31. Nadia De Ala, Negotiation Coach on Charging Your Worth

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Episode Transcript

[intro theme music]

Alisa Manjarrez: Rosa and Merary, have you ever felt that being a woman of color has gotten in the way of getting paid what you’re worth?

Merary Simeon: I think, still to this day, women of color, particularly, continue to be underpaid. Research shows it, but let me give you a specific example. I am blessed to mentor many women outside of the organization that I work in, and one young Latina woman that I was mentoring a few weeks ago received an offer from an organization, and that’s great that she received the offer. The issue was that when she compared the offer and salary to her white peers, she was getting a 50% less offer than her peers. And she was also offered a more administrative position than her peers. Yes, you read the research. Yes, you know it, but when you know someone that you’re mentoring in 2020 that comes to you and shares a real life experience, it hurts. It hurts me for her and it hurts for me just as an individual, as a Latina and as an executive in the United States today. 

Alisa Manjarrez: I had a client who was an executive in tech. She had been in the industry for 20 years and over and over and over and over she found that she was getting looked over for senior level positions. She wasn’t getting paid what she was worth and she couldn’t help but think it was because she was a woman of color and they actually gave her some executive coaches, but all the executive coaches were white. And it’s not saying that white coaches don’t understand, but the specific coaches that she had did not think that being a woman of color was a factor, and she felt marginalized because of it.

Rosa Santos: Yeah, it is hard. I think, for me, when I came to the US 20 years ago, it was interesting because it was a brutal realization of what it meant to be different in corporate America was for me. I came here super excited with a company that I was working for at the time. I thought, you know, I made it, I got three job offers within my company to come and work in the US. I got the one. I accepted the one that was like the most exciting for me. The one that provided the most prospects, et cetera. I started on the job. Everything was awesome. I loved it. And six months into the job, I happened to come across a document that actually showed how I was being paid half, literally half, of the salary and none of the benefits that my white counterpart with the same level of education, the same level of expertise, the same number of clients that both supporters internally had, she literally was getting a hundred percent more if you come to the benefits from what I was getting.

Alisa Manjarrez: How did you feel?

Rosa Santos: It was awful. I mean, it was awful, but it was a sense of, again, feeling about like, what am I doing wrong? It wasn’t like, what are they doing wrong? But what is it that I am doing wrong? And I tell you, this was 20 years ago, and I still feel it as though it was today. I don’t think I’ve cried so hard over a job since that one. I think I’ve learned throughout the years, right, then how to show up, how to negotiate, how to manage frustration, how to then really manage the context and the situation. But at the time I think I was way too young to know how to do that. I was devastated. Problem was, like many of our fellow women of color, I was in a situation that I was in this country with a visa. So therefore it wasn’t like I could go and say, I’m leaving this company. Because that meant I couldn’t have been able to stay. So that added another level of stress on my life that the vast majority of my colleagues at the time didn’t have. 

Alisa Manjarrez: Too bad you didn’t have our guests today, Nadia De Ala, because her whole mission in life is to get women of color hella rich. 

[cue music]

Nadia De Ala: I’m Nadia De Ala, or I’m Nadia Lumbang De Ala, we’re going to go all out here. And I am a leadership and negotiation coach for women of color in tech. So I’m a founder for my own business, Nadia De Ala Coaching, we just hit our three year anniversary for that. And I’m super excited. 

And I’m also a co-founder of another company that I just founded with my childhood best friend called Let’s Get Hella Rich. It’s a membership for women of color entrepreneurs, so supporting them. And overall, my mission is to close the leadership and wage gap for women of color all over the freaking world. That’s basically all my life’s work. That’s all I think about every day. That’s all I do. And. I find deep satisfaction in helping folks like us get more money. 

One client got a $25,000 increase plus a promotion. And another client was able to get just recently $300,000 in grants for her new nonprofit. And it’s so beautiful because her non-profit is around undocumented creatives. And so that feeling just gets addicting, honestly. And I’m like, I want more, I want to help more. So, by the time I got a couple under my belt and more active negotiations for some of my clients, I just decided to slap that onto my name and my title and my role for my company, leadership and negotiation coach. So it is really incredible to do this work, but it just kind of happened by accident. 

Alisa Manjarrez: I loved our conversation with her, because that’s what Color Forward is all about. We started with the knowledge that women of color are only making it so far in the work place. They’re only advancing so far. And the three of us set out to find out, How do we overcome those cultural barriers? That’s why we invite so many amazing guests like Nadia to come on so that we can help women of color get hella rich too.

