 Welcome, everyone, to this session of our Launching Leadership Series. As you know, the purpose of our Launching Leadership Conversation Series is to highlight the accomplishments of our alums, featuring a fabulous group of graduates who are shining examples of an intellectually adventurous Mount Holyoke education in action. And I'm so pleased to welcome our guest today, two current members of our Board of Trustees, Mona Sutfin of the Class of 1989, and Natasha Mohanti, Class of 2003. Let's give them a round of applause. I'm going to tell you a little bit about each of them, and then I'm going to jump right into our questions, our conversation. But please be aware that I will be stopping so that some of you will have opportunities to ask questions as well. So we'll look forward to that part of the conversation. Mona was an international relations major and later earned a master's degree in international political economy at the London School of Economics. She has had an illustrious and varied career, serving for several years as a career diplomat on the staff of the National Security Council during President Bill Clinton's administration, and later serving as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy in the Obama Administration from 2009 to 2011. She has over 20 years of experience advising multinational corporate, philanthropic, and institutional investors on the intersection of geopolitics, policy, and markets. Currently, she is a partner and head of investment strategies at the Vistria Group, a Chicago-based private equity firm with a focus on technology, including as the co-founder of several startups. And I've already told her I'm going to ask her to tell us a little bit about what private equity is. In case you are wondering about that. Natasha was a computer science major at Mount Holyoke and went on to earn a master's degree also in computer science at UMass. After working for several years at Google, she co-founded FAM Inc., an AI-powered video engagement and media analytics SaaS solution that offers content discovery, personalization, predictive viewing, and analytics for media and telecom companies. She's now an engineering leader at Stripe, a financial services and software company based in the Bay Area. Now if you've been listening, you will hear two very different pathways. These two alums have had very different sets of experiences, but where they intersect is in the world of tech startups, and that is something we will explore. Let's start with Mona. Your career seems to be the epitome of an intellectual adventure, let me just say. Global travel, politics, international finance. Is this what you imagined when you were sitting in your international relations classes? That's back 30 years ago. So first, really glad to be here. It's really fun always to be on campus. And thanks for the great weather, ordering that up for us. So no, I can't say that that is at all what I had in mind when I was studying international relations, but I grew up in Wisconsin, in Milwaukee, and in a neighborhood where people didn't really travel the world. And I had always had this very strong desire to be in the world and not an observer of it. So I was always drawn to experiences and opportunities that would push those boundaries. So when I got to Mount Holyoke, that helped open up my whole world. So you got to Mount Holyoke, a global community, very literally, with students from everywhere. How did that story unfold when you graduated and then what? Yeah, so I ended up studying international relations. I studied Chinese. I was always interested in international related issues. But I actually have had also this interest in the creative side of my life as well. So I actually went into the advertising business when I left Mount Holyoke. And I always tell people when they ask me, well, how did you end up going from advertising to diplomacy? And my answer is my professors at Mount Holyoke College. And I always say, I really owe my career to Mount Holyoke. I would not be anywhere, I would be today without that. Because I met some people who were very, very influential in my trajectory. And I had my campus job, was with Tony Lake, who later became a national security advisor. And he was somebody who kept on saying, yeah, I know you want to go into advertising. But you know, you might want to take this foreign service exam. And I thought, I don't want to go into government. Like, there's no way I'm doing that. I'm not going to do that. He said, well, just take the exam. You know, it can hurt, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's fine, OK, yes, I'll go ahead and take this exam. But I did go into advertising. I moved to Chicago. I'm working for an advertising agency. And then my wake-up moment was one night at about 2 o'clock in the morning. I was working, and I accidentally deleted the entire column of my formulas and my spreadsheet that I was working on, my advertising agency. And I realized it was going to be up all night. And I remember thinking to myself, there has to be more to life than selling shampoo, which is what I was advertising. And literally, I don't know, maybe four weeks later, five weeks later, the foreign service called and said I had passed the exam and did I want to join. So that led me into this whole path. And I said, oh, yeah, sure. I wasn't even sure what it was, to be honest. I just thought, oh, it's definitely not what I'm doing now. It'll be an adventure. It'll be an adventure. Right. Definitely was an adventure. Right. Well, thank you. I'm going to come back to you a little bit. But now let's hear from you, Natasha. You received a degree here in computer science. So it's easy to see your connection to the world of technology. That seems like a pretty straight line in a way. You started your journey at Google, a little company none of us have heard of. Tell us about that. And your path to becoming a co-founder. For sure. I want to echo what Mona said, super awesome to be here. And I also want to say, when I started at Google, most people did not know Google. This was like, I interned there at the Year of the iPod. So it was still sitting here at UMass. No one knew what Google was. It was just a real start at. It was just like, at that time, the recruiters that used to come to Mount Holyoke were very heavily either banking or Microsoft was the first tech recruiter that showed up here. And so Google was actually just not at all here. And I'm actually super thrilled to hear these days I hear lots of these companies come here, so very, very, very proud of Mount Holyoke's evolution through that. But yeah, so I think I actually interned at Google because Google was doing that. That time also wanted to encourage more women in tech. And so they had like a scholarship program. And I applied kind of randomly like that. And then they're like, yeah, you got the scholarship, come visit. And I was like, well, yeah, let's go. My roommate is also a Mount Holyoke alum. She's like, just go. It's California. You'll have fun. Come back. I went there. That day they were like, we're also looking for interns. Do you just want to do an interview and apply? I was