4 Questions with Rissy La Touche
1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I am a Black woman of Jamaican and Grenadian descent, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and I’m part of the first-generation of my family to be born in the USA.
Professionally, I’m a storyteller focused on brand and marketing strategy, and I’m currently on sabbatical as I seek opportunities to move my career to Amsterdam.
For fun, you can usually find me cycling around Brooklyn, doing tricks in an aerial hoop, or curled up with a book.
2. How did you get into STEM?
My road to STEM was a bumpy one.
As a junior high student, I tested into one of the top high schools in New York City, Brooklyn Technical High School. As a child I’d always wanted to be an astronaut, and with the privilege of attending a well-funded public school with majors, I chose to study Mechanical-Electrical Engineering.
I was later accepted to Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as an Industrial Engineering major, and was one of two Black women in my entire program. When I failed out two years in, I believed it was because I didn’t belong.
Not only was there was no one else who looked like me at that point, but I always came back to one instance in which I mustered up the courage to ask a clarifying question in Physics, and the teacher responded in front of the entire class: “I don’t understand why you don’t understand this.” In short, I thought I was stupid.
Later, I found out that failing out of RIT was par for the course. Fast forward a bit, I was re-admitted to RIT and chose to study Advertising and Public Relations instead. I took my first job at an advertising agency, working as a strategy analyst on the launch of Motorola’s first smartphone under the ownership of Google. After six months in that role, I jumped ship to my first tech company.
Six years in, I’ve worked in tech my whole career, touching the payments, consumer tech, food delivery, film, and gaming industries, and have picked up skills across analytics, performance marketing, content production, and brand. I’m a jill-of-all-trades, and a master of many.
3. What’s a challenge you’ve faced, and how did you get through it?
The biggest challenge I’ve faced in my career has been being a Black woman.
Don’t get me wrong — my identity as a first-generation, Caribbean-American woman is part of what makes me such a strong marketer. I navigate cultures with ease, even when I’ve never encountered them before. Growing up in a Caribbean household, attending schools with a diverse population across the African Diaspora, going to work with your mom who nannies for upper-middle class white families, attending a high school with 5,000 students from all over NYC, attending a primarily white university, and then joining the ranks of corporate America will teach you how to be a chameleon.
However, a few weeks ago, I realized that I’ve never interviewed across the table from another Black person, save for a recruiter. I’ve worked with exactly two Black marketers over the course of my six-year career. And that’s tough.
I’ve dealt with racism, doubt, and countless challenges over the course of my career. But I care about people, I care about spreading positivity, I care about paving the way for other people who look like me, and I absolutely LOVE to tell stories. I hope to be across the table from them one day. So I don’t give up.
My best friend once said, “Rissy, you have a way of bending the universe to your will.” Every time I even think about giving up, I remember that I’m powerful.
If not me, who?
4. What’s something you’ve done that you are immensely proud of?
I built the entire content program for Caviar, the food delivery service, from scratch.
I went from not knowing how to spend money — the first budget I was ever handed was $9k, and I was BIG scared — to allocating an $800k quarterly budget.
I went from not knowing the difference between a director and producer to creating an entire, and might I add successful, video series with the support of an absolutely amazing team. (Here’s where I shout out Lisa Yadao!) I started as a social media manager and came to command the power of a nationally distributed content program, and I had so much fun.
I’m very excited to see what the future holds.
