to be listening to all people and to be valuing their experiences, even if they're different than our own, even if they are bringing ideas to the table that like seem totally outta left field. To use a, a baseball analogy here [00:12:00] a very American sport. Maybe it's not outta left field. Maybe it's just based on our social position and our social context. So those are some people to go read with and to think with and to consider. Especially if you want to widen your lens. I'm trying to widen my lens to understand ambition, to understand. Who am I not listening to? Who am I not thinking with? So those are some great places to go. I highly recommend. So we're gonna wrap this up as our post pods go, they're pretty short. So just thanks for listening. This is Women of Ambition podcast. I am your host, Alyssa Calder Hulme. And I will again, put the transcription up here. I'm putting it in the show description, so you should be able to see that within your app while listening. If you would like. If that's for some reason hard to read or the text is just too large or whatever it is, please feel free to reach out to [00:13:00] me. I'm happy to email out those those notes or add another layer to my website where maybe those transcripts are a little more legible and easy to find. But yeah, I, I strongly suggest each of those texts, they're so many incredible Latina authors out there. Latinx people who are writing and speaking and teaching and living in ways that we can all really learn from. So go check out the Latina ambition of weaving in liminal spaces and border crossings and speaking up when people don't wanna hear or don't know how to hear. Really some really incredible women out there. So hope you enjoyed this, and again, please let me know if those transcriptions are helpful and we'll see you again next time.[00:14:00] /episode/index/show/womenofambitionpodcast/id/26692803

Border Crossings: A Latina Look at Cultural Agility and Sixth Sense Bridge Making + Natalie Alhonte 04/28/2023

Border Crossings: A Latina Look at Cultural Agility and Sixth Sense Bridge Making + Natalie Alhonte Alyssa: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Women of Ambition podcast. I'm your host, Alyssa Calder Hulme , and today we are going to be beginning a little bit of a shift in our podcast experience together where we've been examining ambition, how women experience that and talk about that. And we're gonna continue on that same path, but I really want to start looking at how culture, ethnicity, religion, all these different things that influence our socialization, affect the way that we think about ambition and manifest it. And then some of the barriers that make it harder to be maybe. Who we want to be. And so today we're gonna look at a little bit a personal experiences of ambition, certainly, but also looking at it within the context of being a Latina in the United States. Today our guest is Natalie Alhonte . [00:01:00] Natalie was born in Bogota, Colombia and moved to the US when she was six months old. During her upbringing, she always had a passion for languages, storytelling, culture, and intersection of public policy and entrepreneurship. She moved to Washington, DC in 2001 to attend American University in their school of international service. After graduating, she began a career in global public affairs, including leading the work. For clients looking to build campaigns around ideas, not just products. After that, she moved to New York City to build a social good incubator working directly with Ariana Huffington, while in New York. She also hired, she was also hired to assist with all aspects of communication for the Brazilian government ahead of the World Cup and the Rio Olympics. Wow. Natalie then returned to Washington to help build the Latin American. Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council for her former boss, Peter. Natalie: Schechter Alyssa: Schechter. Okay, thank you. She's now the director of strategy for the Latin America Practice [00:02:00] Group at Wilkie. Also founded by a Latin. Latina and an investor in immigrant foods, a gastro advocacy restaurant dedicated to celebrating the contribution of immigrants to the United States, and she resides in Salt Lake City, Utah. Not too far from me with her husband son, Sammy and their two dogs. Thank you so much for being here today, Natalie. Natalie: Thank you so much for having me, Alyssa. Alyssa: Sorry If I, I messed up some of those words there. Reading and podcasting at the same time is rough. I'm used to just kind of going off the cuff. Natalie: It's hard. There's a lot of tongue twisters Alyssa: I'm also very, very aware that you are trilingual, at least correct Portuguese, Spanish, and English, and so, I have very minuscule knowledge of those languages, but my pronunciation is horrible at this point. No. So please forgive me and correct me. Please correct me. Natalie: Yes, absolutely. I, yeah, we're here to learn from each other. [00:03:00] Absolutely. Yes. Alyssa: Well, thank you so much for being willing to come on the show and talk about just this complex world that, that you live in and that you navigate and that you're so knowledgeable about. So to start, this is our first question we always ask, do you consider yourself to be ambitious? Natalie: Oh, I love this question. And actually I think you know, when I received the invitation to be here with you today, it really set me on sort of a journey of sort of trying that word on. I think it's been