like, well, OK, why not? Again, I'm nothing to lose. Like, these are easy. And worst case, I just go back. It's all the same. And then I interviewed. And then they were like, well, do you want to come intern? And I was like, ah, I guess I'll go intern. And then I had a lot of fun at the internship, which sort of what convinced me that I should go work there. But I do want to be honest here. I was in a PhD program at UMass. And I did tell my professor for four years after I was a girl, I'm coming back. I promise you I'm coming back. Never did, but it's one of those things where I feel like being in Mount Holyoke, like letting go of something that you're excited about is very, very hard. And I think it took me a long time to let go. Because I'm like, I'll miss out on whatever I could have learned. So I think that that was an interesting journey. The reason to kind of do the startup, I was at Google for about eight years. And I think there was a time when our motto was never fear change. There was a slash in between, but I'll just not go there. I think that was pretty much the reason, which is like, I knew how to do this. I could do it. But I was getting a little bored and felt like I needed something else to stimulate me and try out something. The way I sort of view it is if actually taking a risk, like what's the worst that can happen? The worst that can happen is you don't like it or it doesn't work and you come back to what you were doing. But I would always regret not trying something. And I think that's like deeply comes again from how Mount Holyoke, like the four years here. And so I was like, fine, let's do it. And I was doing it with two other women. One was from Smith, actually. And our startup was very much about, how do we change how women were represented in the media and use technology as a lever for that? And so how did that work for you? I mean, in terms of getting started, I'm quite curious about that. Getting started, getting started. The early days of a startup are really, really fun. You sit in a room with people you respect and who are really sharp and come up with cool ideas and then you're like, oh, I'm gonna go build this. And I don't know if any of you are in tech, but coding is actually fun. So going and building something that people can play with, really, really fun. So those were all the fun parts. Then there is the raise money and all the other sort of logistics of it that, for my standpoint, not the most fun part. And so there was a bit of up and down there. And then you're back to when people use your product, I mean, there's no more thrill than people using something you build. So super fun. But so that was, I would say, early days was like sit in a room, come up with ideas, build really quickly, ship it, get people to use it, get people to give feedback. That was all the fun. And then there's the raise money and follow this and that. That was an interesting up and down journey. But if I would say it was very brutal at times, really thrilling at other times, but I wouldn't have had it any other way. Which leads us to you. And I know that that's the roller coaster. I call it, yeah. So Mona, I know you've been a co-founder as well. So tell us a little bit about that experience, how you got into that. But also you are in the world of private equity, a funder. Right? So let's hear about it. It's announcing both sides of it. Yeah, so tell us about that. Yeah, so when I left the, well, I've been actually started up a couple of different companies, but I've won very recent one and won slightly older one. So when I left the Clinton, the national security world the first time and left the government, I went to a little startup in the financial services space in Silicon Valley and I was the classic 19th employee in a garage in the valley. And I was going from government where you get a paycheck every two weeks and your social security is taken out of it and there's a number to call when you have problems to literally nothing, flying with nothing. And I had to get used to the idea we lost a client that somehow the entire company, the bottom was gonna fall out. And so I used to say, I don't know how you guys live on this roller coaster because the highs are incredibly high. When you ship a product, develop a product, people start to use it. You've never, it's never been so exciting. And I was on the sales side and the marketing side and you get the traction, it's so exciting. And then yeah, then the reality hits and you have a setback and then you think, oh my God, this is all gonna fall apart. But it's very exciting, very intense, very exciting. So it's, I think a little bit addictive and there's some similarities with government in a way, I could get into if people are interested in that, in that it's complex problem solving in not a well-defined space. So there's lots of room for creativity that gives you a lot of satisfaction. And I think creativity is a really important part of keeping your career going in a sustainable way. But now on the other side of it, and I talk to founders all the time and give them advice because now I'm on the other side of it, which is the capital raising part that everybody hates so much. And if you know anything about private equity, everybody hates private equity too, but it is the foundation actually of how most of the American economy has been built. Most of the most innovative companies originally had somebody who was willing to back them with money to get them going and understood what the vision was, willing to go alongside with them, invest so that people can get their product to market to get it to scale, to get it to the vision that ultimately the founders have. And that's what I spend my time doing now is actually looking at how the world is changing and where we should be putting capital as different industries change and how to foster that change and growth and development. I'm curious about the part you said that it's like government. And I know you were alluding to that in terms of the creativity and the problem solving, but do you wanna say more about that? So I think a lot of people when they're thinking about their careers, what are they good at? What do they like to do? And I think people don't think sometimes enough about who they are as people. They think about the job and not like what actually gives them excitement and happiness. And early on, one of the things I realized, I was a little bit like Natasha, I needed it to be challenged. I needed it to be interesting. And I needed it to be changing a lot. And that's not like everybody. I mean, a lot of people I know don't like the idea that they go into an office and they have no idea what's gonna happen to them from nine o'clock until 10 o'clock to 11 o'clock to 12 o'clock. For a lot of people that's very disruptive and very frustrating. They wanna go and know what it is their goals are. They wanna know what their day, how their day is gonna unfold. And they would find it very distressing to have what I have, which is if I get to 10 o'clock and my day is what I thought it was and I'm feeling kind of dissatisfied somehow. So government by definition, because it's dealing