Unseen Battles

I am one of those people who are perpetually trying to lose weight. For as far back as I can remember, “lose 20 lbs” has made my new years resolution list every year. My reason is simple - I want to look and feel better. I want my clothes to fit better. There is enough research to show that losing weight would help me live a longer and healthier life. So I have tried to change my “why” for losing weight to becoming healthier. But the truth is that what motivates me to get off the couch is the hope that one day I will fit into my favorite top from 2013 that I have not had the heart to throw away. What helps me reach out for an apple over ice cream is my old picture as a senior in college when I was my ideal weight. Even though I should lose weight for health reasons, I realize that I have a much higher chance of success if I were to stick to my “why”.

In this episode, Erika Ferszt, an advertising exec and an entrepreneur talks about how she learned the value of sticking to her conviction, of not forgetting her why.

Moodally founder Erika Ferszt was raised in New York City. In her 20+ year career in advertising, she has won over 70 awards for her work, most notably in her role as the Global Advertising, Media & Digital Director at Ray-Ban. In 2015, Erika was hospitalized after suffering stress-related vision loss and became interested in studying the impacts of burnout on employees. Putting her successful career on pause, she completed Post Grad studies in the Neuroscience of Mental Health. Erika combined insights from these educational pursuits with her previous work as a high-ranking ad executive to create Moodally. Moodally offers extensively researched training courses that help employees combat workplace stress through the day-to-day management of their mood. Recently selected as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Ventures, she looks forward to sharing her vision with the world and helping organizations remove work-related stressors and effectively manage stress. Erika lives in Milan with her 15 year old daughter Isabel and their rescue cat Zoe. She loves rock music, travelling, throwing dinner parties for friends, and great conversation. Her primary form of meditation is baking.

Connect with her on LinkedIn. You can also follow Erika at moodally.wellness on Instagram. Erika also hosts free Lunch & Learn presentation on "Mood 101; Everything you didn't know you need to know about your mood." for companies that are interested.

If you have any comments about the episode or would like to share your own story, you can share them here.

“Before you climb the ladder, make sure it’s leaning up against the right building.”

-Steven Covey

Until a few years ago, I had not taken the time to think about what that “right building” looked like for me. Most of my career decisions have been based on goals that were defined by my middle class upbringing - money, title, stability and prestige. For a long time, this did not bother me. I was able to compartmentalize work and get fulfillment through my relationships and hobbies outside of it. But as I have grown in my career, work has has taken up more rom not just on my calendar, but also of my headspace. And the details I was able to leave behind earlier - what my day to day looks like, the kind of problems I solve for and the culture at work are a much larger part of my life, and play a significant role in determining my happiness. While I still don’t know exactly what the “right building” looks like, it is something I am actively working on.

So I was delighted to discover that my good friend, Jen Stefanski, has given this some thought. In this episode, Jen shares her career journey and how she learned to make professional decisions based on the life she wanted. Through the years, her career moves have been guided by personal needs even more so than professional wants, and this has been her recipe for success and happiness. As Maya Angelou said: “I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life.”

Jennifer Stefanski serves as Product Counsel at SurveyMonkey, and previously held Product Counsel roles with PayPal and eBay. She began her career at Blank Rome, LLP as an associate in the Intellectual Property and Technology practice group. She is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Pennsylvania State University. She also teaches a communications course at Santa Clara Law School as a co-instructor for their High Tech Law program’s titled How Engineers, Businesspeople and Lawyers Communicate With Each Other. Jen also serves on the Board of Aerie Africa, a U.S.-based non-profit, dedicated to providing a home for orphaned and vulnerable children in the southern region of Ethiopia. https://aerieafrica.org/

Connect with her on LinkedIn.

If you have any comments about the episode or would like to share your own story, you can share them here.

If you are anything like me, you have FOMO when not invited to meetings with execs. But at the same time, when you are invited to present, you find yourself falling apart. I suffered through this no-win situation for a while. In retrospect, I realized that I was I putting too much stock in what presenting to senior audiences meant for my product and career. But I am working on reframing presenting to execs as partnering with execs to get to a common goal. Thinking of it as a partnership rather than as an opportunity to impress removes the pressure to “perform” and I can actually be myself.

