53. Create With What You Have

Episode Transcript

Alisa Manjarrez: (00:00)
What was a job that you had early in your life, before you were 20, where you gained skills that you know made a difference in getting the next job, or the next job, or the next job, or any job that you have now? What was it?

Rosa Santos: (00:15)
I’m just laughing because I’m thinking like, “Was I ever 20?”

Alisa Manjarrez: (00:23)
Merary, go ahead.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (00:23)
Thanks. Honestly, I started the corporate world since I was 18. I was actually 17. I’m one of those few people who actually started in high school as a co-op.

Alisa Manjarrez: (00:36)
What? What were you doing?

Dr. Merary Simeon: (00:37)
I was an intern in HR for a corporation. It was Pfizer, actually. The company was actually Warner-Lambert before it was bought by Pfizer, but I started as an HR intern when I was 17. It was a co-op back then, but my whole life has really been in Human Resources.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (00:54)
For me, I look at it a little bit different. I think there were strengths that I’ve always possessed and they just came to life the more time that I spent working. One of the things that I’ve always done is I’ve always had that learning attitude. To me, even starting in high school, I always wanted to learn. When I got put in a different world that I didn’t know, I was like, “Ooh, how do I figure this out?” To me, that was always challenging. It’s a strength that I’ve been in able to build.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (01:23)
I also worked at night. I worked at a bar. One of the strengths was I used my wanting to learn. It’s like, “Okay, I am going to figure…” They would come in, I already knew what they were going to get. I learned how to make their drink. Whenever they come in, because they were regulars, they loved me because I just knew what they wanted. To me, I look at it as that was a strength that I’ve always possessed and it really helped me grow to be where I am today.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (01:50)
Now, did I learn other skills and other capabilities? Absolutely. However, I think a lot of the times there are skills within us that we don’t leverage, and it is what makes us great, it is what makes us continue to move on to. Whether it was at the bar serving drinks or whether it was in corporate America, that hunger for me to learn is what made me be successful. Then once I learn, how do I make it better? Just like today, I’m unapologetic about advocating for women and I continue to learn ways to advocate and help and support.

Alisa Manjarrez: (02:21)
You’re like an HR lifer.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (02:22)
I am. When people say, “I started high school”, it’s like, “Yeah, no. I did.” It’s true.

Rosa Santos: (02:29)
Wow. I don’t think I knew in high school that such a thing as human resources existed. I tell you, two things that I think I learned, or two jobs that I had that I learned a lot from in my teens and my early twenties, the one that really helped me figure things out and knowing that I could do it, that no matter what you know was in front of me, I was going to overcome and do it. I was very, very clear that I wanted to go to university internationally, but my parents couldn’t afford it, so I needed a job. Where I lived there weren’t many jobs available, so I transformed my room into a tuition academy.

Rosa Santos: (03:17)
I’m laughing because things like… My bed was a bunk bed with boards. I disassembled the bed, and out of the length of the twin bed, I made it into a table. I bought those… I don’t know how you call them now, those legs that you can put the board on top. I painted it different colors and I advertised myself throughout the neighborhood that I would teach kids math and English, and I got a bunch of kids that would come to my house to my room.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (03:53)
That’s awesome.

Rosa Santos: (03:54)
Yeah. Even to this day I have kids that… They’re not kids anymore, they’re in their thirties… Who, if I’m in town, they know me from that time. For me, it was figuring it out. Making it happen. You have an issue, you’ve got to solve it. To Merary’s point, I think there’s something inherited in you that if you know what you want, you’re going to go create it. And there’s nothing in between your goal and where you are that is going to stop you, to the point that you’ll do that. I do remember I did not have a bed and I used to bring this very thin mattress under that table that I had created so I could sleep. That’s one.