with the world around you, all the in-bounds are coming in at 100 miles an hour. And certainly when you're dealing with diplomacy, you're dealing with other countries and what they're throwing in over the transom. So every single moment of every day is changing just like a startup when you run into a problem in X or Y or Z. So it's problem solving at scale and for public good as opposed to for a technology or a product or an investment. Got it. That's my theory. Sounds like being a college president. Exactly. You know it all too well. Thank you. Well, there's a phrase I learned from one of our alums, Sheila Marcello, who was also a founder of a company and she described what it means to be authentically bold. As she said in an interview, when you bring your truest self to the table, you are able to be bold in your own authenticity. And there's a lot of evidence of authentic boldness in the stories that each of you have shared this afternoon. So I'm curious to know how did your Mount Holyoke experience help you find or deepen that sense of authentic boldness? You want me to start? You can? Go for it. Yeah, if you're ready. Yeah, I think I'm ready. So I think probably the most important thing in this journey of figuring out exactly who you are and what you want to do and your ability to push boundaries was something that I didn't appreciate when I was here, like it's often the case, which is that Mount Holyoke helped me separate my gender identity from my identity as an individual and that I did not, I felt like I was permanently that connection, which back I went to college in the 80s. So gender stereotypes were still a very strong driver in career choice and career path still is today, but definitely more so then. And I felt like that connection was permanently severed when I was at Mount Holyoke. So I never felt in my career constrained by how people might perceive me as an African-American woman walking into a space, even though in my career in national security I often was the only woman and certainly the only woman of color for probably the first 15, 20 years of my career. So, and I think that held me in very good stead because I didn't constrain myself on that basis. Thank you. How about you, Natasha? Where does that authentic boldness come from for you in your Mount Holyoke experience? I think for me what's interesting is to, the one thing I learned in Mount Holyoke is that it's okay to have questions and it's okay to like not be satisfied with what you have and always wanting more different something else. And I think that's held me in really good stead because sometimes, you know, say I was working at Google, lots of people asked me, was a great job, why did you leave, right? And it wasn't because of everything wrong with the job. And I think Mount Holyoke let me kind of put that aside where like things don't have to be wrong for me to want something different. I could just want it and that's okay. And I think that was like a big, big, big step, right? Because until then, like I thought of my career as like, okay, you know, go to college, get a degree, then get a job, make sure you like payback your, you know, loans and those all of a lot like create a bunch of milestones and then like just try to like chip at it. And then suddenly you're like, okay, so I've achieved those milestones, like, is it okay now or is it ever okay to be like, well, actually I just wanna go do something else. And I think of Mount Holyoke and certainly all my college friends do continue to give me that strength. So whenever I feel like, do you think it's okay to kind of like say no to this or say yes to that, I do come back to like college friends and be like, and they're like, yeah, it's totally okay. And I think that just, you know, kind of pave your own path and that's okay came certainly from my time at Mount Holyoke. Yes, one of the things that I'm curious about relative to that, paving your own path and deciding it's okay is that you're not running your startup now, you're back at, did I say a regular job? Yes. And so was that hard to transition away from? That's very interesting. So the reason I, I don't know if you guys, so I work at Stripes, so Stripes, it's like a, it's a pre IPO company, but like just cause I think the company chose not to IPO, it's like a pretty decently large-sized company, but we are growing very rapidly. And one of the reasons I chose to come to Stripe is there was a stage of company I had never had in my career. And this is the stage of company that like has figured out product market fit, but is like actively growing and needs to grow more lines of business if we are to become like significantly bigger than we are today. And so like last year, the company like doubled in size, right? I have not been as a leader in a stage of a company of that particular shape. That's actually why I chose Stripe. So it was to like get some other itch, right? Like I haven't done that. I'm gonna go try that and see if I like it. And then, you know, if I like it, I'll stay longer. If I don't, I'll go create something else. Great. I know that in your own bio, and this is probably true for both of you, but I was particularly struck, Natasha, that a lot of your time, your free time, to the extent you have some, is spent helping women develop, whether that's as coders or, you know, basically building the pipeline of women in technology. Could you talk a little bit about that? I think lately I've done a lot more things from the other side, which is what do we do as companies or organizations to hire more women? I think there was a point when we used to discuss like we need a pipeline of women because there aren't enough women in tech. I think now we have established that that's a myth. There are plenty of women that can be in tech and it's actually, we need to take a look at the other side and make sure that we have the right hiring practices, the right organizational structure by which women will want to be in tech and then will thrive in tech. And I think we can all agree, tech's done a pretty crappy job of like encouraging women to join and then making them like actually happy in tech. So I spend now a lot more time on that side of like what do we do to create a better environment than I am like Nestle drawing more women. And a lot of that, I think some of the early work was very much like take a look at a lot of our interview processes and like are we asking the right questions? I'll give you an example, engineering interviews are always pretty standard. We have a standard list of questions, we're evaluating a set of criteria, but it turns out that you can ask those questions in the context of gaming or you can ask those questions in the context of you know like social networks or you can ask them in a different context. And depending on the context you choose to ask them, you will get people, you will get a different set of people applying, you will get a different set of people thriving. And so early Google interviews were all gaming related. Who was not a gaming company? We never made games, we will never make games. But it was just sort of like the early engineers were all gamers, they