Empowering the Next Generation
Based on an episode with Odalys Jasmine 🇭🇳
Welcome to Latinx in Power, a podcast aiming to help to demystify tech, the way we do that is by interviewing Latinx and Caribbean leaders all over the world to hear their perspective and insights.
Odalys Jasmine (she/her) is a highly talented Latina storyteller who has made it her mission to write and tell human-centric stories from a diverse and inclusive perspective. Her dedication to sharing the unique experiences of first-gen Latinx and immigrants has led her to create Hella Latin@, a dynamic platform that gives voice to underrepresented communities and promotes cultural understanding.
As Content Strategy Partner for the Americas at TikTok, Odalys continues to leverage her storytelling expertise to drive meaningful engagement and build bridges across cultures. She recognizes the transformative power of storytelling and understands how it can help people to connect with one another, find common ground, and gain a deeper sense of empathy and understanding.
In this episode, Odalys shared her insights on the importance of owning your story and the impact that it can have on your life and the lives of those around you. She will inspire listeners to embrace their unique experiences and perspectives, to share their stories with pride and authenticity, and to use their voices to create positive change in the world.
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Do you have a favorite childhood memory?
This is kind of reckless of a story, but I’ve always gravitated toward my brothers. I’m a big family person. I have a big family. I’m the youngest of seven. My favorite childhood memories were always with my brothers, because it was always something going on.
There was one thing that they loved doing and it was playing football or soccer in the house when my parents were gone. When my parents were there, they were like, “Don’t play in the house. No, you can’t do it.” But when they were gone, my older brothers were in charge and they were like, “Oh, we’re going to play soccer. We’re going to play football.”
I was la mas chiquita, the little one. I would just pretend and try to play with them. There’s this one moment, my favorite childhood memory. We were playing football and I was playing quarterback, and I threw the ball, and it hit a frame that was our family frame, and it was huge, and it broke the frame. The frame just fell and all the glass shattered all on the floor. My brother was so mad at me and he’s like, “Okay, everyone, we’re going to clean this up. We’re going to hang up the picture again, like, they might not know.” It was so funny. We cleaned it up. They were doing everything. Of course, I was crying, because I got in trouble. We hung up the frame. No glass, it was just the picture.
My parents came home and we thought they didn’t notice. My mom was like, “Yes. Okay, what is this, like, what happened?” We were like, “Oh, no.” It was just my favorite bonding time with my brothers. It was always something funny happening with them.
My oldest brother always knew exactly what to do, like, “Okay, you do this, you do that.” I was sitting on the couch actually, I didn’t really do anything. I was just crying because I’m like, “Kevin yells at me.” It’s so funny. Just funny memories.
What does it mean to be a Latina for you?
Oh, being a Latina means having this undeniable sazon and fire. I think being a Latina means being this really strong character that has so much love inside. I feel like every Latina I’ve met, even you, right, I don’t know if you identify as a Latina. I know Brazil. It is part of the community. There’s something about meeting Latinos where you just feel like this warmth. I feel like there’s this presence and strength, but there’s this warmth at the same time. I feel like being a Latina is all of that. It’s the warmth, it’s the strength, it’s everything. So, that’s what it means to me.
It’s funny because I learned about the makeup of Latin America. I learned about the Caribbean nature, the Central American experience, the Brazilian experience, the South American experience. We really started to dive deeper into the history and the definitions of Hispanic versus Latino. That’s what I do now. It’s my jam. What’s funny is I had a best friend who I just told you about, who I met in college, and I thought she was Latina. So, I started speaking to her in Spanish. She’s like, “I’m Brazilian. I don’t know Spanish, but I’d love to learn.” We just had very similar experiences. She was one of those other first gen Latinas that was really vulnerable about her story from Brazil to hear, the immigration story, what she’s been through, how hard she has to work. We bonded so much over shared experience. It’s been so beautiful to learn this other side of Latinidad that they may not speak Spanish, but we all have the same shared experience, and struggle, and beauty, and culture, and there’s similarities and there’s differences, but it’s all very beautiful and centered on what I just explained, the warmth, the resilience, the strength, all of that is still part of everyone that’s part of Latin America. It’s very beautiful.