Rosa Santos: 20 years too late.

Alisa Manjarrez: We all need a Nadia in our lives.

Rosa Santos: We all do.

[music stops] 

Alisa Manjarrez: Nadia is a leadership and negotiation coach. And she fell into this by accident. She has a background in tech sales. She did what a lot of our guests have done, she took a huge risk by leaving her job before she has anything else lined up.

She fell into coaching and she realized in her research that a lot of women of color, first of all, didn’t even know they could get a coach. They thought coaching was just for white people. And that’s been kind of a side mission for her to allow women of color to know that they are worthy of coaching. They’re worthy of therapy and they’re worthy of negotiating a job and a raise and getting paid what they’re worth.

Nadia De Ala: I used to be in tech sales, so I’m used to being quota driven. I’m used to negotiating, but for business, right? That’s so different. There are so many women, and women of color sales folks and business folks who know how to negotiate for somebody else, right? But when it comes to ourselves, that’s where we all kind of get a little really emotional or close up and just not do it at all. And it kind of happened by accident. So when I discovered coaching after quitting my job and slowly just kept getting training and slowly hired a business coach and slowly decided, well, I guess I’m starting my own business, right? 

And I guess I’m not going back there. I’m going to try this out, because I still am not ready to go back into the corporate world or corporate America. I started with leadership coaching for women of color, period, and solely wanted to work with women of color and was really great at it, still really am.

I believe that truly coaching is one of my super powers and gifts, and I feel so fortunate to find it. And when you help a woman of color up-level her leadership and break her status quo and truly step out of the fears of being labeled the angry Brown woman or the angry Black woman, or being too much or taking up too much space, it is truly limitless what they can do. 

Alisa Manjarrez: Nadia gave us three tips for negotiating our salary. And the first one that she taught to us is really about mindset. She says, anyone can Google how to negotiate for a raise, but not everyone can get their minds in a place where they feel like they can accept themselves, and they feel like they can negotiate.  

Nadia De Ala: I mean, there’s so many tips, but one of the biggest things is getting the mindset right. And, as you say, you’re a giver. What woman of color is not a giver, right? It is in our DNA to over-give. It is in our DNA to nurture and to take care of and to put the weight of the shoulders on our backs for our families, for our communities, for the movements we care about, and for our work. 

It’s really true when we say we work thrice as hard for half the recognition, right? It really is. I think I see you two nodding. So we’ve all been in that position where it feels so thankless sometimes to show up in all our glory and power.  

Rosa Santos: This idea of the mindset is really important. And I’ll tell you why, I think, especially culturally speaking and culturally for the Hispanic community, this concept of being thankful, always being thankful and appreciative for what you have and for what you get, is unique to our culture.

Alisa Manjarrez: It’s like a form of respect.

Rosa Santos: Yes, and it’s like, Wow, aren’t I fortunate? Wow, I should be absolutely thankful that I got this offer, even though it might not be, you know, at the same level as somebody else. And it’s, honestly, it’s this concept of what we think about work and what we think about what we offer and what our product is. We should be a bit more pragmatic about it. And that has to do with the mindset. I have certain kind of a skill set. I have certain kind of expertise, knowledge, and I’m putting it on the marketplace and understanding what that costs, right, and what it’s worth and how it should be retributive or paid for. It is important before we put it on the marketplace.

Nadia De Ala: We have to let go of the people pleaser in us. We have to let go of whatever internalized blocks we have around rocking the boat or saying no to authority or saying this isn’t good enough. And really most of us need to set aside guilt. We need to set aside shame, because most women of color that I speak with and myself even, I didn’t negotiate my first two jobs and I used to be terrible at setting boundaries.

Now I’m like, Hello? I am the queen of setting boundaries. I’m A-okay with setting boundaries. I’m A-okay with letting balls drop. It’s okay if I fail, because I know it’s not the end of the world. And if someone else thinks it is, that’s a reflection on them, not me. 

Rosa Santos: It’s important, because this is a two-way street. They’re there because they also… they’re in the marketplace because they’re shopping for certain skill sets. And if you have it this is how you make sure that this is a win-win situation for both. And you get into that kind of dialogue and negotiation as equals and not really tipping the balance one way or the other.

Merary Simeon: Knowing your worth is so different than being humble. And I think a lot of the times we confuse the two. Oh, but she’s so assertive and she’s not humble at all. No. Being humble does not mean that you don’t know your worth. And being humble does not mean that you don’t sell yourself because other people are doing it.