created an interview loop about gaming. Most of the women when they would interview be like I don't want to do this and I don't want to take part in this interview. So I think a lot of the work I've done lately is like just making sure all our practices are like truly diverse and by staring at like every single lever we have there. And then once women join just like how do we make sure they feel comfortable in this environment, right? And how do they feel like they have a voice here? And so a lot of like groups within companies are like how do we make sure women have a voice? How do we make sure they have a sponsor? Not just a mentor who will like fight for them when they are not in the room. So that's sort of where I'm spending a bulk of my time now. Great. I know in your case, Mona, you have had, as you said, you were often not just the only woman, sometimes the only African-American, sometimes both, both in the world of finance, but also in the political arenas in which you were operating. I'm wondering how you see that shifting now. Yeah, I mean, I wish I could say it's getting better. It is getting better, but it's not great because of these unspoken barriers that are really about culture and how people value each other and what you see when you walk in the door. And there's still a lot of embedded bias that is very difficult to weed out of the system. And I see this a lot in investing and I saw it a lot in government because in the case of investment, let's say you're investing, I don't know, $100 million in a company. Not shockingly, you're worried about, okay, we need to make sure we get somebody who really knows what they're doing so that we don't lose all of this money. People have a tendency to default to people they already know that they have confidence in. So all you ever do is default to people who are already in your network and the person who's making the decision is less diverse. You're never gonna break that circle open. That's where I see a lot of, I spend a lot of time, at least certainly as an investor and elsewhere, just really probing those, what I see as a bias, which is just, oh yeah, that's the first person you reach for, but it isn't the only person actually who can do this job. It's more that it might take a little bit longer to meet the person and realize, no, actually they have a lot more to bring to the table. And that's hard work and there's a lot of pushback in the corporate world on some of those things. So yeah, so we spend a lot, in my firm, we spend a lot of time challenging assumptions around race and diversity and we push all of our portfolio companies in a really hard way and sometimes people don't wanna do what we want them to do, then we don't end up investing in them because they're not on board with our view of how society should change. That's great. Yeah, it's fun. I have a lot more questions, but I know that we've got an audience of students who are here in part because someone said they're good questions, they have good questions. So I'd love to- Pressure's on. Yes, I'd love to open the floor to our audience. Yes, please, stand up and introduce yourself. Hi, my name is Liz, I'm a senior, majoring in Peter Science and East Asian Studies. And my question is, what did you do to sustain yourself as a gender minority and or a racial minority in industries where you're underrepresented? How did you sustain yourself? I'm glad you chose the word sustain because I think a lot of the initial years was very much keep your head about water and what does, what would that take? I think like, I would say my early years were very much sustained by the relationships that I made at Mount Holyoke, right? Like the, like, well, I'll just be honest, right? Like you go to work, you put on a bit of a persona of like, okay, now I'm a professional and I'm just gonna treat everything professionally, then you come back to a safe space and then you scream with like the people, you know? Like what in the world was that? So you need those people that you can be like absolutely real with. And then that allows you to wake up the next day and be like, I can do that. So I think a lot of that early sustains came from there. But I would say like after like three, four years, I'm like, actually, why should I take it? Like why should I? Why should I like deal with this instead of just calling people out in the most nice way? And got a lot more, I guess, comfortable in my own skin that I do belong and I belong enough to actually call people out if they say something that didn't work for me or that bothered me. But I would say it did take me like three, four years to get there but now I'm like, yeah, you know what? I am here and I'm not gonna deal with crap, so be it. Yeah, I totally agree on the, I still have a group of people that I feel like you always need a safe space both for that sustaining kind of community of people who actually really know you and know and can also be the people to call you out and say, are you really, are you sure that makes sense? Cause I don't think it does. And they're willing to, with love, say what they think it is you need or what you should hear. So I think it's super important throughout your life really. And, but even more at the early parts of your career because some of it is this question of yes, how do you assert yourself in the workplace in a way that is authentic and comfortable? And you need to bounce that off of people. So just advice from peers is super helpful. And I always tell people when they're looking for mentors, I'm like, you want a mentor who's a couple of years ahead of you. You don't want a mentor who's 30 years ahead of you because the person five years ahead from you actually just went through whatever you went through successfully or not. And people spend too much time looking at for mentors that are way, way ahead in their careers. So I just give that a little bit of advice. But on the, I think on this question of like asserting yourself in the workplace, like Nancy Pelosi always says it's about like know your value and asserting yourself. It's a very difficult thing to do. It's like it's because you have to figure out a way to do it where you're authentic, where people will respect it, where you feel like you're doing it in a way that's productive for you and your career and your identity and all the rest. And that you are dealing with whatever the fallout might be. And so it gets to your self-respect and all the rest and learning how to articulate that in an effective way. So I think it still takes time. I see it even in my career now. It's always front and center. Comes up all the time. Yeah, better at it as you're going. Other questions, yes. Hi, my name's Nora. I use the AC program in the senior politics major. And I was wondering, one thing that impunites me about leadership and becoming a workforce leader is the idea that when you make mistakes, the consequences are bigger. And so I was wondering if you can talk a little bit in your experience, like when you're doing problem solving at scale, like what happens when you mess up? Yeah, I got a whole riff on those two mistakes. I make mistakes like so