IIC: Working in Silicon Valley, using your culture to excel in your career, and becoming an Execu...

hello and welcome to the Immigrant incorporate podcast my guest today is Victoria shiroma Wilson Ed Victoria is passionate about empowering others to design sustainable strategies towards transformation that is in alignment with their values cultural identities and unique dreams growing up biracial at the intersection of multiple distinct cultures languages and nationalities add dimension and Leed authority to Victoria's understanding of societal Dynamics and the importance of understanding how one's unique voice can be a competitive advantage in today's interconnected world to feed our insatiable curiosity Victoria earned a doctorate from the University of Southern California she serves as an executive coach for socially conscious leaders and design courses on identity culture career and leadership Victoria is one of the amazing women that shared their stories in my book thriving in intersectionality and she shares insights from our experiences working within Corporate [Music] America hello and welcome to the Immigrant incorporate podcast on this podcast you will learn from Le experiences how to thrive in the corporate workplace place as an immigrant my name is Lola Ado I am the CEO of eqi mindset and the founder of the nonprofit immigrant incorporate Inc I work with organizations to build inclusive workplaces on this podcast I will be amplifying immigrant voices from within corporate organizations through solo episodes as well as guest interviews it is a global world of work and I'm very sure you can learn a thing or two from my guests who are originally from different parts of the world and their experiences working in the corporate workplace hi Victoria welcome to the Immigrant incorporate podcast and thanks for joining me today oh my goodness well I'm so happy to be here and it's been it's been a journey for you and I and and we get to that in a little bit uh because part of the project for me that launched this podcast is my book and you also had a similar book that you featured me and I featured you in my book because we have similar topic and passion so I'm excited that you know it's almost like we've been on this train for a long time yes we have yes and I and I feel like our our our adventure is just beginning in a sense exactly because I can't say it's coming to an end it really is just beginning yeah yeah exactly so um I'm I'm excited to document an official conversation for my podcast audience with you even though you do have a little bit of your story in my upcoming book thriving in intersectionality so if you could start by giving us a little bit of your background what's your immigration story yeah and so in many ways I've had this really unique experience coming to the United States um my situation I would say is unique but then at the same time it followed this typical trajectory of an immigrant story um and depending on somebody's perspective they might see like a lot of similarities and it might resonate with their own stories or might be slightly different but um I can share with you a little bit about just overall like what brought me here right so I actually spent uh my my childhood I was born and raised in Japan um I'm biracial um my father is Japanese my mother is American so even living in this country that I spent all of my childhood in um I was always kind of perceived as an outsider but during that time I also went to an American high school and I had American friends right and I and I just remember at that time in in uh growing up I mean they would always talk about how wonderful America was especially since they had this wonderful creation called malls that I had never experienced before you right growing up in like this little this little island here and but when I came to the United States I came to the United States for the first time when I was in University you know to attend University I would say and I was I went from a semi-tropical island tiny little island with maybe about a million people total population to you know the Midwest right I was in Wisconsin and it was I went from you know just balmy weather to just bitter cold right but what was really interesting about that experience for me and I can only say in hindsight I see how it kind of follow this typical immigrant Journey because I was dropped into the middle of the Midwest and I immediately experienced tremendous culture shock right and even though I did have the privilege of the advantages of like speaking English with a Midwestern accent what was going on inside of me was just like I really was having a hard time reading culturally what was going on around me um I really had a hard time like interacting with uh the people around me and other thing that I mean in hindsight I realized is that all the Americans that I encountered were in Japan right at you know when I was growing up so they had the experience of immigrating right and so they could kind of understand those nuances but when I went to the United States I was confronted with people who had never even left their small towns right right so how I interacted with them and how they interacted with me came up with like a number number of challenges overall um right and and way you grew up you from your perspective growing up you thought you know this is pretty diverse I'll be fine right you grew up what part of Japan did you grw up uh I grew up on an island called Okinawa so there's a large US military population there but then you also realize that there's so many cultures even within the United States right so I I got to meet people from all over the United States and it was a very much an integrated Society with the military right so um then you go you go to someplace like where you're in the Midwest and it's like wow you don't have maybe that perspective like a lot of the people that I encountered just didn't have the perspective of understanding that there was this world outside of the state let alone World outside of the United States right so so you you had more exposure back home than you when you came to the United States and and that's important because for me one of the things that I talk about is I thought I spoke English and I've watched Hollywood movies you know so I'm fine we have all of these ideas that it's not really until you get in there right and depending on where you go right what part of the country you go your experience will also be different yeah well and I think the other thing that I you know again looking back on it I can see with clarity now that I didn't see at the time was that I really