a while since I've sort of categorized myself as ambitious, but, you know, really getting familiar with the, the definition and, and. To, its very core and maybe not so much of the archetypes that maybe we have associated with it. I would definitely claim it. I, I would also say I'm very driven a funny story about that. I actually, if I had a memoir, I think I would have. Titled it Driven because I learned to drive so late in life. I actually just learned [00:04:00] to drive six months ago after being, you know, a, a, a true and blue New Yorker. But yeah, so driven, ambitious are definitely things that I would say are part of, of who I am. Ambitious for myself, but also ambitious for others, I think is another thing that I would say. I, I'm one of those people who really. Get so much in really success and. I've seen other people accomplish things like finding their own voice and seeing what they're capable of as well. But the one caveat I would say about ambition is that I would say yes, ambition, but not at any cost. Hmm. I think this is the new, the new learning for being my life. Especially as. I've become more multi-dimensional, becoming a mother becoming a wife, becoming, you know, trying to be a better friend and also just a better, you know, person who takes care of [00:05:00] myself is saying at ambition. But there has to be a very careful consideration about what the impact is on myself, on others. And definitely growing up in New York where there was a little bit more of a cutthroat culture being on the other side of what ambition on the negative side can look like I've always really prided myself in and to, and not being that type of person who will use anything and everything to get ahead. Despite sort of what the repercussions could be on others around me. Alyssa: No, I, I really appreciate you saying that. I've been obviously thinking about this word for a long time now. And I've been tinkering kind of with like another kind of nuance to this word where a lot of people associate ambition with like that competitiveness and like being willing to step on other people to [00:06:00] succeed. Especially cuz I, I've been reentering academia and so there is like a lot of competition. But. Valuing ambition for itself and valuing it for other people and having it be something that is in balance with other values like community and support and You know, your other values that can kind of balance it out, I think is a really, really important part to, to that aspect. So thank you for sharing that. It's interesting to hear a lot of guests come on the show and they're like, yeah, you know, you asked me to be, to come on and I didn't know how I felt about that word, or I'm a little uncomfortable. Calling myself that. And I thought about it and it, it actually fits really well. It's like, this is the why I'm like so interested in this word and this position cuz it's like there's so many layers to what it means and what it implies to people and relationally to other people. So like the part that I, that I'm tinkering with is [00:07:00] that, Ambition is like a drive to do or succeed that for whatever reason is beyond whatever is socially expected, given the context of wherever you're in. So your family, your community, your country, your socioeconomic status, like. There's some kind of a relative piece to that that is informed by who we are. And so that's why like talking about culture is so important because that's where you really learn your values, and that's kind of where all these things get put in reference. So I'm excited to dig into that more today. Natalie: Yes, me too. No, that, I think that sounds right, and I think you're right. Sometimes we have to go back to the very root of a word and really to really understand it because there has been, there are words that are becoming so polarizing and they're misused, and language really matters, you know? Mm-hmm. If if you have. Sort of a feeling about a word. I think it's important to go back and [00:08:00] say, is that really, is that how society, is that the messages that society has given me? Or is that really what, you know, is there a, a purity to that feeling? Is there something that's very connected to values that are part of that feeling? And I think with ambition, it's, you know, it really, to me at least, it's related to courage. And courage, right? It comes from the Latin heart, right cord, which is heart and Spanish. And when you think about how much courage it takes to put yourself in uncomfortable situations, the willingness, the discipline when it comes to self-talk to, to get, to go above what's expected of you. I think it courage and, and sort of ambition or go hand in hand. Alyssa: Yeah, I would, I completely agree with that. It's hard and it, it does take that extra bravery piece for sure. Okay, so [00:09:00] let's talk about your. Beginnings with ambition as a child, as a teen, do you, do you see pieces of that coming through in your early life? Natalie: I, I, absolutely. So I think some of my family's favorite stories you know, about me are just about sort of that independent streak that I always had. Though, you know, in the Latin culture, we're very, we have, we're taught and socialized to be very different differential to our elders and mm-hmm to the people who have traditional relationships of power, sort of like teachers, et cetera. I think my parents did a really great job not sort of oppressing that independent spunk and streak in me to let me be sort