absolutely, yeah, all the time. And I've made some mistakes, like I won't get into like, one time I made a really big mistake with Obama. And he was like, I cannot believe you made that decision without consulting me. I was like, I'm really sorry. And he's like, and I would not have made it. I'm like, even worse, like, okay, great. One is I think a lot of times if you're, you're gonna make mistakes. So that's just like the way it is. I think they're owning up to a mistake before it gets bigger is a big problem that people have in life. They double down when they believe they've made a misstep instead of realizing like I need to put this out on the table. And so I used to see what were small problem, the worst three words when I was in the wine house was always like, I have this problem. I tried to fix it. Oh no, that's a terrible thing. So I'd say part of it is your stakeholder group when you're making decisions and feeling like you're consulting with people, it softens the blow later. Particularly if you know what the risks are of when you're making a decision or you're making, you're doing something, you realize there could be, this could be a mistake. And if you name that and you bring that forward in the dialogue, it's much less painful later than if you hit it all. And then suddenly this thing is a disaster and you didn't tell anybody, right? So I think a lot of it, it gets to like, just framing what the risks and rewards upside and downside are of any decision helps a lot. And surrounding yourself with people who are honest brokers. I echo all of that. I mean, I think like, you know, own up and sort of like, I would say right now, like it's also my job to create an environment where people feel they can own up, right? So like if I don't own up, they won't own up and then we'll all be much worse off for it. So I think just that's a huge part. But I would say one thing that I think I've struggled with which is forgiving myself for the mistake. Like I hold on to my mistakes very deeply. And I think the, I would say as I get older, one of the things I'm like, it's okay. It's true when I say people make mistakes, I am one of them and give yourself some grace for that. Because I think if you hold on to like, I made this mistake so I will not make these decisions, that will really hold back your career because you keep having to make decisions. You just have to figure out how to like, let that go. For sure, you have to make decisions. You have to continue to make decisions. And you never get 100% information. So you always are making decisions before you're fully comfortable making them by definition in life. Yes. Hi, I'm Louisa, I'm a sophomore. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us. The question that I have is if you could go back in time and give one piece of advice to the version of yourself that you were when you were at Mount Holyoke in our age, what would you say and why? Advice to your younger Mount Holyoke self. I mean, I think I got this advice when I was at Mount Holyoke. So when I, a lot of, when I joined Mount Holyoke, I was an international student and a lot of international students were majoring in like computer science and economics. I was like, oh, maybe I should go do that. And then one of my professors was like, why you should major in something because they make you major in something. After that, just have fun. I think that was the best piece of advice. I didn't think I had that much fun. So if I were to go back to my past, I would tell my college self to have more fun, take all the intellectual stimulating classes that are like nothing to do with computer science. It was like over time I ended up specializing and specializing and specializing. And it's really hard to find like time and resources to learn about international relations. Our psychology is just much harder. So I would just tell my past self, like take all the courses that like don't have anything necessarily to do with the immediate career, but will be something you'll hold on to for the rest of your life. Yeah. So I might have actually a little bit like the opposite advice because I was a student that was on everything. I was on social probation like three of my four years. I was on academic probation for a little while here and there. Like I had definitely had a struggle taking my academic self seriously. And I feel like I missed out with, and I didn't have a major for a long time. And I eventually had to do a little Venn diagram to figure out like what major can I have here? Like what do I need to take to kind of graduate? And I was really worried that I was not gonna graduate because I didn't have enough PE credits. So I literally, I had to do a sport my senior year so I could have enough PE credits to graduate. It's like, if I have to tell my parents I'm not graduating, I can't do PE. Like it's ridiculous. So I would say a little bit of the opposite, which is if I had been less splitting around and a little bit more intentional, I wouldn't give any of it up though, right? I wouldn't do it over, but I think I would have told myself like, okay, a little less of the running around, multiple other people's campuses at two o'clock in the morning on a Thursday and more attention to what I was supposed to be doing. Would have been good. Less all-nighters at the 11th hour and all that. This leads me to ask you a question, which is because you went on to get a master's degree from the London School of Economics, which is not an easy place to be admitted. So how did that happen? Yes, exactly. How did that happen? I do not know. No, so I went back to graduate school after being a diplomat for almost, so I was in the Balkans during the war and then after the war ended and I had a free year basically. And I thought, okay, I really at that point was doing something that I think I probably should have done in Mount Holyoke, which is I actually really want to learn more about what I've been up to in this space, even though I was an international relations major. And I was really interested in the economy as well. So then I could see already how the economy and politics, how they fit together. So it was really intriguing. And I'd say it was the first real sense like that an academic space is the best place to learn this and not just getting out in the world. Because as I said at the outset, my desire was to get and be in the world. So the academic experience of observing the world was not naturally appealing, but then suddenly it became really necessary and very interesting for me to put the context to what it was that I was actually seeing and how I was moving in the world. So yeah, so I got serious about it. Great. Yes. Hi everyone, I'm there, I'm a junior, I'm a computer scientist, I'm an international major. And my question is we talk a lot about identity, like the outside, like we are women, no matter people, gay and lesbian. But often, like you said, I don't have the identities between me, like I'm just me. But I feel that as you step into an industry that reminds you constantly that that is who you are, is how do you separate society's identity from who you are? Okay, I'm gonna repeat a little bit