did have the same experiences like an international student did right but I wasn't classified as an international student you know um just because through my mother I had citizenship um but when I came to the United States and then I was going and I was just struggling my first year you know with all the different cultures uh or just this new culture that I was just immersed in um I think I could have benefited from like having the knowledge to seek out maybe the international student organization or something like that because with those resources so that's one thing I would say is like seek out those resources if you can right I didn't even know that piece right when you were talking about coming into school I'm thinking oh international student as resources but you're right you didn't come in as an international student you came in as a resident I so and of course going to a big state school like Wisconsin I was you know it was just kind of a check in the box so I was classified as a domestic student so you know they thought oh well you know the month you move into your dorm you're done but then that's when my my challenges began right so did you eventually discover that you needed the international student office or is it something that is was only advertised for the international student so at the time it was something that was only advertised for the international students right and so I think about now knowing who I am many decades later you know I I think I would have benefited like if I had known that I I probably should have just sought that those resources out absolutely and I think I and I think the point you're making is important because um I had not thought about it from the perspective you did right so I've spoken with a lot of people that came in from other countries through the school route and is usually you know the school experience is way better than the school integration experience is better than Corporate America integration yes and and it's because of exactly what you said the international students office acknowledges that you're coming from somewhere else and so they provide uh support for you from that perspective but what happens when I am an immigrant because I moved from somewhere else I grew up somewhere else but technically I'm not you know an international student uh by legal classification right and I would say that the probably that population is bigger than one suspects you know just due to the number of exp Patriots um that live all over the world as well as military as well as um folks who just are like what they call third culture kits like and you know they and we're just kind of this unique classification but we we don't have the numbers at any one institution that a lot of um and I think there's more awareness around that now versus when I was at in University but yeah it was one of those it was one of those struggles yeah and and and I think we would we would talk about that further too as we as we go into you know your entry into Corporate America how that relates because I'll I I would love to dive into how it Compares with my experience coming into Corporate America when it was a couple of months after graduation but my my status had already changed to green card M so legally I didn't need the network and I didn't have the network of other International students other immigrants who were building a community and supporting each other right right exactly yeah um my entry into Corporate America was that's a whole another story that I'm happy to share let's move there I think that's the next next part um uh what was that like for you how long did it take for the school and then what was the process of getting into Corporate America yeah so I was one of those people that I thought I was going to actually end up in government service and I remember going straight from undergraduate to graduate school on the east coast and feeling like I'm going to be serving you know the United States um and I ended up Landing I would say my what is it called dream internship at the time with the state department um and in highsight I think it would have been a you know it would have been a great career to have but in my young 20s I was also I would say feeling like I wanted more of an adventure right so through a number of twists turns I finished graduate school and actually moved out to California um and started my career official career in technology and um and I realized that being in Silicon Valley right being in Tech that of itself has its own culture its own ecosystem its own ethos right um and its own hierarchy in terms of the ways you know you have to get things done and I just remember like as I was getting started I I I started in a number of startups and I just remember like feeling though I had to assimilate pretty quickly and again you don't have those resources that you know to ease your way into something you know you're just you have to hit the ground from the first day you're on the job in a sense so yeah and in some some respects I felt like I couldn't really be myself like I actually had to turn on the side of myself that didn't come naturally to me I had to be logical I had to be you know I I actually had to be very direct in my communication I had to um feel like I had to be a lot more aggressive than I naturally am yeah and so how did you end up on the west coast what and what is the difference in that experience right the cultural geographical culture within the US well coming from you know I ended up getting a glimpse into government right and the go and the one of the main reasons why I decided to leave government um is that as I was rounding out this um internship experience um you know my mentor was just like well you know you're certainly welcome to pursue a career here but somebody's going to have to retire or die before you can get a job here and maybe in like 15 years you can actually you know get a promotion and I was thinking to myself and I and I have to admit I wanted a calling and not a career and I was feeling very impatient about it right so um my boyfriend who became my husband at the you know later became my husband actually said hey I'm moving out to California um he ended up getting a job in Tech so um so I followed him out there and you know and I had to like search you know without any Community without any network to to find something and so yeah it was it was an interesting it was kind of an interesting process um it was just kind of like I'll try anything so I ended up um my first job was working at a startup in marketing um and um it was yeah and from there I I felt like I learned a lot but it