Rosa Santos: (04:39)
I think, again, the other… I do remember this so clearly. When I was in college and I was in the UK… Again, I’ve always had to work to support myself. My parents were very gracious and they supported me in every way they could, but there was only so much in the budget that you could spend, so I always had jobs. In England if you have a Saturday job and you’re a student, they call you the Saturday… In my case, the Saturday girl. At a suitcase store I used to work, I remember it was a suitcase chain store, the leaders came around to do a market tour and they came to our store. I do remember the power of networking, and I remembered is, “I know my supervisor hates me.” I remember this feeling of, “They gave me the crappiest of the crappiest of the jobs.” I don’t know if I can say that.

Alisa Manjarrez: (05:32)
I don’t think the suitcase store people are going to hear you.

Rosa Santos: (05:38)
No. The cleaning of the backroom, the organizing, and never talk because, obviously, I was a foreigner and my accent wasn’t appropriate. All those really silly things that one goes through that makes you more resilient. I remember when these folks came through I made sure that I was there and they could see me and they could talk to me so I could ask for what I wanted. What I wanted was a different schedule because what they gave me was not really conducive with my studies, but they weren’t giving it to me. I stood up for myself and asked for a different schedule and they gave it to me.

Rosa Santos: (06:19)
Those things, in terms of really overcoming the barriers that you have. As well as, again, knowing the power of who you need to speak to and who needs to, in a way, sponsor you. In this case to say, “Yeah. Things are going to change.” But you need to be purposeful about it. I do remember that so clearly. This is many years ago, I think I was a freshman in college. Really, it’s a very well lesson learned for even today, so many years after.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (06:54)
For me, I think definitely, Alisa. My experiences helped me narrow down the purpose in creating what I want to see. To me, I repeat it again, I want to create a world where multicultural women in positions of power is the norm. I’ve used my experiences from the past to really hone in on that. The number one thing that I do is I do not give up when it gets hard. As multicultural women, the shadow that we cast and the impact we have by just being in these roles, by just having this title or being in these positions, we are sending a message. So giving up, for me, it’s not an option because it’s not just about me, it’s the rest of the women that are coming behind me and the women that I stand on the shoulders of. Even today, you and I both know that there are not enough multicultural women, yes, in the C-suite, but also in boards.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (07:51)
I intend to serve on a private or public board. I don’t do that yet, but I am going to create that. The only way that I can do that is by not giving up. Will it take a while? Yeah, but I’ll get there. The second thing that I do is… I learned through the experiences that I mentioned that I love to learn, and insights is key. So, I activate the strengths and the gifts women already possess, because I know it was those strengths that I possess that helped me be here today. Whether it’s through mentoring, through a conference, through meeting people in the supermarket, that’s the second thing I do.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (08:28)
The third thing I do is I sponsor and I connect people. If I meet somebody or I hear about an opportunity, I will sponsor somebody. They may not even know, but I don’t care. That’s not the point. The point is that I need to be able to sponsor others or connect them. To me, those are the things that I do. The fourth thing that I do is I’m unapologetic about it. It is what it is. This is what I’m going for. This is what I’m creating. Either you join me, or you just get out of my way. That’s my mission.

Alisa Manjarrez: (08:59)
Sounds like you had your mission from an early age, and Rosa had this entrepreneurial spirit from an early age. Both of you are like, “I’m going to go for what I want. However I need to do it, I’m going to make it happen.” My favorite job… Most of my high school I was in babysitting, but when I was 19 I wanted to start a fashion magazine in the future. That was my thing. I wanted to start a fashion magazine to empower women. I did not like Seventeen Magazine. I just felt like they were talking about topics that were too… I was prude-ish, but it was too adult-ish. I was like, “I’m not wondering how to have sex with my boyfriend. I don’t even have a boyfriend.” Things like that. I just felt like, “Why isn’t there a magazine for me and for my friends? Because we’re not in this place where everyone else is, but I love fashion too.”