But I love how Rosa put it, because knowing what you bring to the table allows you to really talk about facts without feeling that I’m being too prideful or that I am not being humble enough.  

Nadia De Ala: I tell my clients all the time in every workshop that, if you came here to learn the A B’s and C’s of negotiations y’all can Google that shit. 

It’s out there for free. You don’t have to pay me for that. And that’s the thing where all this knowledge is out there for free on, what to do when you get low-balled by a recruiter, what to do when, you know, someone rejects your counter offer, what to do when you don’t know to say when a recruiter asks, you know, what’s your expected range for the salary? 

And yet we don’t do it still. Why is that? It’s because, honestly, that we have to take care of our own internal blocks before we can handle the real external challenges that we have, right? We are truly facing sexism and racism in our workplaces and in business, even as business owners. Even as a business owner specifically working with women of color, I still experience racism and sexism, depending on what companies I partner with and work with.

And it starts from inside to be able to choose that I am worthy of negotiating. I’m worthy of just checking. I’m worthy of asking. I’m worthy of pushing back or saying this is a non-negotiable and having those things. So tip number one is really getting your mind right. Whatever it is that you are really holding yourself back. Just get curious about it.

Alisa Manjarrez: Part of her own experience was being a Filipino immigrant. She grew up going to Catholic school. She was taught to fear authority, and she tells us that her background didn’t really allow her to acknowledge how amazing she was in the workplace. For her, it was her background and through years of therapy, she thought, wow, there are so many thoughts that I have that are ingrained in me because of my culture, and because my mother came here to survive, that when a lot of women of color are looking for jobs, they’re just looking to get hired. So taking that extra step of asking for more is huge.

Nadia De Ala: For me, it’s about choosing your discomfort. Because if we are not finding where we truly can be ourselves and comfortable and still push out of the status quo in a way that feels good to us, or challenge the norms in a way that feels good to us.

That’s just a fast road to burnout. Imposter syndrome is so rampant in the tech industry, and for women of color in most industries, that if we just let that stay without really examining it, we’re going to lose ourselves, right, very easily. And then we’re going to burn out and we’re going to opt out, the way that I did, out of tech. We need diverse minds and perspectives in our tech, otherwise it’s not made for us. 

And tech is the future. So we really need us to stay opted in. But, yeah, I mean, society, life experiences, even our own parents, right? I always tell people the story of how I was raised in Catholic school, K through 12th grade. And I was raised by pretty strict Filipino parents, and I was taught to fear authority, and that transfers over.

Alisa Manjarrez: And for the three of us, we’re all women in leadership. If we can’t become comfortable with ourselves, then there’s no way we’re going to push the status quo for ourselves or for others. And I think that’s a process, and that process looks differently for everyone. So for you, Rosa, it might be sitting down and writing out all the things that you contribute in the workplace, and for someone else that might be going to therapy and dealing with all the crap from their childhood. It all comes down to being okay with who you are in order to move forward.

Nadia De Ala: I love therapy. I love coaching. I love anything that has to do with inner exploration. When I first started therapy for my immigration process and handling the weight of that, I went every week for three years. And I didn’t know that I would uncover all of this cultural upbringing and just, you know, I’m still a first-generation American and realizing, Wow, that is not mine, right? 

I can’t tell you how many of my clients are like, What I just said is my mother. It’s not even a bad thing, right? It’s really just recognizing what is mine and what is theirs, right? And what do I need to let go of that truly isn’t mine.

I remember the moment in therapy I realized, and I said out loud to my therapist, I believe that life has to be hard. And I told her, I was just like, My mother wears her resilience and whatever she has survived, which she has survived way more than I have, like way more than I probably ever will coming from the Philippines.

And she used to live under martial law with fascist dictator president and came over here, all the things, right? And that shattered something for me. And that’s when I started finally making moves that, I don’t have to be in survival. I don’t have to wear my pain this way.

And I don’t know if I would have ever gotten there without therapy. It doesn’t have to be taboo. It really doesn’t. I believe it’s almost like, cultural oppression to make it taboo that women of color can’t have these types of resources. Why can’t we have this, right? Especially if it’s in our means, I know it’s a privilege to be able to pay for this type of support, but if it truly up-levels your life, if it really makes you happier, more self-aware, more confident, why not?    