was also not it didn't come very naturally in terms of like what I felt like my skill set was right right we yeah that's I mean when we look at our stories I I just see a lot of parallel and I also see a lot of what we in the way we can see it now with our experience we actually are privileged if we think about it because uh similar to you my husband was already living in California and that was why I didn't look for a job in Texas that's why I came to San Diego so I pretty much left the community that I already had and I came to this brand new city where I don't know anybody I don't have a job lined up yet and I'm job searching by myself right if I was still in Texas where I went to grad school I could at least maybe still leverage some of the resources on my campus um but again I I feel like it's also a privilege because I finished my degree in biotechnology but I also knew I didn't want to be at the bench so a lot of the people in my program were trying to look for jobs in the lab yes yes and I was trying to get into corporate and I you know s go is a biotech orb there's a lot of companies here so I think it's easy for us to look back and see all of these reasons why you know we're privileged we have opportunity uh but the reason why these conversations are really important is because we don't know who else is out there that is kind of locked into something because of the environment uh because of what you see because of what you observe and and so yeah so let's talk about that like being in the workplace uh when you eventually switch to Corporate America based on your background as you know an immigrant and then based on your experience in college right let's unpack how that helped or didn't at work right what what were some of the challenges that you um noticed at work so it's it's interesting um so one of the things that I had to confront right and and and and in fact it was definitely not a very linear process it was a very messy process for me internally right um it is the whole notion of what was it the the social contract that I thought existed so for example like one of the things I see a lot of my my clients who I coach um one of the things that that they struggle with is that you know they there are these messages that you internalize through your entire life right um and I and some of the messages that I internalize that my parents would always say like you go to as good of a school as you can you get a good job and then everything else is going like line up in life right and honestly it didn't line up that cleanly for me right because I was building my own self-awareness about like what what what it is that I wanted and so fair you could have stayed in government and had that remember our parents in their time you get a job and you stay there exactly for a long time right exactly and it took a lot long time for me to realize that so you know then like looking at another you know looking one layer down and understanding like what motivated my parents my you know my parents were kind of like especially my father was the you know he was he survived World War II right so being safe being secure having a secure paycheck was a big motivator for for him and also the world you know like if you think about the postwar generation in Japan it was all about sacrifice so that the Next Generation could really Thrive right and and and get the get the basic material needs right right that they didn't have growing up and so that's the messages that I kept on internalizing and so I felt for me and I see this a lot with actually like well a lot of my clients whose parent who have had similar situations the stakes seem higher right it's like gosh you know they sacrifice so much for me that I need to go and get a good job have this good wife so I can help show them or anybody else that I've I've kind of made it and so right yeah that was always a challenge yeah and I think that that's that's the danger is that we don't feel like we have the luxury to explore where our passions are like to find your voice or to find yourself all of those things sounds like lazy terms like you just need to get a great job that pays will work hard and get paid yeah and I think um it can also get wrapped up into logic like you know you know so back to what you said it's like it seems extravagant in a sense to to say well I so you know I know that my skill set or my passions or my interests are elsewhere than what has been prescribed for me right but one of the things that I try to help people understand is that you can actually work with both of those contexts right and then so what's you know what's how do we design something for you that's going to work to preserve your relationships and then but at the same time you know help you thrive in the workplace right right and and we'll come back to your current walk in a minute because I think this is part of where the intersection of our work and our book kind of kicks in but I want to go back take you back into the corporate workplace because I know you had some pretty fun experiences um around different areas um you know leadership hierarchy are there some of those key areas that you want to discuss or stories that you want to share around your experiences yeah yeah I mean there's a couple of stories that I can I can share but I think the one thing that Ian when where I I think I started and I'm going to come back to is the whole notion of the social contract right so another thing that I internalized from my parents was specifically like hey you know somebody you know if you work hard and do your best then you're going to get rewarded for it that was another kind of myth I would say that I internalized quite a bit um and so there and I call it the myth of the benevolent manager right that you know that if you work hard then you're going to be recognized for it then your manager's going to you know say okay you're ready for a promotion and things like that and I think one of the things that we all you know if you have that type of a manager good for you that's fantastic right um but for a lot of us we didn't have that experience like it was never that perfect so trying so I just remember like putting a lot of faith in my managers um and I just remember there were times I I would say I had some managers that kind of misread me like they didn't understand me culturally then and so um I remember I during a a performance review I had a manager t tell me specifically like you you have very low self-confidence and I was just like first of all per this is a performance review right you know but but rather than the character descriptions and so that's so