I was really glad to find my friend, Christa Johnson-Perkins, had a similar journey herself. In this episode, Christa shares a key presentation from her career that did not go as planned, and important lessons that she walked away with.

Christa has spent over 15 years in the EdTech industry, engaging in product management and marketing roles around products that support learners of all ages. From Rosetta Stone to K12 to the makers of the GMAT exam, she helps companies build and market products that delight and (with luck!) change the world just a little. She earned a B.A. in Psychology from the College of William and Mary, and an M.Ed. in International Education from George Washington University. Her COVID hobbies have been primarily planning a new home build in Virginia and pursuing an Executive MBA at Columbia Business School.

Connect with her on LinkedIn.

If you have any comments about the episode or would like to share your own story, you can share them here.

Last year I decided to build a Twitter following, except I couldn’t figure out what I should post about. I gave up after a few weeks of half-hearted attempt, mostly retweeting (although I did have one original tweet about Indian Matchmaking that I am quite proud of). As of today I have 19 followers on Twitter. You can be the 20th by following me @FindParul.

In contrast, Shruti Kapoor has around 12k followers on Twitter. In talking to her, I realized that she had the obstacles that I did - having to figure out her niche, getting over the feeling of "but I am not an expert”, and the fear of rejection. However, in spite of these fears, Shruti got started and kept going. In this episode, she shares her experience of building an industry brand - writing her first article, giving her first talk and finding her support squad.

Shruti is a Senior Software Engineer at PayPal and works on the Checkout product. She spends a considerable amount of time on her JavaScript and GraphQL side projects, speaking at conferences and meetups internationally, writing blogs and articles for the developer community. She livestreams coding work sessions on Twitch where she invites folks to bring their side hustle and work together in Pomodoro focused sessions to keep each other motivated and accountable. You can often find her tweeting DevJokes on Twitter: shrutikapoor08.

You can also connect with Shruti on Twitch, LinkedIn or read her blog posts on GitHub.

You can find my talk about conflict that I refer to in the episode here.

If you have any comments about the episode or would like to share your own story, you can share them here.

I am addicted to praise, to validation. But it also means that criticism, no matter how small, bothers me. It took me a long time to realize that if I were to measure my value based on what others thought of me, I would be forever be riding a rollercoaster of emotions. Now I am learning to rely more on my self-evaluation. While I still enjoy a compliment (especially if it is related to the podcast), and a criticism still makes me sad, I try not to spend much time mulling over either.

In this episode, Alexandria (Alex) Carroll, shares her story of being told that her experience was not good enough and how she she found the conviction to say “Yes, it is”. Do not miss this great conversation with Alex where she shares her lessons learned on how to filter feedback and not personalize someone’s opinion.

Alex is an entrepreneurial strategy and operations leader whose career spans tech, consumer retail, and investment banking. Her startup experience includes founding License to Drift, a leisure travel planning assistant, and executing growth team initiatives at future of work startup Undock. She has also mentored retail tech startups through XRC Labs, VentureOut, and RetailXSeries. Alex honed her business acumen at leading multinational companies such as Global Brands Group/Li & Fung, Perry Ellis International, and Goldman Sachs. She holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Stanford University and an MBA with Honors from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. You can connect with Alex on LinkedIn. On Twitter, she is @xmisscarroll.

If you have any comments about the episode or would like to share your own story, you can leave it here.

When I look at the career decisions I made in my 20s, they seem rather haphazard. Instead of moving towards a career goal, my career decisions were motivated by either avoiding boredom or getting out of unpleasant experiences. I learned the art of setting career goals for myself and finding opportunities to support those goals late in life.

In her unseen battle, Ronke shares her story of how she learned the importance of making career decisions based on finding opportunities rather than running away from problems. Ronke made the mistake of taking on a role because she was trying to run away from something, and what followed was a period of being treated like an outsider. But instead of letting this experience demotivate her, Ronke marched ahead with conviction until she found a place that felt like home. Do not miss this fascinating story!