[cue music]

Alisa Manjarrez: For our listeners who don’t follow Nadia, she’s @NadiaDeAla. A lot of things that she says on Instagram is, People tend to go to her, you know, the day before they’re about to negotiate a raise, or they say, Hey, are you free tomorrow? My boss wants to have a conversation. And her response is, You shouldn’t negotiate before you ever even have your first job. Even right out of college, you can negotiate your worth, and you should always be researching, always negotiate, always ask for more. If you can make it a practice to negotiate from day one, you won’t be scrambling when those conversations come into play.

[music stops] 

Nadia De Ala: I had one young woman who slid into my DMs on LinkedIn and said, I’m a new graduate. I just attended your free workshop. She said, I actually implemented everything that you’ve said, and I pulled on my project experiences and my unpaid internship experiences. And I think she said she got a 5% bump, which was still great, right? That’s 5% more, depending on the salary. That’s thousands of dollars more than what she would have started with. And she just pushed for it, right? And it’s not like you have the biggest leverage. But the point is to still ask and try to have those conversations.

And this is where marketing research, again, really plays into your value. Because there’s always a range, right? There’s always a high range. Say an entry level is 30 to 40,000, right, for whatever position, and if you could get to 35, maybe you’re not at the 40,000 mark, but instead of starting at 30, maybe the market says like, Hey, what, what if I could get 35,000? 

Merary Simeon: You know what’s interesting, in my time now mentoring and mostly our new professionals in the workplace, I find that, especially right out of college, they all know what each of them are making. Like they’re constantly talking to each other, which is interesting, because to me, it’s still hard.

I don’t even think I ever asked anybody how much they’re making. Yet these students they know what everybody’s making, like all their peers, I mean. So it’s interesting how the culture there has changed, but yet many of them are still not comfortable negotiating, even though they have the data. 

Alisa Manjarrez: Do you ever forget to negotiate? Is this something that’s on your mind at all times or does it come up once a year?

Rosa Santos: I think the question is, do you remember to negotiate? And I go back to this idea of the mindset that we started with, right, that Nadia talks about. We don’t have the mindset. Nobody taught me when I was in school, that this was a thing. Nobody told me that I needed to fight for not just for my salary and for equity, but really, as we say, for my worth, like who I was, right? Nobody taught me this. The one thing that I do remember my parents saying was, As a woman, you’re going to be fighting at twice or three times more than any male counterpart.

We were three sisters, and they knew that from the beginning. And I know it’s helped me, but it’s helped me, only to then realize that when it happened, I could see it, right? I think having that kind of education, and that’s why it’s important that we, in whatever way possible, we think and help others through that.

It’s huge. It’s a huge contribution. Also negotiating, you guys, if you think about it, has a very negative connotation. When you think about negotiating, you come from a place of fighting. You don’t come from a place of collaboration and partnership and possibility. No.

Alisa Manjarrez: You know, it’s almost like thinking about the meaningful conversation. Just like racism has a negative connotation. This is a meaningful conversation that you can have with your boss or with HR, whoever you’re negotiating with. It’s hard for me even to think about how it’s positive, because I still feel like it’s so easy to fall back into that, I don’t want to be greedy mindset too. 

Rosa Santos: Yeah, because we never talk about money, right? That’s no good. We don’t talk about money, and that’s why I think it’s important, because, yes, you do have to talk about money. Money is a fact of life, right?

Merary Simeon: Honestly, I forget all the time, because I think we could be negotiating about if we’re really talking here about salary, we could be negotiating about salary once or twice a year. And the reality is I can’t remember the last time that I did, to be completely honest. It’s just like, okay, this is what it is, fine.

But at the end of the day, it’s a mistake. Because, like Rosa said, uh, we probably should be doing it, but I was never taught to do it. So I just haven’t.

Alisa Manjarrez: And there’s a lot more to negotiate than just your salary. You can negotiate days off, you can negotiate work flexibility. You can negotiate benefits. There’s more than just the bottom dollar that you’re advocating for yourself for. But it is a mindset shift. I think that, Rosa you hit it right on the nose, because it’s not natural to us to have these conversations or even these thoughts. There’s a lot of them information out there on negotiating. You can Google things, you can talk to your colleagues. There are so many tools that Nadia has given us, and she gives us an example of going and just talking to people in the workplace. 

And when I heard this, I got a little uncomfortable, because I don’t think I’ve ever asked any of my colleagues like, Hey, what are you making? It feels weird to me. And I don’t know if that’s appropriate, always from an HR standpoint, but I’ve done it after I’ve left a job.

And that’s when I get all the dirt. And that’s when I find out I was completely underpaid. And so I wonder what would happen if I had had those conversations a little bit earlier before I left.

