Why Immigrants Cannot Succeed as Easily in the US: Introducing Zaka
Imagine being an adolescent or young adult and your parents decide to move to the United States from your home country. You will need to adapt to a new culture, new goals to align with established education and career systems and perhaps adopt new aspirations to survive economically in your new environment.
How do you maintain your sense of purpose in this huge life change and establish a sense of belonging? How do you build community to help assimilate while maintaining your culture in a country where diversity has yet to be completely embraced? How can you succeed when media portrayal and perception of the immigrant community is often negative, blaming them for societal issues.
These are a few of the challenges of First and Second Generation Americans who are seeking community, mentorship, education and strategy to reach their career goals and inspiration to make their diversity work for them. To fulfill this need, I’d like to introduce to you, Zaka.
Though representation of Black and Brown leaders is still a work in progress, several companies globally and across the United States have immigrant leaders and C-Level executives who are driving impact across their industries. These immigrant leaders endured the same challenges younger generation or new immigrants are facing today.
Instead of spending more time and energy learning their industries in isolation, even working in roles much more junior than their qualifications or potential, what if they had the personal and professional support and guidance from similar leaders to help them attain their goals? What if they had a strategic blueprint, access and real examples of leaders who look like them? What if they had mentorship from people who can relate to their culture, journey, fears and deep desire to create their version of the American dream? How would that impact their access and inspiration?
Zaka is a platform that will share the journeys and stories of successful immigrants and help inspire fellow immigrants in their pursuit of the American dream.
Underrepresented minorities experience specific challenges that can inhibit their ability to advance and access opportunities to create their dream careers. Zaka was created from my personal and professional experience and the shared challenges of most immigrants including lack of representation, impactful mentorship and inspiration. Zaka is providing the necessary resources to these communities.
Though I felt these challenges in the last 15+ years of my professional journey as a Marketing and Content Acquisition leader across various industries, it became crystal clear in one of my most recent roles. After investing 5 years and successfully generating over $50 million of revenue for an entertainment company and realizing how an OTT platform that I ideated and launched sold for $1.5 million, I understood that my voice mattered and my ideas held significant value. I wondered, “why didn’t my proven success and accomplishments result in the executive roles and compensation I deserved?” and “why didn’t I advocate for myself more?”
Years later, these questions still consumed me and I realized that my experience is shared with most communities of color. Immigrants and underrepresented minorities often feel challenges including feeling like they don’t have a voice, being contained in a box that does not create an environment for their full potential, bringing their authentic selves to work and lack of seeing individuals who look like them in leadership positions.
As an advocate of unity and positivity, I have been blessed to build relationships with people who share similar views, including my partners, Circe and Francois. Circe and Francois have inspired me to step into my truth to become the leader that I was born to be.
As three individuals who immigrated to the United States at a young age and had to figure out how to create our version of the “American Dream” through trial and error, all while immersing into American culture and maintaining our own culture, a clear path towards attaining our professional and person vision was unclear. Do well in school, get into a great college, get a good job and make an honest living would not be enough for us to thrive in this world or position us to use our talents and capabilities to attain our dream. This is a reality for all people of color who have been underserved, marginalized and adversely affected. Moving into our careers, we further realized the reality that our diverse, cultural backgrounds were not considered an advantage; rather, they were ignored or often taken advantage of.
What would have helped us understand our potential, learn from similar-background immigrant leaders who attained success and reach for more than what was expected of minorities would have been having access to a platform like Zaka.
In 2020 in the height of social and racial injustice conversations, people of all backgrounds got a glimpse of the many challenges underrepresented minorities face in their personal and professional lives, a topic that is often stifled.
This is where Zaka comes in. Zaka bridges the gap between the career advancement obstacles underrepresented minorities face and their vision for success by providing career advancement content, mentorship, mindfulness and learn from the journeys of top, global, minority leaders while providing them an environment of inclusivity.
I invite you to join our community, provide your input and recommend which minority leaders you want to learn from. We are surrounded by heroes everywhere we go from our teachers, our farmers, lawyers etc and to our small business owners, chefs and fitness trainers. Let’s not be blinded by a blue check mark, number of followers or the dollar signs in your bank account. We all have different goals and dreams. We should not feel embarrassed or unworthy if what inspires you is not glamourized. Zaka will be a safe, authentic and vulnerable space for our community.
Please follow us on social media @zakaconnect, check out our podcast feed, Zaka, on your favorite podcast provider and share zakaconnect.comwith your networks.
We thank you in advance for supporting our mission to create lasting impact for first and second generation immigrants.
Greg Maurice
Founder