Alisa Manjarrez: (09:56)
In my mind, I was like, “Well, I need to work in fashion first.” At the time, in 1999, or I don’t know, somewhere around there, Y2K era. I was like, “Banana Republic, obviously, is where I should work.” And we didn’t have one in Fresno in central California. We didn’t have a Nordstrom, we had Macy’s, but there wasn’t a Banana Republic. I only went when I was out of town. So I moved to Sacramento. I had a cousin that lived there, and I only moved to have a retail job. That was my first corporate move. It was because I wanted to be in the scene. Also, Sacramento is not a fashion-forward place, but compared to Fresno, it was.

Alisa Manjarrez: (10:40)
I remember every day coming in. We had this amazing manager and he would give us best dressed of the day, and my goal was to always get best-dressed. I got it a lot. I got really good at getting the look down, getting that Banana Republic vibe. I’m locked down. Even though, most of our customers walking in the door were in their forties. I was 19, dressed like a 40-year-old, basically. For me, one of the things that I learned and really fell in love with, it sparked when you were talking about this, Merary, because I learned how to accentuate women’s gifts. The way they looked, and their bodies, and how to make them look better. It didn’t really matter what size they were, I could get them looking amazing no matter what, and on trend, and help them feel good in the meantime. I know I’ve definitely carried that through in how I coach today.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (11:37)
That gift is that strength. Rosa mentioned it earlier, you take that with you and it’s transferable skills. It didn’t matter their strength on how they look and making them look great. Now, with what you do, you’re taking out their strength and really bringing them to life with the work that you do. It’s extraordinary. The gifts that you’ve been able to really grow and carry with you. Its like, “I love doing this.” And now that is what you do. You have a career out of it, and it’s all about empowering women and people in their vision. I love it.

Rosa Santos: (12:15)
I was just listening to you. In terms of how that has translated in what you do today, the one thing that I should have added to those jobs is I had a multitude of jobs. I was always multi-employed, but I… I’m just laughing because I remember this so clearly and how much money I used to charge for doing this. I used to do career consulting. Honestly, I was in my twenties, I did not have a career.

Alisa Manjarrez: (12:44)
Why does this not surprise me but amaze me all at the same time?

Dr. Merary Simeon: (12:48)
Exactly.

Rosa Santos: (12:50)
I used to get parents who would bring their recent grads from school to help them think through what they wanted to do next. That came out so naturally to me. I tell you, I used to charge a lot of money for this. I was surprised that they gave me that money at the time. But then when I see what I used to do then and what I do today, to your point Alisa, it’s pretty remarkable how so early-on you start. It gravitates to something that would translate in a lot of different ways into what you end up doing in the future. It may not be the exact same thing, but it has a lot of the traits already there. It’s pretty remarkable.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (13:32)
It’s your calling. You start what you think is like, “Oh, I’m good at this.” Or, “I’m going to figure it out.” But just think about that. Yes, you were making money off of that but it was your hobby because you were doing other things, and it turned out to be your calling. Because even in what you do today, yes, it may have a different title, but that’s what you’re doing. It’s pretty cool. That’s why I think I love so much really bringing out the strengths in people, because it’s something that they’re going to love to do no matter what. You’re putting your energy where you can have an impact because it comes natural to you and it’s something you love. It comes from an authentic place, ultimately.

Alisa Manjarrez: (14:11)
I haven’t even introduced the episode today or the topic, but I love it. I like to affectionately call these episodes ARM Episodes, Alisa, Rosa, Merary. But formally, this is What Rules!? Podcast. We are here to help women outsmart the game to advance their career.

Alisa Manjarrez: (14:45)
The name of our company is Color Forward. The name of our podcast is What Rules!?, but we want to bring women all the way up through the C-suite. We do this by interviewing successful women who have overcome cultural barriers, mastered the art of resilience. What we’ve found is, through these interviews that are guiding principles, that have guided all of these women along the way. With me today, I have Rosa Santos who is an HR executive and leadership expert. And I have Dr. Merary Simeon, who’s an HR executive and motivational speaker. My name is Alisa Manjarrez, I’m a vision producer and executive coach at The Happy Cactus. Today, we are talking all about how to create what you want to see. We’ve taken a look back at our past and tried to find patterns that have brought us where we are today, and are even bringing us forward.

