It takes time, but I have learned to understand that I am where I am in my career, because I have earned my place. Nothing was given to me. I exude that confidence all the time, because I will almost always be the only woman of color in the room.

"Don’t worry if you don’t have it figured out yet... If you are intentional about self-reflection and regularly ask yourself and others what you are good at, what you like about a job, and don’t like, in time you’ll find where you belong."

Strive to bloom where you're planted. Your education gives you a content base to work from but it will not fully prepare you for your job. You will have to learn from experience, failure, and success.

It is important for you to create and maintain a network. I’ve learned so much over the years from my peers. This doesn’t always come natural, even to me, but working at it has helped me create relationships that have been critical to my ongoing success.

I can imagine how uncomfortable it might be to ask a person of color how they feel or what they think about things that are happening in this country every day. I can even understand that people might not want to have those conversations at work out of fear of saying the wrong thing. But I believe that we can only begin to address those issues through mutual understanding, which requires open and honest conversations.

Working in industries where there are very few people of color has often made me experience Imposter Syndrome. I would look around and longed to see more people who looked like me and shared similar upbringing or experiences. I felt like I didn’t belong and that I was given the job by mistake... It was thanks to a Career Coach who helped me address these feelings and gave me perspective that I was able to turn things around.

One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned thus far is that you are never 100% ready for any role. I think the best roles are those where you have roughly 50% new skills to learn and ~50% where you can draw on prior skills and experiences. If there is a role where you already have more than 50% of the skills or experiences required then you are probably not pushing yourself hard enough.

Your career is your professional reputation. My first job post college was not intellectually challenging. As a result, there were days when I definitely slacked off and would commit careless mistakes. My boss called me out on this and I’m glad he did. His point was simple. If I wanted to be trusted with the bigger things, I had to do the little things right first.

Introspection and self-reflection are critical. If you can’t motivate yourself to ensure that your career is progressing then there’s a serious problem. No one can make you hungry. Hunger is innate. I’m motivated by knowing that my career is still a work in progress and I have not yet mastered my role.

Spend a lot more of your time trying to truly understand your future company. You must really understand their agenda and how your role/division fits into their broader goals. This includes digging into the details about how your company accomplishes its goals and drives toward its vision.