for people who might not have heard fully. What I heard you say was that if you're in an industry that's constantly reminding you of an identity that may or may not be what you have deeply internalized, I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but you're constantly being reminded of it, how do you manage that? Yeah, thank you. Ah, yeah. I mean, I don't really accept it, I guess. I just kind of go through, you can observe it happening, but I intentionally go right past it. But there is, there are certainly circumstances where people will not take you as seriously because of the way you look. That's just the reality of it. In the old days I used to do before the internet, before Google, I used to do this thing where I would, with corporate clients, I would intentionally have a phone call with them before they ever met me. Because nine times out of 10, almost every professional situation I've been in, even with women and people of color, when I walk into the room, often people will ask me to get them a cup of coffee, often people will ask me where the bathroom is, people always ask me in the store where the shelving is, always, always, always, 100%. Every single workplace I've ever been in. And in the old days you could get by that because then there would be the shock when they'd realize, oh, you're the person I've been talking to about this substantive thing for three months and I'm finally meeting you and you can see in their face that they're clicking through their mind like this is not exactly what I expected. But at a certain point, it's on them. It's really, it's like, that's your problem. I call it a YP, right? That's your problem, like it's not an MP, it's not my problem. And you can have that hold you back or you can just say, you know what, if you just have to keep going and you can't let that get in your mind too much and start to psych you out because it's really their issue. I don't know if you agree with that. No, I totally agree with that. I mean, I think I'm sort of like semi-protected from it while you code, like it's just, it is meant to be like not personal in that way. And so, you know, there was some ability to hide within work to kind of be like, you know that got hotter as you could sort of rise the ranks because then you don't code as much. I think once some of the advice I was given is like, well, you are in the minority but guess what? They'll always remember you because there are so few women to every meeting it's like instead of using that as like, okay, then maybe I shouldn't say anything. I was like, well, when will I get this 100 people? And they'll all know my name. And it's true. They'll always know your name. And so a lot of it is like, you know, yes, it's, I think this is where like the having your own like people really helps because you literally go into these rooms and like take on a different mental model, a different persona. And then yeah, from a career standpoint, don't let it hold you back. And like to some extent they do, like they will know who you are because there are so few of you. And so like, I was like, that was great. Like use it to your advantage, but it is exhausting. And so you do need to like come back and like let like allow some space for yourself to be whoever you are, because it is exhausting to kind of like fight some of all of that. But you know, from an actual career standpoint, it won't hold you back if you, if you kind of like, don't let it. I just to chime in, I actually think it's easier when you have an international career, like as a diplomat, I always found that my, as somebody who's a minority, going into a foreign culture, like I was used to being different. So it wasn't strange to be different in then some third country, whereas everybody else was really struggling with this idea that they were different. And so you realize that's just part of your skin. That's what you get used to and you can definitely complain to your advantage. Way in the back. I see a hand. Hi, I'm Hannah. It's good to see you here at History Major Asian Studies Minor. And I was wondering sort of what are the hardest skills you guys have had to learn over the course of your career? What are some skills that we here at Montclois can really start to build and start to learn as we look towards the future if whatever comes next? Hardest skills. I think as a computer science major, I would say like we had a good computer science program, but I did struggle quite a bit in the actual technical part of it. So I did spend a lot of my early career just like reading up. I think my Montclois was a big leg up is as you moved up, they really, you really care about like, synthesizing things together from like 50 different whatever readings or documents into a clear, clear articulated plan. Did a lot of that in college. Do that every single day. Like every single day it's like, oh my God, there's a mess here, there's a mess here. How do I synthesize this and turn it into an action plan that like a hundred people will then go follow? So I feel like that, a lot of like the reading, the writing workshop I feel like have held me in very, very good stead as even in a super technical career, like how do you articulate whatever you wanna say, whether it's in an email or like a long form thing. I think that's been sort of, I would say, the biggest, big, big, big learning. So for me, I think one of the biggest challenges was public speaking in a, particularly in a large crowd format, not this size, but like much bigger or even significantly bigger where and when you go, if you ever do press interviews where making a mistake is more consequential, so you'd be very careful with what you're saying and how you're saying it and feeling comfortable in your skin speaking in public is not something, actually you might do it in class, but it's different when you have to do it in front of your peers or in front of a workspace or even with the broader public. So I'd say that's a skill, once you start to master it, and you can start it obviously in class and there's lots of little tips I think that are easier to pick up when you're just coming out of school that make it much easier than if you just suddenly have to do it at 25 or 26 and you haven't really had a lot of practice at it. Speaking, arguing, writing folks, I'm sure are happy to hear all of these things. Yes, other questions? Yes. My name is Sohini, I'm a senior. I use your pronouns, I'm an architecture and math major. So speaking of identities and interaction and intersectional identities, when is a moment that you actually felt empowered in the identity that society has told us that makes us underprivileged or pushed back by? I can point to a moment of, of when I think, I think for me I feel like the journey was a lot of like, it took me a while to realize that people are putting me in a box, right? Like so I think you come out of college and there aren't very few boxes if any and then you're like, oh, I'm a free spirit, I can do whatever I want, however I want to do it. Then you kind of go along your merry way and then you're like, oh damn, that something is not working, like that it doesn't make any