Nadia De Ala: When we talk about market research, you can Google it. You can ask colleagues, your counterparts, or people who have the same title as you, or the same title as you in other companies, even your competitors, right? Hey, what are you making? So live conversations, online research, there are so many sites out there that have it, but what’s really important is it takes the pressure off of you feeling… This happens a lot with women of color, a lot of us say, Oh, I don’t want them to think I’m greedy if I ask for more than what was offered. I don’t want them to think I’m ungrateful. 

And it really takes the pressure off of that from us by saying, Hey, let’s look over this research and data. I spoke to 10 people who are also product managers in Los Angeles with my experience from these companies and I researched these numbers from these 15 websites, right? And what are we going to do about that? It’s as simple as that, like I’m getting paid 20,000 less than market value. I’d like to talk about how we can get closer to that number. What can we do, right? 

So it’s really not you being angry. Although I’ve been there, I’ve found out that I was getting paid way less than a white male counterpart, like 20,000 plus less. And I can get so angry, but anger doesn’t help the negotiation table conversation. It puts the other person on the defense. So I like to calm my anger down and just present straight facts. So I think it’s really important if you don’t know your number, find out first and foremost, to see what you’re working with. 

Alisa Manjarrez: It’s so important for us to understand what our worth is and add more, because if you do an exercise where you’re writing out everything that you’re bringing to a company, it is likely that you will sell yourself short. So if you add more, you’re probably right where you need to be.

So I would even say add more and then add more, because if you don’t feel like you’re asking for something that’s over the top, you’re not really pushing any boundaries. And if you’ve done amazing work for a company, you should be compensated for it. It should be a math exercise, as Rosa might say. 

Nadia De Ala: Charge your worth and add tax, right? I think the tax that we add is that value then. So this is just straight equity, but think about what is the ROI that I have given to this company since they’ve invested in me, or what is the promise that I will bring for this company if they hire me. So that’s the adding tax part. Those are the things that market research can’t tell you, but should be added on top of your market research. Especially if you have done amazing achievements that are actually tied to revenue increases for the company. 

Rosa Santos: So this notion of the adding the tax, I actually quite love because I think then around the extras, right? The flexibility, the extra day off, the special projects, all those other things around. I think it makes a huge difference. I do like that concept. I actually talk a lot about personal and professional equity when talking about worth, right?

Because I think the equity, your own professional equity, also changes and knowing part of knowing your worth is understanding what your equity equates to. And, again, if we think of it from a, and I know you guys laugh, but if you think of it from a business transaction perspective, I know it’s more clinical, but I think it helps.

Understanding your equity, what your equity, your professional equity is, it really helps define and boost your own worth awareness.

Merary Simeon: I was going to say something totally different that just made me think of all this, because I think the scary part about negotiating anything is that you do it when the time comes and how many of us actually don’t negotiate already throughout the day on different things, right?

I think we might underestimate that we already do it a little bit and if we just intentionally put it to practice. So every day I have to negotiate my schedule and there are things that are really important to me that I make sure take place in my calendar. However, I don’t think I’ve ever looked at negotiating my professional salary as something as important as to how I’m running my business or something as important on what the business needs or who needs to get on my calendar. So that’s just one example. I even think about it from my personal life. There’s a lot of things that I will negotiate, and that I will not tolerate when it comes to the education of my children, but yet I’m willing to not negotiate when it comes to my salary. 

[outro theme music]

Alisa Manjarrez: If you were to think about negotiating for your salary being proactive in your approach as a form of advocating for your own daughter, how would that change how you looked at negotiating, Merary?

Merary Simeon: Wow. When you put it that way, it would be something that I would do intentionally. I love that perspective. Because it’s really truly about negotiating for the women that are coming after you, but when you put a face and somebody that I care for in front of it, it makes it even that much more important to me. 

Alisa Manjarrez: It’s so powerful thinking about the people that you are paving a path for and how, what you do today affects the future of the next generation of women. It’s a big responsibility.

Nadia De Ala: Someone is always, always, always watching you, thinking, Oh my gosh, if she can do it, I can do it. So you acting and pushing beyond your fears is giving another woman of color, just like you, permission to do the same. You’re somebody else’s glass ceiling, break yours accordingly so that someone else can enter and reach another level after you.

[musical break]

Alisa Manjarrez: For more inspiring stories, please subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you have a guest you’d love to hear on the show, send us a DM on Instagram at @colorforwardpod.

I’m Alisa Manjarrez, producer of Color Forward. Thanks for joining us and, please, leave us a review.

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