Alisa Manjarrez: (15:47)
Just before this episode, we were talking about things that we want to see and other ways that we want to help see multicultural women succeed. It never ends, it’s like this revolving iteration of ourselves and of our lives. What we want to encourage women and all of you who are listening to do is to think back. What are the little things that sparked you and interested you in your childhood, as a teenager, as you’ve grown into your career? Has it disappeared? Have you seen instances along the way in your career where some of those bright lights, those really cool ideas and passionate things, have there been moments where it’s dimmed or you lost sight of who you were? It’s hard to create what you want to see when you forget yourself.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (16:40)
Wow. That’s a really good question. Yes. I would say there’s been times where I was so busy trying to fit in, to figure things out, that I for got what I really was there for. I think I’ve had that moment. Like, “Why am I not fighting for the things that I believe in?” I had to do a self-check and really look at what my values were, and was I being authentic to those values? To answer your question, yes. I’ve definitely been in positions where I was too busy trying to please other people, or just trying to do something else, but I had to really quickly look and figure out that my authenticity was at risk. While I know authenticity’s different for everyone, I needed to understand what it meant to me. There was a point in my life where I forgot who I really was because I was too busy trying to fit in.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (17:43)
One of the things that I’ve learned to do, and this took time, was really understand my values and have my values be my compass. My values then represented my authentic self. Sometimes I think, even me, I confuse flexing my style with my authentic self. Now I realize that I can flex, but my authenticity is never lost. What I realized as I got older is that I learned that the price to pay to flex on my values was too high. The emotional tax, the physical, the mental stress, the impact of my personal and professional relationships was not a price that I could any longer continue pay. I think that’s really where I sit today. Today I don’t waiver when it comes to my values, and I flex my style but I don’t flex anything else.

Alisa Manjarrez: (18:40)
Your core stays the same.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (18:42)
Yeah, it has to. Otherwise, I go back to the price is too high. The price is too high to pay and I’m not willing to pay that price any longer.

Alisa Manjarrez: (18:51)
What about you, Rosa?

Rosa Santos: (18:52)
Sorry. I cannot match that. You’re too inspirational, Merary. I’m just absorbed in like, “Wow. I want to be Merary when I grow up.” Honestly, I have to say I want to say that I’ve conducted my life following my values. I don’t know if I have. I don’t think my compass has been that clear. I think sometimes I may have done something that I needed to do because it was the thing to do, not necessarily what I wanted to do.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (19:26)
But you paid the price.

Rosa Santos: (19:28)
Maybe. I don’t know if I paid the price. I don’t know. It depends on how you quantify or qualify the price. I think as you go to those stages of maturity, the way you approach what is the price that you’re willing to take, or to accept, or to risk, truly changes. Sometimes by the time you realize that paying a price, you’re so bought into that, you’re so bought into the job that you’re doing and it’s already two years, three years, into that role because you were so busy doing it or doing something else, that you didn’t stop and thought, “Is this really in accordance to what I value or what it’s important to me in a career?” For instance. I’m just giving that example. I think as you mature, you are able to make those choices and to pull out the compass much quicker and in a much more straightforward, easier way.

Rosa Santos: (20:30)
I’ll give you an example for me. For me, there is a line that it’s super important for me at work, which is respect and being respectful of your work and of other people’s work. Even if you don’t appreciate what it looks like or how it turned out to be, I like to think that you go into this or you present your work with the best of intentions. Sometimes people don’t show respect for the effort that you put in into that piece of work and they might say things that are not in accordance, maybe, with what in my book is being respectful of somebody. I think in the past I would’ve just been furious but wouldn’t have said anything about it. Wouldn’t have said a thing about it. Would’ve gotten really upset because either my work was being disrespected, or somebody else that I worked with, or in a situation that I was in, somebody else was being disrespected.