sense. So I will tell you, like it took me a long time to even realize that there was a box happening that like and what those parameters were. And then to then process it and then kind of figure out like and be empowered by it. I think I spent most of my career just like ignoring it, right? So I wouldn't say I was like terribly empowered by it outside of like very tactical things just being like, but like my work will speak for itself and you know, all of that I'm the place where I truly started to embrace it was when I realized that like, I am a role model for other people. And if I don't embrace this, then like what am I actually saying for, you know, women that come after me that like, and I think that was when sort of like, I guess something clicked in my head being like, okay, you actually need to stare at this and be like, you know, I am actually pretty comfortable with who I am. I don't, you know, very comfortable and I start to own it. And I think that I would say the moment was like, you know, quite a bit stemming from realizing that like other people are looking up to me and my ignoring this is actually kind of telling them that that's what you need to do to be successful. And that was never the intent. So I think just like that clicked on me. And then I would say the second place was when I have two kids, my older one's a daughter and I think that was the other place where to some extent a lot of it is like now I, like I have to do daily role modeling and like really try to embrace like, I really want her to be whoever she wants to be and not feel like there's any box. And I have to like truly embrace who I am for her to feel like comfortable with who she is. So I would say that's the other place that really like hit me in the head. Yeah. Did you want to add? No, no, no. Yeah. Are you sure? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Hi, my name is Rebecca Lietto Adbaris. I issue her pronouns and I'm just so grateful to hear this conversation because this is a conversation on leadership. I was wondering when you guys start to see yourselves as leaders and how that has evolved throughout your career? So I mean, I'll tell you a story of like a serious leadership moment, but one way you start to realize that you're a leader is when you go to things and people start to ask you for advice. You know, younger people come and seek you out for career advice or in a more subtle way. But there was one moment where I realized like, wow, okay, I guess I'm a leader. So early on in the Obama administration, there was a woman, Melody Barnes, who is an African-American woman who ran domestic policy and she and I had a meeting and we were talking about something we were gonna do. And at the end of the meeting, there was a conversation about, okay, what are the next steps? And we talked about it a little bit and then everybody stopped talking and they started looking at me and her. And then she and I realized like, oh, wait, we're the deciders. Like we realized like, oh, wow, there's nobody else to decide, like there's only us or you go to the president of the United States, that's it, right? So we were like, oh, wow. And afterward, she and I both said, we pulled each other's side and said, how crazy was that meeting where suddenly for the first time, everybody is stopping and waiting for us to make the decision. That's when you realize like, okay, I guess this is on, right? We're making decisions and we're real leaders. Yeah, it was very telling moment and very funny because we didn't really even see it coming. I think a lot of mine will be very much on the same. You only view it through other people's eyes. Like you just, you don't think of it as yourself. It's just like, it's sort of a reflection of like what people think of you. And then you're like, oh damn, okay. I better like say things, write things or be careful. And I think, yeah, I mean, it's even little things right now where I'm like, I used to be very casual about things. And then I realized people actually take it very seriously. I was like, I'll be like, oh, I think we should go do this. And suddenly like five people are working on it. And I kind of did not mean that. Yeah, you say, oh, that's kind of interesting. Then you find out, wait, like 10 people went for a year to go like, because I said, oh, I thought it was interesting. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Like, that's a bad idea. Yeah, you gotta come check, right? Yeah, yeah. So that's when you realize that like the price that you must pay as a part of that is be a lot more deliberate about what you are saying and what you want done. And I think sort of that's when I've had to flip from like, these aren't my friends. I mean, they're really nice people, but they are looking up to me. And so I need to be more careful and more thoughtful about everything I'm like saying and doing it. But it just didn't occur to me to like, things were just happening. And then I'd be like, oh my God, that was not at all the intent. I'm thinking of a quote I heard read once that said, leaders are like eagles. They don't flock. Is that, you know, I was thinking about what you just now said about, you know, how you had to be careful, they're not your friends. You know, is leadership lonely? Extremely. I would say very lonely. I think, I mean, I don't want to say leadership. I feel like my current job, I'm very lonely. And it's one of those, one of those like active things to spend time on like making sure I have built some relationships to make that happen. I think some of it is like everyone is also busy, right? So like, you can't tell all your doubts to people who report, who look up to you. But like the other people you would share those with are very busy taking care of their people. And so you end up being, yeah, I would say. Yeah, it's something we observe a lot with the CEOs and our portfolios. We own a bunch of different companies. And one of the biggest challenges is a lot of leaders are facing similar challenges, particularly now. Obviously there's stress related to the pandemic, a lot of culture related questions in the workplace, a lot of thinking through the world is changing like so fast and it weighs on people heavily. And what you find is people are so lonely and they're carrying all this burden themselves. And there's really nobody to talk to other than people are going through it similarly, right? So you do have to find similarly situated people that with enough time to be able to get some back and forth, otherwise you really do run into the risk of feeling like you're by yourself flying alone, which is not great, obviously. I know I've been looking at this side of the room so I wanna come over here. Go ahead. Hi, I'm Tia, I'm a sophomore and I'm studying physical science and math. And so my question is kind of a two point question. The first one is that when you were in college and looking back on your college, wait, are you everything you envisioned you would be right now? And if not, how did you deal with the idea of changing your plan and like overcoming to make it something else and not just like shortening the growth in yourself? So that's my