of who I was. And I think, you know, some examples they like to tell about this are I had a ice coffee stand. A lot of children had traditional lemonade stands, [00:10:00] but I realized that our house, I, you know, I grew up in Brooklyn and our house was. On the road to sort of main subway stop, and a lot of people would commute in the mornings to go to work. So in the summer, I used to wake up really early and we would brew fresh Colombian coffee and we would, I would go out with my little wooden table and I would sell ice, fresh ice coffee to the commuters as they would head to work. And I tried to have partners, you know, friends on the block be there with me, but nobody had the the drive to be up at. 7:00 AM to do that with me so quickly. You know, there was a rotation of partners that would come and go and nobody would stick. So I really loved the feeling of being there, being useful and being reliable to my. To, to my customers at a really, really young age. So that, I think it's, it's a fun story that [00:11:00] they tell, but I think that's definitely who I am. Someone who likes to be useful, have an impact and sort of doesn't really see anything as impossible for better or for worse. When I was 15, I started to sort of shift that I would say ambition to social good work. And I started an organization when I was 15 years old called Teens for Humanity. And it was dedicated to raising funds and supplies for developing world, especially Latin America given, you know, that my ties. So it was an incredible experience and I think. That's sort of those leadership skills that you start to learn that are inside of you you know, would just continue to grow. But it definitely never felt like anything was impossible. I just would see any task. And the world's my mom likes to say, the world's very small for me, and I feel like that's definitely been a part of[00:12:00] what's informed, sort of my decisions, my dreams, and my goals moving forward. Alyssa: Those are fantastic examples. Holy smokes. I love, I love to visualize you on the corner street hawking your iced coffee and then being in this teen for social justice, like, that's incredible. Natalie: Well, thank you. It, it's, it's been an incredible life and so far and I'm so glad to be able to, Talk about, tell my story because it reminds me of these things. You know, it's been a long time since I thought about them and really connected with them, but definitely inside of me lies a very, very ambitious little nine year old girl who never, who never went away, luckily. Alyssa: That's awesome. Okay, so, and then obviously you've had this like really incredible career path that we're gonna talk about now. But have there been, like growing up, were there clashes with. Culturally I You're a first gener, not even a first generation or [00:13:00] what would you call yourself? An immigrant? Yeah. I, yeah, Natalie: I'm definitely an immigrant. I'm somewhere in between. Yeah, first gen. I think it's, I sort of, I relate a lot to first generation just because I spent so much of my life in the us. And, but. Definitely my son likes to remind me that he's actually the only person born in the United States in our family, the point of pride for him. But yeah, I, I guess somewhere between first gen and, and immigrant. Mm-hmm. Alyssa: And so navigating kind of that, like that transitional space, were there clash points there? Were your parents just really supportive of you being yourself? What was that like as growing up? Natalie: So what's really interesting is that my mom comes from a, you know, medium sized town in Colombia, in the coffee region. Pretty, you know rural I think is the wrong word, but it's sort of like what you [00:14:00] would picture, like the Napa Valley of Colombia, beautiful. Rolling mountains. It's, you know, just a beautiful scenery. And my dad was born in Staten Island New York. So he's a New Yorker and up to Jewish parents. Okay. So. In my house. It was a, there was lots of paradox and contradictions. Okay. And mixed signals. So, you know, very typical sort of multi cultural, multi dimensional story. So. I had, I'd say in my home, represented two cultures that were, they couldn't be more different in terms of the value system, styles of communication, sort of the way that sort of the worldview and they were all happening. In real time in my house growing up, I also had the benefit of growing up with my grandparents. My [00:15:00] Jewish grandparents lived living up one floor above us. Oh wow. So they had a lot of influence as well in, I would say on the second floor. But my mom ran our home like a Colombian embassy within our home. It was very I would say You know, the culture of Colombia was very present. It was in the food, it was in our traditions. It was in the way that she ensured that we were connected to our roots and we understood where we came from. And she just, it was. Really important to her that we felt fully Colombian. Instead of sort of half and half, we were 100% Colombian and 100% American at the same time. So I don't know what kind of math that adds up to, but that was sort of how, how I was raised. And I would say that through [00:16:00] that it was, The ex, through that experiment, you would see that there was a lot of mixed messages about what success really looked like. And, and that also had to do with the extended family. So, you know, in my in my household, there was definite co cohesion. But I would say that when we would look at the extended family education was so important on the, you know, Jewish immigrant side and especially given the history. But then in Latin America it was much more about sort of the markers of success were about you know, physical beauty about thinness. About, you know, what, who were you in your social standing? Are you, are you going to be an eligible candidate for good marriage? It was a very mixed bag when it came to that, so there was a lot of pressure both on the side of.