What It Looks Like to Show Up as a Leader When Life Throws a Wrench
On 9/8/2023, I officially started my third year on the Tableau Social Ambassadors team with all the social media fanfare and kudos from my peers. I was ready to pilot out my first podcast in 2 weeks and had lots of fun ideas to implement by identifying areas of growth for women undergoing mid-career shifts. Despite being 7.5 months pregnant and feeling like a miniature beluga, I was more energized than ever on the next phase of my career evolution.
Four days later, on 9/12, I was rushed to INOVA Fairfax hospital from my 34 week prenatal checkup because I had repeat BP readings north of 150/90.
Three hours later, my doctors would give me the diagnosis, preeclampsia with severe features. I would have to have my second child the next day, 6 weeks earlier than planned, and would not be able to move from my hospital bed due to the magnesium/anti-stroke medications.
I’ll refrain on the details of what happened next but let’s just say baby girl decide to flip bum down and sent me into a stat c-section. Not cool, Athena.
I would spend six more days at the hospital battling swinging blood pressure (seeing scary scary numbers), countless tests, and being wheeled up and down from the postpartum unit to the NICU to see my daughter. I laughed slightly with the postpartum nursing staff (who, by the way, were some of the best humans ever) that I was in BP Prison. I’m pretty sure I watched The Birdcage three times on my Kindle to make me feel better, because yeah, it sucked. Athena would end up spending the next twenty days growing and feeding at two NICUs.
I walked out of the hospital crying because I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out alive and also saddened that I needed to leave her there.
Needless to say I had a wild year as a second time mom but also as a community leader. I wrote this post as the Tableau Ambassador nomination window is coming to a close. I hesitated even until the last day to self-nominate because how I showed up this year was VERY different than previous years. I even hesitated on hitting “publish” on this post because it seemed very un-Christina like to talk about something *very* personal and not career-focused.
But guess what? Life happened this year and I was living in that aftermath. I was selective in how I valued my time this year and some outputs below are a snapshot at what I was able to highlight in my nomination:
- I answered Slack questions (both technical and career-related) at random intervals while I was pumping and feeding for the Women in Data Viz, Moms Who Viz, and Career Pathmakers communities.
- I signed up to be an Iron Viz Qualifier judge (both standard and student editions) and reviewed vizzes around the clock whenever I was mildly awake.
- Giving frequent feedback when asked on product features and ideas with the Tableau community and dev teams where it made practical sense with my actual work. For example, I contributed as a test subject for some of Tableau Research team’s text usage studies.
- Spoke at Tableau Conference to over 140 attendees on a women in data + AI career panel. I had several individuals across generations and genders, come to me afterwards or online to share how much they appreciated seeing someone like them on stage that didn’t fit the typical career path and managed to carve out a new role for themselves.
- I continued to moderate 4 Datafam Career Pathmakers Transition sessions, two of which were held while I was on maternity leave. I was often juggling a cranky and hungry Athena in the background.
Could I have done more? Probably yes. I had every intention of doing a data viz series on Early American women along with my new podcast. The new podcast hasn’t sunset yet, but I just don’t know where to find the time at this point with figuring out when I can get time to breathe between managing a rising kindergartner, baby, career, husband, and oh, maybe some time to seek out the dark forces (but mostly 70%+ cacao bars, Negronis, and vintage).
The main intention of sharing my story is that I wanted to show that strong leadership can show vulnerability. It took several women (Brittany Rosenau, Emily DePadua, Kate Brown) in the community to not scare me off from self-nomination this year because I looked at what I did with the lens of “I barely did anything.” I often feel icky about self-nomination even when I am in my usual spirit so this felt especially terrifying this time around.
In a year when survival and my health was more important than gaining followers or likes, I needed to accept that asking for help and doing what I could was miraculous and a gift.
Christina, you are enough.