question. Changing your plan. Oh yeah, I'm a big fan of that. I came to Mount Holyoke to major in astrophysics. So actually one of the reasons I left, so in India I actually could do really good well in computer science. So like there's a lot of technical colleges but one of my motivations for coming to the United States was to get to a liberal arts degree but also like study astrophysics. And I did actually, I'm minor in astronomy so I did like study astronomy in college but I feel like I'm almost like a year in plans already changed. So it was pretty sort of like plans will change. I would say, I don't know. I mean, I think like today's young people I feel like think a lot further ahead. I had only thought of like I need to pay back those student loans and I just need a job that will let me, that was the extent of my plan. So to some extent like I hadn't thought it all out and I feel very grateful for where I am today but it was like no part of it. Like I hadn't like thought that far out. So maybe that's how I didn't worry about change. Yeah, I feel the same way. I feel today's graduates are under a lot more pressure to define what it is they wanna do to, I think very early. And I see a lot of people getting caught in what I would say a little bit of a cul-de-sac early on in their careers where they get stuck on a particular path because it was either the easiest one or the most logical one or the most rewarded one from the LinkedIn profile, et cetera, et cetera. As opposed to thinking through, do what am I good at? And you really only know what you're good at when you get into the workforce because it's all relative to somebody else, right? And so I think it's really important to just always be, I always was questioning, I would always look at my boss's boss's boss and say, do I wanna do what this person is doing? And if the answer was no, then I knew I would never, I would not be there for the long haul. And then the next question was, what are the skills that I need to get in this role? And every year, I have an anniversary, I still do this to this day. Every year, same anniversary, I say, have I accomplished basically everything I think I can accomplish at this place? Have I learned everything that I'm starting to see the same thing over and over again, two, three, four times? And if I am, I really have to force myself to say, I think it's time to move on. And you really have to create that structure in your mind because it's very easy to get just on a conveyor belt. And whether you stick with what you're doing because you love it or you don't, at least you've had this check-in about what you're enjoying, what you're good at. I wanna echo what Mona said. I feel like when I was in college, I assumed like career and life growth is linear, right? Like it's a straight line and must go up to the right. And then you realize in reality, people who have accomplished a lot, their parts are rarely linear, right? It'll go up, take a twist and come back, right? And if you're not comfortable with that, it'll be harder, like the local minima problem is like absolutely there. And so I think just to take a step back, most people's career in the world is not linear and that's okay. I know we have another question in the front row. You hit your hand up earlier. Yeah, I did. My name is Ramon, so when you shared your program and I'm a senior majoring in international relations. And one question that has kind of long, but it's more like if you're going to like the workforce with like certain values or beliefs that like, you know, like they won't change, right? How is it like navigating like the setting we have to make to compromise that, especially being like from marginalized communities, like you are more like just looked at and watched. So is it hard to like just set boundaries on those beliefs or values that you have and like not having to compromise it to advance in your career? Or like how hard is it to like not lose yourself in the leadership dream? Yeah, I mean, I think this is actually very important and very serious question because the reality is in the workforce, just in life generally, you're going to compromise a lot because you're meeting people halfway and any workspace you're in, any relationship you're in, any interaction with other human beings, right? You're kind of trying to meet people halfway and find common ground or not or identify whether there is common ground or not. And in the workplace, obviously the stakes are higher because you have a job, et cetera, et cetera. So, but the way I've always seen it is there are red line elements and then there are other things where people live their lives differently, et cetera, et cetera. The good thing I think about at least the United States today and certainly global if you do end up doing global work is I think people are much more accepting of difference than when I first went into the workforce. There's not an automatic assumption of assimilation to a particular way of being and I do feel like there's more value seen in a diverse perspective than there used to be. And so, but there are certain red line things where if those are crossed, you just can't feel comfortable in the workplace, right? And you have to get yourself out of a situation and I would say, you know, you're truly miserable and you feel like this is really eating at the fundamental identity of who I am. It's making you really, really unhappy and Chancellor, you're not going to be that successful in that gig anyway, right? And if you're not going to change it, then the question is am I going to try to change it and we're going to go do something else? That's also a really hard decision, right? So, but mainly to stay true to yourself is the way I wait at that really core, like what's a red line thing as opposed to what's, you know, in the gray area. I totally echo that. I mean, I think do not, well, my safe answer is do not take jobs where you think there's a chance that there will be a red line that you will be uncomfortable with because it is a lot to deal with. And personally, there are lots of jobs out there that don't have that red line. And I feel like any organization that has that is not worth my time and I'm like cool with that. But at the same time, if you are in an organization that does a lot of good, but is also doing things that are challenging, I think you have to ask yourself if you have the stamina to drive through that change because it's never going to be fast or it's never going to be easy. It's probably worth it, but you'll have to really dig in and be like, I am ready and willing to make this happen because of I believe in all the rest that that organization is doing. And then once you compute the ROI and you're like, I can do it, then more power to you. But there are moments where I'm like, well, there's no way I'm going to go be a part of that organization and there's other things that I better use of my time. And I really want to thank you both for being available to this audience and to those who will see the video this afternoon. Just thank you so much for your generosity of time and effort. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.