That’s why I started my podcast, because I think there’s so much that even our own community doesn’t know about each other’s cultures. I always make this joke. When I was younger, my friends that were Mexican were like, “Why do you say “vos”? Why don’t you say “tú”?” And I’m like, “Because that’s what Hondurans say. We say “vos”. I remember, I would always be asked, “Do you speak Mexican?” And my best friend who is Mexican, she would be like “She’s Honduran, okay? Get it right.” She would always defend me. We’re still best friends now, since kindergarten forever and she always jokes about it like, “I always defended you.” She was like “She doesn’t eat spicy food. She eats “platanos”, okay?” She would always tell people. It was so funny.
I think, what if she never met me? She would never know the Honduran experience. I always felt like it was my role, I guess, to tell people about what it meant to be Honduran, what we eat, what we listen to, “nostra musica”, our music. I was that person. I just wanted to educate people on what it meant to be, what it was like to be Hondurania. I feel like I wanted to just create a bigger platform, because I’m like, “I just can’t be the only Latina feeling like there’s no representation for her culture.” Then, you hear from Peruvians, you hear from Brazilians, and you hear from these folks on the podcast that talk about their experience of navigating identity when you don’t see it around you in the US.
Can you share with us a little bit how everything started?
Before the pandemic, I was working in a small business and I was wearing a lot of hats. I was doing workshops, doing events, doing communications, doing everything under the sun. One of the things I created in the role and I fell in love with was working with Hispanics serving institutes. So, working with San Jose State, working with a lot of first gen, black, and Latino students, and letting them know of the possibilities that we as a company can offer them. I was in a contracting agency. We were the middle person between these big tech companies and all this amazing talent.
I saw that there was a lack of diversity in our talent pool and I was like, “Um, can we get some color and sazon in here, because there’s no representation?” It’s not because the talent is not there, obviously. It’s because we’re not reaching those communities. So, I created this aspect of my role that I fell in love with. A part of what I do is I would go to these organizations, these schools, these universities, first gen orgs, and I would talk about the power of telling your story in an interview, outside of an interview, how to own your unique superpowers, which stem from your story. That was the work that I loved so much that students were reaching out to me wanting to do one on one sessions with me.
There were two things that happened. One, burnt out, because of a pandemic. It was a lot. Just going on the world and it impacted so much of my mental health and the people around me. And so, I was getting burnt out having this one-on-one conversation all the time with students. I was thinking, dreaming, “Is there a way to just have all these students in one room and I could just say it to everyone?” I was always finding myself connecting with them like, “Oh, you should reach out to that person. That person.” I used to call myself the plug. I may not know what you need, but I know someone who knows how to help you. And so, that was a lot of my work.
When the pandemic hit, the second thing that happened was all of that stuff that brought me a lot of joy was taken away. I was not going to the universities anymore. I wasn’t talking to students one on one in person. I was setting up these Zoom calls and the Zoom fatigue in 2020 was so real, like, you were on camera every single second of the day, and I was like, “Oh, my God, this is a lot for me.” I just stopped the work altogether and really focused on trying to just get my job done and spending time with my family, taking care of them.
What happened during the pandemic was I was starting to feel really unhappy in my role. I think it’s because the parts that really filled in my soul, my heart were taken away, and I was left with this work that was draining, if anything. What would bring me joy in those moments was spending time with my parents. Thaisa, how often do you ask your parents about their story, where do you come from, what were your struggles as a kid? Tell me about mi abuelito and abuelita?
At that moment, I spent a lot of time with my parents. I called it with them our “cafecito” which you’ll recognize from the actual podcast. We would sit down at the table, “com la prima”, people would just come over too, the cousin. It was just these moments where we talked about family stories. It’s a window into a museum of your family roots and where you came from, especially being born in the US and not immigrating over here. I don’t know what it was like to grow up in Honduras. I haven’t even been to Honduras. For me, I wanted to understand, “Where do I come from?”
