Here’s the tea from holding my own Virtual Coffee Chat ☕️
How does one find a group of four professional women with amazing careers in the tech space to get together for a video chat? I’m still in awe of how I, a self-proclaimed antisocial socialite, was able to do this myself.
Here’s how I met these women and why I knew they would be perfect for this event. I’d also like to share my takeaways from attempting something out of my comfort zone, as someone more on the introverted side of the spectrum. I hope this will inspire someone else like me to do something similar.
Last year I embarked on a mission to get a Technical Program Manager role at a top tech company. As you can imagine that requires a lot of networking. And I met some amazing women through the process.
I connected with two women in particular who really stood out to me. The first was Ann Vu, who works at Peloton. I met her through a connection I made on the women in tech networking site, Elpha. I’m forever thankful that Ann is so understanding after I totally messaged her asking about the wrong company <insert facepalm> 🤦🏽♀️ After getting over that embarrassment and actually speaking to Ann, she not only told me about her experience working at Peloton but she gave me some excellent career advice. After our first conversation, I knew she was someone I would want to keep in touch with.
Because I was learning to put myself out there for my job search, Janisa Anandamohan came across one of my cries for help in a Facebook group. Janisa works with cloud infrastructure which is closely related to my data center expertise. Not to mention she has an impressive career, having worked at Microsoft, Facebook, and now Spotify and she wants to pay it forward. I’m forever thankful to Janisa and Ann for their willingness to help me out during my job search.
Camille White-Stern grabbed my attention in a black woman in tech Facebook group. She asked something like “Who wants to chat about finding more fulfillment in their life”. Here I was unemployed after being laid off in the midst of a pandemic, so I was like me me meeeee. What can I say about Camille? She’s the total package. She’s a fulfillment coach and focuses on mindfulness. She also works alongside the CEO at Splash, the events marketing platform, after previously working in the music industry. Super cool, right? I went through her program, got super vulnerable <cringe>, found some healing, set some goals up with her help, then asked her to join me for the virtual coffee chat.
I met Tania Feliz through my boyfriend, who went to college with her. It’s a cool thing when you get along with your partner’s friends. Even better when they’re kickass women working in the tech space. She was recently promoted to Director of Program Management at the Wall Street Journal. She is also gracious enough to help me out with a strategy for Tech and the City. She’s a big believer in passing on lessons that you may have learned the hard way on your own. I hope to see some type of publication from her on that topic one day.
So here are my main takeaways from hosting the session:
Work through your nerves.
Talking one on one is not a problem for me, add just one more person and my voice starts shaking, my thoughts spiral, it’s not cute. But what ultimately made me feel better is that I had the courage to step out of my comfort zone and that what I put together was awesome.
It’s okay to be silent and take it all in.
Earlier in the day, my horoscope alluded to this. It was something along the lines of holding space vs being a part of the conversation, and that it’s okay to just pick one. Guess what? Your girl still tried to do both.
I’m still not able to watch the recording because I cringe thinking about my rambling. I wonder if Oprah felt like this when she started out. 🤔 I’m not saying to not talk if you don’t have something to add to the convo but don’t talk just for the sake of it. No one will question your intelligence or judge you for just listening. I felt like I wasn’t able to fully articulate my points. What helped is that the other women literally said a lot of what I was thinking and they said it so well.
3. Your perceived shortcomings can be an opportunity to improve.
I am definitely my own worst critic. I later spoke to Camille who said I didn’t even sound noticeably nervous. However, the fact that I perceive that my performance wasn’t up to par leads me to want to keep trying to do better next time. Also, the fact that I want to get better, lets me know this is something I’m passionate about and that I should keep going.
I might be a little shy, I might be introverted, but one thing I am not is a quitter. Just because I didn’t perform the way I hoped isn’t a reason to give up. If anything it’s an opportunity for God to work on me.