it was really fascinating to find you know and as this manager was telling me I I apologized a couple of times because what there was a there was a project that fell behind and so what I did was I actually took the responsibility for the project I thought I was demonstrating leadership qualities right by saying saying hey you know what this was my fault I take the responsibility for it but and here's what I think we can do but the fact that I apologized app according to that person they interpreted that as a sign of weakness right and they and they felt like well you don't have self-confidence if you're apologizing for your mistakes right and again I it took me a while to unpack that but I you know I think the conclusion that I've reached is that's a matter of perspective right what is considered strength versus weakness and all that and I think that even in some environments that would be perceived as a strength in other environments obviously with the one I was in it was perceived as very much a weakness right right and and where the cultural background um I think comes in is that you take these people and you look to them as I need to listen to you I need to believe what you say because you are a manager so you are in a position of authority and there's there's just a different culturally there's a different expectation with that Dynamic yeah absolutely and I think that was another piece of culture that I did internalize as well a cultural you know assumptions that I internalized as well was the fact that you know if that manager was there they were there for a reason right and I say the the society in which I came managers have a very different level of responsibility too it's like they they are responsible for taking care of their folks right again a very different social contract from the one that I was in so that it was it was a very big warning experience experience for me you are turning all of those learnings into something that would be really helpful to other people in in your situation or that were in your situation at that time um so how did you transition so because that's another thing so you were in Corporate America and now you are doing work that still impacts those in Corporate America those individuals so tell us about what you're doing now and and how you got here yeah absolutely so after a number of failed startups I liter there was one moment I actually had this epiphany I was I was like you know what I really am passionate about helping people and then you know like when you have those moments of epiphany those moments of clarity then all like the facts you know just come and fall into place I'm like yeah I was always the person that everybody was in my Cube you know a cubicle at work because they wanted to talk to me about like what was going on with their career or what was going you know like how to nego navigate like a diplomatically tricky situation you know or politically um tricky situation at work and so I'm like you know what I want to actually dedicate more my Prof Prof life to helping others that way so I went back to grad school I ended up having a u you know getting my uh my master's degree in counseling and then I have my Doctorate in Education and all around really like how do how to integrate like cultural identity into kind of like making positive change so a lot of what I do is I work with Multicultural leaders to really understand the full extent of like all the influences that their culture and identity you know um play in their leadership and then how they can actually leverage that as a really positive thing um in in the workplace right and you you do share some of those Frameworks in your upcoming book right I do can you tell us about that yeah so um in fact it's funny because and I think you and I can laugh about how like our the titles of our books have like evolved over the course of the last few months but my my final final title is exceptional feutures the power of identity to design positive change and in it there are these Frameworks and these models for really being clear about like what's a guiding question like and so for somebody it could be like how do I become a you know more a better leader right that could be your guiding question and so I work through a number of like uh Frameworks and exercises and elements to help you really get that Clarity for yourself and and understand what type of change you want to make right whether it's within yourself maybe within your team or within a bigger system and then um and then put a plan of action together to be able to do it right okay well we're looking forward to getting a copy of that I'm looking forward to my copy yes yes I know in a couple weeks for but so if you if you look back at your experience within Corporate America now now not from the perspective of the work you are doing now which is you know you're you're packaging all of those experiences if you look at your experience within Corporate America do you think or how do you see that your background the way you were raised the environment you were raised how do you think it helped you survive some of the scenarios you had there yeah I mean it's it's interesting because um I was reflecting on that earlier um I do feel like what I do bring to the T you know the picture is I do have this you know tremendous work ethic right I don't give up easily and in fact I think some people have called me tenacious in a good way as a result of that right because I'm like I'm not willing to just give up on a problem easily and I think that my being a being an immigrant and having uh challenges around just integration was always like helped me along that that path um I think the other thing is loyalty right um the type of bonds that we form with others as immigrants um is different I would say from a from something that's a little bit more transactional um so that was one of the things I think hurt me a lot like I felt emotionally just sometimes bruised because sometimes others would have this like more of a transactional nature to working you know the work relationship and but I always saw myself as being a little bit more like loyal right and it's helped me and it's also challenged me in some ways but I always prefer to see that as an asset right right well I think you've shared a lot with us thank you for sharing about just that I think you you opened my mind really to that different side of being an immigrant student is what I would call not necessarily the typical classification that we use for international student and my new nonprofit immigrant incorporate Inc part of the things I want to do beyond my book uh is also