Celebrating APISA Heritage Month: A Q&A with APISA women in leadership at Chime

May is Asian Pacific Islander South Asian (APISA) Heritage Month and Own Your Career Month at Chime. Held annually by Chime’s Organizational Development team, Own Your Career Month aims to bring awareness to how Chimers can own their careers and support them in starting the conversation with their managers about holistic career development.

To celebrate both months, the Chime Resource Group (CRG), PacifiChime, partnered with Chime’s Organizational Development team to produce a panel of APISA women in leadership on their career journeys, learnings, and advice. For the panel, Chimers tuned in virtually to hear from six employees spanning departments and teams. Here are the highlights from the discussion!

Meet the panelists

How did you make the transition to people leadership? What were you doing before?

Siddhi: “My managers actively started bringing up people leadership when I was a tech lead, but I wasn’t quite ready to make the switch. I started really thinking about being a people leader when I started to enjoy the mentorship aspect of my role — helping someone reach and exceed their potential and aspirations proved very personally fulfilling to me. It really helped that I had a very supportive manager because as a first-time people manager, you don’t know what you don’t know. She was there to answer all my questions and provide me with the support and mentorship I needed.”

Rucha: “Before becoming a people leader, I was an Individual Contributor (IC) analyst working on many projects. The impetus for me to move into people leadership was realizing that as an IC, I could only have so much impact. As I grew in my career and took on larger and larger projects as an IC, I could keep doing them, but at some point, I would reach the physical limits of making an impact. So my path to having more impact — and there are multiple ways to do this — was to start leading a team.”

What’s your advice for people who are curious about people leadership but aren’t sure if it’s the right thing for them?

Rucha: “Nowadays, there are many ways to try out people leadership beforehand, such as through a manager trial program or informally mentoring more junior folks on your team to see if you like helping someone else grow in their career. Afterwards, going back to an IC role is pretty easy (and comes without the stigma that used to be attached to it). I recommend trying out people leadership first because it’s not for everyone — there are challenges and it can be hard to motivate a team. Being a people manager isn’t the only way to be successful and impact a company, but if you’re interested, give it a try.”

If you didn’t go into people leadership, what was the reasoning behind the choice?

Jackie: “I’m at a stage in my career where I’m an individual contributor in my role as Chief of Staff. The Chief of Staff path was interesting because it provides a front-seat view into how different execs and organization leaders make decisions. There’s flexibility to being an IC that’s really important to my role and making sure I’m giving the executive team what they need — without worrying about being a good people manager. Being an IC in my current role means I’m still learning a ton and maybe someday I’ll move into a people leadership position — I’d definitely love to try it.”

What have you had to unlearn to support your career?

Margaret: “Like many children of immigrant parents, I was raised to be hardworking without causing trouble — to quietly work in the background. I’ve had to unlearn that to a degree because it’s not enough to let your work speak for itself, you also have to speak up and be your own advocate.”

Jackie: “If you are invited to the meeting — you deserve to be in the room and your voice deserves to be heard; don’t let someone else say what you’re thinking! I’m an introvert — and I was quite quiet earlier in my career, nervous to speak up even though I had opinions. My first Chief of Staff role was reporting to a COO. A few weeks into my role, my exec pulled me aside and said, ‘I hired you for this role for a reason — you’re bright, understand the business, and I invite you to these meetings so that you can share your point of view. You’re not really doing your job if you’re not providing your perspective.’ She didn’t just tell me to speak up in a meeting, she told me that my job is to speak up and make sure my opinions are heard. Since then, I never take being in a meeting for granted.”

Sanchi: “I have had to unteach myself to try and fit the traditional mold of a successful person. Instead of trying to moderate myself and my presence, I find it more powerful to bring my authentic self to work. This has enabled me to take on non-conforming roles that push the thinking, build deeper connections by sharing my life, and simply be happier”

What are some systemic issues facing Asian women professionals that you’ve personally seen? How have you dealt with them and what advice do you have for the audience?

Sanchi: “Until recently we did not have too many women of Asian descent in executive and leadership roles, instead we were over-indexed in roles where we are viewed as “worker bees”. We definitely put in the hard work and expect our work to speak for itself, but that’s not enough. You must be your strongest self-advocate — get comfortable talking about your own expertise and be much bolder in asking for what you want next.”

Shine: “One systemic issue is that we have few to no female role models as senior engineers. Seeing is believing. When we don’t see anybody like us in the top bracket of leadership, there are a lot of implications — it feeds imposter syndrome, and there is nobody to turn to for advice or mentoring. Often, nobody can advocate for us to get to the next level. Overall, it makes the path harder for us than others whose community is already represented in a majority at the top level.

Another issue is social marginalization in the workplace, especially as someone who comes from a different culture and is not a native English speaker. This lack of familiarity with culture and fluency in the colloquial language results in social isolation at the workplace. For example, it’s hard to inject oneself into conversations and build rapport with the leadership in the same ways as folks from this culture.

The default human nature is to feel closer to people who are more similar to us, which also instills more confidence in our abilities. So, when a leader needs to identify someone for the next stretch assignment or promotion, they obviously gravitate towards people who are similar to them. With a larger portion of the leadership being from the dominant cultural group, more career opportunities go to people from that community. And then there’s the reality of leadership changes, which can manifest as a reboot of relationship building and expectation setting.

So, in a nutshell, this is how folks different from the leadership can end up proving themselves over and over again before they can move to the next level.

To face these issues, I closely observe folks who are in positions that I aspire for, and I try to be a role model for women who will walk a path similar to mine. In terms of social dynamics, I focus on building one-on-one relationships. I also like to keep investing in my skill set — not just technical skills, but also soft skills and personal development through leadership coaching.

Rucha: “I’ve noticed that when we face a challenging situation, it’s easy to think that it’s unique to us. My advice is to remind yourself that most people who’ve been in your shoes before have probably faced the same problems — so reach out and ask for help.”