I realized at that moment, “Do Latinos really even know about our own history? I never learned our own history,” so I clearly had a lot of time on my hands. I started listening to podcasts, I started reading books, I started watching TV about Spanish and Latino history. Not just my own family history, but Latinos in general. I came up with this idea because I was listening to a lot of podcasts. I was telling my dad one day, we were sitting down watching TV and I was like, “What if I create a podcast that had this vulnerability that Brene Brown has the storytelling, the vulnerability, but also is like a mix of Con Todo? Which is a Netflix podcast, Brown Love, it is called.” I told my dad, “What if it’s like this vulnerability, storytelling type of platform. It also has the sazon, the culture, the celebration, the beauty, the fun, and the vibes.
At Hella Latin@, we amplify the story of first generation and immigrant Latinos and their experience of navigating, identity, career, and all of that. My dad was all supportive. He’s like, “That sounds like a super cool idea.” He’s like, “You have to do it. You have to do it.” And so, that’s how it started. It started with me. The first episode is a 15 minute story about me telling everyone about where I come from, who I am, what it’s like to be Honduran American-Latina. It’s been 80 episodes, almost three years later. Yeah, it’s been a journey since.
Do you think this process of creating the podcast and having those conversations with your family was also a healing experience?
It was such a healing moment because to get really honest and vulnerable here, I had a lot of trouble with my mom. Me and my mom were the same exact person and we butt heads all the time. One thing that I think I resented my mom for a long time when I was younger, because my mom, I used to say she was emotionally unavailable to us, because she was.
Later on I started to understand. She was working three jobs, trying to provide for us. She was busy, she was tired, she was exhausted, cooking for us, cleaning for us, working three jobs while doing it all, and just dealing with life and trying to survive in a world that wasn’t or in a country that wasn’t really created for you. As a kid, you don’t understand, you don’t understand that as a kid. For me, I was just mad at my mom all the time. She’s like, “Oh, my God.” Every time I cry, she’s like, “No, Odalys, don’t cry.” I would hate it. I’m like, I’m a cry baby still.
My mom, Capricorn, is a Capricorn woman. She was like, “Stop crying. Stop crying. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. You don’t have a reason to cry.” She would always say those things to me. I think I internalized that as having shame of my tears and feelings, thinking if I show any feeling, if I cry, I’m weak, and I don’t want to be weak. And so, that was like a resentment I had against my mom without even realizing it and shoutout to therapy for helping me navigate that, but also talking to my mom and understanding all of the things that she went through.
I could cry now thinking about how my mom held that together for so long trying not to show us any sign of she’s sad, she’s tired, she’s weak. Instead, she was like, “No, let’s do this.” She bosses around all the time, but it was because she just wanted to have a beautiful family that was healthy, that had everything that they wanted, so she was willing to work her booty off to do it. I learned to just love my mom and see her for who she was and know whatever happened. As I was a kid, she also gave me so much. So, it was very healing. I still love having conversations with them. It actually changed my relationship with them for the better. I always call them my dad and my mom, my best friend, because they really are.
How is your process navigating your own identity in the United States?
What a loaded question. It’s funny, because I didn’t know what the term first generation meant until I went to college. I remember, me and my brother, him and I are the youngest, and we were the two that were born in the US. He was always, like, I don’t know how to say it in English, but he was very just too smart for his own good. He did really well in school, he was part of all these programs and extracurricular. He loved science, math. He loved all those things. I was very opposed to science, math, all of those things. I’m creative. I love writing, I love talking, I love making up these stories in my own head, and I love just listening to people talk. It sounds weird, but that’s what I loved.