provide resources for international students and and immigrants in the workplace as well as HR and you know Recruiters in in Corporate America so I think you you touched on something really important which is how we classify people and then how we determine who gets what resources yes yes absolutely and I would also say that there's a lot and my focus is on identity there's this tendency to have like trying to have these neat descriptions you know by putting labels on things like as an immigrant you must have this experience and to understand that the The Immigrant experience is so diverse right and and how we SE our see our eles and see the world in terms of our own lens of identity is very important in this whole process right right right and and and it's a it's an important conversation to be having now I think the work you're doing with identity and and designing Futures and and what I'm doing with empowering immigrants in the workplace I think it's all timely because we are talking of all of these diversity Equity inclusion initiatives and we're trying to change systems and change organizational culture but is also getting giving people a deeper understanding of what we're trying to do here you know it's not putting people in neat little boxes every individual is going to be very different yeah and I think what I'll add to that is that for those organizations that want to move from a knowledge to an innovation based culture right um really being able to understand and Leverage The uniqueness of you know of each of of your employees is going to be your differentiating Factor right having people feel like they belong having people feel like they can actually have a voice to be able to help grow and develop new markets perhaps or even um develop new technologies um it's that's important I think a lot of organizations are not tolerant of like what comes with it some there's this prec perception of messiness right that like oh well you know it's not it's not unified and like well there was a generation of unification in that way but that was also sometimes assimilation right and now we want to try to figure out how to leverage all these wonderful unique perspectives because that's really where growth is going to happen right right thank you all right to to wrap up I like to ask a final question okay well two let let's let's talk about the one first uh takeaways if anybody in your situation right somebody moving from ow from a mix if you were to talk to your younger self now is there anything in terms of resources or advice or Insight or final thoughts that yeah I would say it's it's interesting because I think for some for those of us if I had to go back to my 19-year-old self or my 18yearold self and give myself some advice and also anybody who's coming to America for the first time I would just say you know spend a little bit of time really investing in the relationships around you right those and what I mean by that is not necessarily people who are exactly like you or come from the same place and all that but people who really you know really get you and respect you and respect really the PO potential that you have right and so you may and it might take you out a little bit out of your comfort zone to be able to do that but really investing those relationships will be something that you can you know that's like a foundation that you're going to build for life right um I think that other thing that I will also say is build that awareness so that you can really be able to differentiate the kind of like the myths of the social contract from what the reality is um one of the things I always tell my clients um is this whole notion of take a step back right some of the advice that like let's say your aunties or your you know your parents are giving you you know um might not be relevant for what's really happening in the world that you're trying to enter into right the world is evolved so so but understand like where that's rooted sometimes it's tradition sometimes it's safety so understand what the underline Dynamic is so that you can you can respectfully work with it if that makes sense yeah no there's that makes complete sense I I think there's some work that we should do um we're not putting all the pressure on the Immigrant or you as a person of course there's changes with the organization that needs to happen uh but there's also that realization that we also have some work to do on our own part yes all right the other one that I want to wrap up with that I was eager to get to is around food my guests are from different countries so and we all like food and food is the way to break the eyes and get to meet people so if you were to share a dish from Japan from Okinawa in the US a dish a snack tell us something that comes to mind why so I'd say the snack that I or actually the dish that I miss the most um there's two of them actually um one is Okinawa soba so it's like soba but okinawans are like really big on pork so um so there's kind of a pork broth you know base plus noodles plus like you know slabs of like you know um tender pork that has been like you know cooked for hours um with some like um fish cakes and green onions and a little bit of Ginger and I just I miss that a lot because I haven't found I really have not been able to replicate that here right um there's another thing that another dish um and it's very simple it's called champuru you know and it's F it's it's a stir fry but there's something about the way it's done in okina that just makes it taste so much better than like the way it's tasted the way or the way I make it so I G to say I can you make that I make it I just like you know but I go yeah I'm like crying tears of joy whenever I go back and have have those dishes I know well I'm glad you get to go back um I'm glad you have your memories and I'm glad that you've packaged all of your experiences right to helping others in the work that you do and I'm looking forward to hearing more about your work Victoria thank you so much for being here and thank you so much for inviting me Lola [Music] thank you for joining me Lola Ado as always for these important conversations on the corporate world of work from The Immigrant perspective for more resources and upcoming events please visit our website www. immigrants Inc corporate. you can also follow us on Instagram at Immigrant incorporate if you are on LinkedIn please join the group thriving in intersectionality - immigrants incorporate Amica there will be a new episode every week so make sure you are subscribed to get notified please leave us a rating leave a review and I hope to see you next time thank you