[00:17:00] You know, career side, but also on the family side, all happening, I would say a hundred percent volume all at once. So that was sort of the environment in which, you know, I was raised and it taught me to really decode and question mm-hmm. What my own values are, my own thinking. But it also taught me a lot about how strong that intergenerational sort of programming can be in our own lives. Mm-hmm. Alyssa: Wow. That sounds like quite the crucible for self-discovery and. Watching your parents, I would assume, navigate that with lots of other family members around, and then you getting to go and be your own person as well. Natalie: Absolutely. I think that it really wasn't until college, until that I had the vocabulary to understand what. What all of that, you know, all those mixed messages really meant. [00:18:00] And I had the privilege really of studying with, I would say one of the fathers of cultural anthropology, and his name was Dr. Weaver at American University. And he really taught. Us all about what culture shock looks like. Mm-hmm. And how it's not just when you go abroad, but if you're living in a multicultural society. If you are multicultural, how the, how experiencing culture shock can really impact you and you're sort of psychological framework, long term and really all the resilience that it gives you. Because, you know, I, there's by no means do I want. You know, the takeaway to be like being multicultural actually is traumatic. It's not, I mean, it, it gives you so many magical powers. But at the same time, if you don't understand sort of the language around it it, it can. It can be challenging. And so I was grateful to have [00:19:00] the language around understanding and mapping culture and understanding the different components of what makes a culture. I think in the US we're not really even that aware that we have a culture. And so it always shocks people that we have one, but we do, you know, and, and I think that understanding what you know, what those components can really help us. Empowers us to be to, to take, to make the most out of being able to navigate many different cultures. Yeah. Alyssa: Thank you. One of the things that I really wanna focus on today is that kind of culture crossing. I, I'm calling it border crossing because we're talking to you, a Latina woman who literally crossed a border to come here. A lot of your work is international but also as a metaphor of navigating different spaces, navigating that liminal in between space. [00:20:00] Maybe translating between two very different. Social, cultural, linguistical locations, value systems. That is, that I, I think of it as like a superpower in a way that clearly you had to earn and was a lot of work. But it gives you an ability to, like you're saying, see nuance navigate spaces, a code shift Mentally, linguistically, you know, so many, so many different things like that. So let's talk a little bit about how that has impacted your career and your work. I feel like every single point on your resume is a fantastic example of this. But is there, is there a space where you can kind of talk about that, that border crossing experience? Natalie: Absolutely, and I think you know, when I was in college I sort of I knew I wanted to do something international, and I knew that that was [00:21:00] what sparked my joy, was to learn about other cultures and to learn about other ways of life. And just had this insatiable hunger for international things. I mean music and, and food. And I, and I knew I had this ability to be a bridge because I had done it my whole life. I had. Acted that way since I could remember to really help. Sort of be an intermediary when maybe, you know, there's this image that I like where you're holding a beach ball and on the left side it's white and the right side it's black. And you know, both people are screaming at the top of their lungs that what? It's white or black and you're holding it at the middle. So you could sort of see the delineation of both. And that I think, has been a metaphor that I've sort of used throughout my life. And it also gave me the resilience to sort of enter into this. International relations space with global affairs [00:22:00] space, which traditionally is, there's a pretty high bar of entry into those spaces in DC and there's a lot of elitism associated with it. It's a lot about the connections of who you know and what private or prep school you went to and you know who you're father golfs with, and I came to DC with zero of those things, you know, absolutely none of them except all of the knowledge of the that my parents really gave me about my history and where I came from. And I remember. You know, I got hired by this very elite public affairs firm who worked on crisis communications, international campaigns, and really high stakes issues. And my first week just being completely overwhelmed by just how much I didn't know, even though I had already been in DC for four years and... /episode/index/show/womenofambitionpodcast/id/26687358