When he went to school, I remember talking to him and I was like, “You know what? I don’t think I want to go to school. I think I want to move somewhere creative and be like an artist or something and a writer.” And he was like, “You’re crazy. You have to go to school.” He’s like, “You just have to go. At least have a degree because you can,” because literally, we’re the only two who can. And so, I think that’s the first time I started to feel pressure of, “Okay, I have a very different experience than our five other brothers and sisters who are immigrants.”
At the time, they were undocumented. At the time, there was no DACA. So, they didn’t have an opportunity to go to school and we didn’t have means for them to go to school, anyway. And so, my brother tells me, “Because you can.” It was like one of those first moments where I’m like, “Okay, I’m privileged. I have an opportunity to go to school. I’d be wasting it. I’d be doing a disservice to my family who don’t even have the option to go to school. It would be a disservice to them.” That was the first time I felt like I started to feel the pressure of being first generation.
When I applied to school, that was another moment, I didn’t know how to do the grants, the scholarships, the FAFSA. I was like, “What is this?” My brother at the time was in school, he was gone. And so, he was like, “You’ll figure it out.” My mom, this is my favorite story about my mom. This is who she was. If any story describes her, this is it. I was literally telling my mom like, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to apply for school. It’s expensive too. How do you do this?” She was like, “Oh, my God. You know what? I remember Tony, this guy, Tony, who helped your brother apply for school, let me call him.”
Literally, she calls him resourcefulness. It runs in our veins. So, she calls Tony, and she’s like, “Oh, yeah, Tony, hello. I have my daughter, Jasmine.” That’s what she calls me to him. She was like, “She needs help applying to school. We have no idea how to do it. I don’t know how to help her.” She’s like, “I can’t pay you, but I can give you a rack of ribs” and she’s like, “I’ll make you food. Can you come help her?” That’s my mom in a nutshell. She’s like, “Listen, I will make anything happen with food.” She called Tony. Tony came over, picked up his ribs, and he helped me apply for school.
A huge shoutout Tony, who’s helped a lot of my family members get into school. He calls himself the Mexican Chicano Counselor. It was just hard navigating some of these moments. Even going to school was very lonely. My brother had already graduated. I felt very alone. I ended up finding this program that helped first generation kids get through school, because I was working three jobs. I was tired, I was homesick, I was lonely, I was scared, all those feelings were really real for me.
When I got accepted to school, I remember the first thing I did was I cried, not because I was happy that I got in, but because I’m like, “Okay, well, now how am I going to pay for school?” You know what I mean? I didn’t get scholarships or grants. I got FAFSA, which took a lot away, but there’s still this other layer of living in the Bay Area, which I didn’t know was expensive. But to keep the story a little shorter, I remember just navigating so much of college just trying to figure it out and trying to get through it. I thought the first generation was done after college was done and I was like, “Okay, I’m ready to not be first generation and to go into the workforce and kill it and make money and be rich.”
And then the first generation continues forever. I experienced these first corporate experiences, and I had so much trouble being completely myself and being in a space that was different than where I grew up, different than what I was used to, different than anything I’ve ever experienced. It was a shock to navigate my first few career experiences. I think one of the things that helped me in those moments where I felt lonely, and powerless, and underrepresented was to almost love my own journey and love my story and show relentlessly who I was despite people looking at me a certain way.
I’ve had people talk about nails and how they were unprofessional. And now I wear my long nails purposely all the time like, “This is me.” But I think in those moments I really started to go into therapy. I had a life coach. I did a lot of spiritual work, and I learned to love my story and own where I came from, and realized that running away from little Odalys Jasmine, who grew up in southeast San Diego, a low-income community, that was her.
The resourcefulness that my mom did with the ribs, the creativity that has always been a part of me, the Latino, just warmth and resilience is all part of who I am and that includes the way I look. The red lipstick, tall, big hips, and long nails, that’s all me. All of that is taken with me in every space that I enter, and I think that’s been another part of my healing journey.
Which advice would you give to someone transitioning their career into tech?