Rosa Santos: (21:34)
For me, it’s always been an issue since I joined the workforce. I think it’s bare minimum, just being respectful of each other’s and human beings. Because that’s so important for me, I speak up and I say, “This is unacceptable.” And I make choices around that. Choices in the sense of that I will call that out. I will call that behavior out because I don’t think it’s appropriate in the workplace to show disrespect for one another. It’s a value that maybe in the past I had it, but I did not necessarily have the strength or the maturity to say things around it.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (22:11)
Yeah. I agree. As I got older, I learn that the price to pay is too high. What I meant about your mental health, just like you mentioned, if somebody’s being disrespectful, that’s going to weigh you down. Mentally, physically, it weighs you down. For me, some of my values that I wasn’t paying attention to was my family. Some of the things that you saw going on from an integrity perspective. Or my love for humanity, my love for Christ. Some of those things I wasn’t paying attention to, and those were my values. That was destroying me because as the price that I was paying me physically, mentally, emotionally, was too high.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (22:55)
To me, the way that I hear you speak about respect, that is a value that you had. Maybe you weren’t ready to speak up about it, just like I wasn’t for a long time. And now I’m like, “It’s not worth it. It is not worth it for my health, my wellbeing, not to stick up for my values. You want me to be authentic? Authenticity is my values. That’s who represents me.” Like I said, I can flex all day how we communicate, what I wear. Don’t mess with my values because now that I’ve gotten older, I realize that the minute I flex on my values, it impacts me, the person that’s trying to create a different world, a better world for all of us.

Alisa Manjarrez: (23:38)
I love that Rosa was talking about how angry she was getting, because I think anger is such an amazing indicator for boundaries. You get angry when your boundaries are crossed. As you get older, you start to learn, “Oh, this is going to make me really mad, so I’m going to nip it in the bud now to save everybody some heartache.” You start setting boundaries sooner and sooner and sooner because you can identify them a lot quicker. An easy indicator is something like anger or sadness, any of those negative emotions, because you know something is not right.

Rosa Santos: (24:15)
I appreciate, Merary, what you’re saying, because I think we all have it. We all have very strong convictions, very strong values, very strong principles by which we rule our lives. At the same time, I feel that we need to be very careful imposing those onto others.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (24:35)
A hundred percent.

Rosa Santos: (24:36)
Because then we are judging. Especially when it comes to advancing women, multicultural women, women of color, this is very important because the way that we might show up might be different from the norm.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (24:51)
Yeah. But I still think that being different, shouldn’t be an issue. I think it’s all about respecting, unless your values are that you only care about what’s important to you.

Rosa Santos: (25:02)
Agreed.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (25:02)
I think that’s not what we’re saying here. What we’re saying is that my values are unique to me and I should decide whether this place accepts my values or not. Your values are different than mine, and I should be able to respect that. Let me respect what’s important to you, but don’t impose your values on me at the end of the day, because your values are your values, they may not be mine.

Rosa Santos: (25:28)
That’s what we see a lot there within this context, that we are being imposed somebody else’s values in order to make choices, or in order to be considered for what the next role might be or what the next career progression might be. That’s, I think, where the breakdown potentially is, because you might want to be creating something specific, but then that doesn’t match the way that you are being seen or you’re being perceived or assessed by the given context in which you operate on a day-in day-out basis from a work perspective.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (26:05)
Yeah. That’s why it’s important to understand your values and if you would waiver or not.

Rosa Santos: (26:11)
Absolutely.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (26:13)
These are my values and I know I will not waiver because it will have such an impact in my life. I understand that my values may rub people the wrong way, but who am I living? And what price am I willing to pay? If you’re willing to pay the price and waiver on your values, that’s okay, but you really got to understand that. Are you willing to take that risk? Is that risk worth taking? For some people it may be, for some people not. At the end of the day, everything is a risk. Going after your dreams is a risk, staying true to your values is a risk, not staying true to it is a risk. Choose your risk.