You can learn more about Ronke and connect with her on LinkedIn. I would highly recommend her blog post on how she dealt with the pandemic and the civil unrest of 2020. Ronke is going to be speaking at Product School about guiding principles to be a great PM. Reserve yourself a spot here!

If you have any comments about the episode or would like to share your own story, please share them here.

What keeps me up at night is not the things I have failed at, but the ones where I chickened out and did not even try. In retrospect, I could have gotten where I am today sooner had I taken more risks instead of taking myself out of the running.  The next time, I find myself tempted to self-reject, I hope I will remember the story of Andrea’s unseen battle.  

Andrea has made some bold decisions in her life, like moving from her homeland, Colombia, to Switzerland to build a new life for herself and her family.  However, when it came to starting her career in a new country and in a new language, Andrea was convinced that her education and background wouldn't be good enough. But in spite of these fears, she tried anyway and this show of courage, changed the trajectory of her life.

You can learn more about Andrea and connect with her on LinkedIn.

If you have feedback about the episode or would like to share a story where you decided to take yourself out of the running (or decided to go for it instead!), please leave a comment here.

If you are someone who feels like you are not qualified to be where you are, and to make up for it you are forever chasing perfection (perfect code, perfect presentation, perfect home), this episode is for you. As I work on this podcast, my first one, I have to constantly remind myself that I am as qualified to do this as many other podcast hosts out there, and while my first attempt probably will not be perfect, it will be a creation of love and passion. So it was comforting to see that someone I look up to faces the same battles. 

Clemence Tiradon is one of the best public speakers I know and someone I have learned a lot from.  So I was surprised to hear the story of her unseen battle where  when given the opportunity to do an important presentation at work, she felt inadequate and unsure of herself. I loved her admission that while she knows nothing is perfect, she is still a perfectionist.  

You can watch Clemence’s award winning talk about biases here (highly recommended!).

You can also learn more about Clemence on her personal website or connect with her on LinkedIn.

If you have feedback about the episode, or would like to share your own stories of impostor syndrome or chasing perfection, please share them with me by leaving a comment here.

If after announcing your pregnancy at work, you noticed that people were treating you differently (and no, I don’t mean just giving up their seats for you, I mean treating you as someone who matters less), you are not alone.  Maternal bias or motherhood bias, also known as maternal wall, is a real thing.

In this episode, Lauren Chan Lee, a product leader, speaker and mentor, shares her story of announcing her pregnancy to her manager and realizing that this news would somehow forever alter how she is perceived at work.  

Lauren is an accomplished writer and speaker.  You can read her blog and watch the short, inspirational Friday Flash videos on her website:

https://www.laurenchanlee.com/

I wanted to share my favorite posts from Lauren’s blog:

New Year’s Resolution Part 1

 3 things first graders are beating us at

If you have feedback about the episode, or would like to share your unseen battle related to maternal bias, you can leave a comment here.

For women in tech, the path to success can be confusing and challenging.  What should be my brand?  What opportunities should I go after?  Should I push back on my manager?  Should I stay or leave? What if I make the wrong decision?  Have you ever wondered how other successful people know what the right answers are? The truth is they don’t.  Even though we often feel alone in our struggles and failures, fear and ambivalence are  universal experiences. Every successful person, every successful career is built on a series of such unseen battles.

Every two weeks,  we will hear from interesting, smart and successful people about an unseen battle from their careers  - dealing with rejection, working with a difficult manager, being a working parent - whatever their struggle was. We will hear about their motivations, fears and learnings. Their stories will leave you feeling hopeful, inspired and confident.

Parul Goel is a woman in tech, a product leader and a keynote speaker.  Having been through her own struggles and failures, she knows how lonely the experience is.  Her mission to remind herself and others that we are not alone in our struggles. Every successful career is built on a series of such unseen battles.  Tune in for you bi-weekly dose of hope and inspiration.