I will give context to everyone that I was a contractor at LinkedIn. I shouldn’t have been a contractor, but I was a contractor and I got laid off a few weeks early, six weeks earlier than my original end date. I was leading all internal and external emerging talent events. So, emerging talent is early career talent or talent transitioning into tech for the very first time. I supported about five to six different programs and I was like the events girl, like, Ola or Latino ERG would hit me up all the time like, “Odalys, can you help us with this? Can you help us with that?” It was so fun. It’s actually how I met Thaisa. I just loved it. I loved the role that I played and what I was doing. Outside of LinkedIn, I have my podcast. I do a lot of content, a lot of strategy, a lot of branding.
One of the things that I’ll pause here and say, that I’ve always been a dreamer. I’ve always loved playing. I love just creating, whether it’s an event, a content piece. I love being able to play, and be free, and be creative, and have room and space to create. So, in my career, you will see my experience. It’s all over the place. There’s some events, there’s some content, there’s some this, there’s some that, there’s social media, there’s PR. And some people are like, “Well, what do you do?” And I’m like, “I play. I will do all of it.”
I will create an event, I will create a content piece, I’ll create a script, a blog, a newsletter. I love to just play around with the term storytelling. How do we tell a story? How do we immerse people in a story? How do we do that? And so, applying to TikTok, I think every role that I’ve had has been through passion. I’ve gone to LinkedIn. When I interviewed, it was all me talking from a place of passion. The same thing with TikTok. They asked me like, “Well, you do events? How are you going to do content strategy?” And I’m like, “This is what I do outside of events.” Even in events, there is a content layer to it.
Being able to just talk from a place of not just the expertise and experience, but passion, like, I do this day in and day out. This is the world that I live in. I love content. I love to play with it. I love events. I really spoke from a place of just passion and love to make it more succinct. I think I have a passion for playing. So, that’s what I did in the interviews. And it led me to a full-time role at TikTok. From doing events to doing content strategy for the Americas, what’s interesting is that my whole platform is talking about this struggle between am I American enough? Am I Latino enough? Am I Honduran enough?
The hiring for this role was because they wanted someone to represent the American voice and help communicate to American audiences, their employees. It’s so funny. It’s like a weird cognitive thing that I’m thinking about. They hired me to be an American voice when this has been my whole platform, “Am I American enough?”So, it’s almost like a healing job title like, “Okay, I’m the content lead for Americas and it’s a beautiful way to enable internal cultures and mobilize them to be part of the shared mission and values of what TikTok shares,” which is all about playing. If you think about TikTok as a platform, you play with video, you play with content. So, yeah, I’m just excited.
One thing that I do for my podcast is I work a lot with ERGs, schools, a lot of just external speaking engagements. There’s this quote and research that is done about storytelling. The thing that people forget is that our brains are literally wired for storytelling. We love stories more than we love the numbers. When we talk about numbers, we tell the story behind the numbers. That’s where our brain is like, “Ooh, we like that. We’ll remember that,” because, what, oh, I forget what the actual research is, but seven parts of our brain is activated when someone’s telling a story, because automatically, you connect to the person. I talked about my mom and the ribs. That probably reminded you of something for you like, “Oh, food. Food is part of the culture.”
We connect, all of a sudden, because there’s a real story being told. And seven parts of our brain are literally like, “Ooh, we heard a story. Where is it coming from?” By research, stories are 22 times more likely to be remembered than facts alone. And so, it’s just important to know in these interviews, in conversations like these, stories stick, stories matter. I’m sure after this, you’ll probably remember the rib story, because it was visceral. You can feel that, you can imagine it, and it’s powerful. What our brains do when there is a story told, we go into this imaginative place in our brain and that’s how we make sense of the world.
I hope you enjoyed the podcast. We will have more interviews with amazing Latinx leaders the first Tuesday of every month. Check out our website Latinx In Power to hear more. Don’t forget to share comments and feedback, always with kindness. See you soon.
Additional Reading Mentioned in the Interview
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