Rosa Santos: (26:49)
Let me tell you something that I talked about yesterday in a conference that I was speaking at, which is this other side. There was a lot of conversation about being a champion of women at the workplace. There was a lot of conversation around sponsorship, which we’ve spoken about here before, and what that means, and the power of making connections and whatnot. It was very interesting to hear the general agreement in terms of what it means to be somebody else’s champion and the number of ideas that were coming up.

Rosa Santos: (27:25)
What it was also interesting to me to hear is, there were all these ideas that especially came up from men that were in the conference. There were both men and women in the conference, which was awesome to hear. It was really awesome to hear. The point I want to make that I made yesterday in this conference was, first off, kudos for acknowledging that there is a need for championing this agenda for advancing women, and in our case, multicultural women, and there is a need to become more sponsored-like attitude and behavior in order to elevate these women and elevate their voices.

Rosa Santos: (28:03)
But my question was, have you ever asked any of this women how they want to be championed? Because I think it’s at the root of a lot of these issues, which is, I think we think of a way of going about it and addressing whatever we call or may perceive as the gap, but we’ve never actually asked to that person, how can I make you successful? What would that look like? What does help look like for you? It was very interesting too. I don’t think they had ever thought that that was a possibility. I think that’s the piece that you’re saying, because we are all different and we all have different compasses, if you like.

Dr. Merary Simeon: (28:46)
Yeah. Because ultimately creating what you want to see, you want to see everybody to be respected for the unique gifts. You’ve got to start by respecting your own so that you could lead, number one, by example. I want to create a world where people respect each other the way that they are and not by imposing your values on somebody else.

Alisa Manjarrez: (29:05)
To create what you want to see doesn’t mean an initiative at work. It doesn’t mean a podcast. It doesn’t mean a job or a company. It’s also just what you said when we first started, Rosa. You were like, “Create the life that you want.”

Rosa Santos: (29:23)
I used to do this program many years ago. It was about innovating what it has not been created. That was a big question for people to answer. How do I go about innovating something? We used to give folks in the program a clay brick, and the question was, “Go take an hour and come back with something. Come back with a product with just a brick.” I remember people would yell at me. Like, “What you think I can create out of a brick? Aren’t you going to give me anything else? Do I get paper? Do I get this? Do I get the other?” And I said, “No, no, no. Just go and just spend an hour with a group thinking about what you can create out of a brick.” Despite of the pushback, despite of the uncomfortness, despite all the this-is-impossible attitude because you’ve only given me a brick to work with, the creativity, the amount of ideas, the products these people used to come up with coming back only after an hour of pushing their thinking beyond what was they thought was possible, it was unbelievable.

Rosa Santos: (30:53)
I think the one thing that I’ll say, think about what is your brick and go out and think about it. At first, it may not make sense, but there’s more than just to a brick. Think you have a brick. You have a brick in your mind, or something tangible. Go and just spend time and push through. Be creative. Just exercise that mind and that possibility. I know I talk a lot about this, but sometimes we are our worst enemies when it comes to breaking through the mold and thinking and creating things that at first you didn’t think were possible.

Alisa Manjarrez: (31:36)
I think that’s why we talked about, at the beginning of this episode, our experiences growing up and as teenagers, in our early twenties. Those are essentially the bricks that we’ve built upon in our lives. I love what you said. There’s so many possibilities if you just change the perspective. Work with what you’ve got is the theme here, and then create what you want to see with what you have.

Alisa Manjarrez: (32:11)
Want to know how breaking the rules can help you level up your career game? Search What Rules!? Podcast on any social media platform and join our members only group on LinkedIn, where we discuss rule-breaking strategies for multicultural women. What Rules!? is a production of Color Forward. The show is produced by me, Alisa Manjarrez, with editing and fabulous sound design by Mathr de Leon. Visit colorforward.com for more stories, events, and of course, all the episodes of What Rules!?

Dr. Merary Simeon: (32:44)
I love that because it’s still a brick, it’s still authentic to itself.

Rosa Santos: (32:48)
Exactly right.