Episode 27: Blessed Or Cursed: Leading Your Life Without A Playbook With Dania Buchanan
All throughout history, women are taught to conform, to fit someone else’s standards, and to be someone they are not. As the world slowly shifts, women are now reclaiming who they should be on their own terms, living their lives away from the playbook. Dania Buchanan, Head of SmartVault, has lived through the changes of time—moving in to fit the standards of being a woman in tech in the early ‘90s, to becoming the leader that she is now. She shares with us her career journey, of leading her life without a playbook, beginning with her personal story of growing up as a child of a fallen commander in Vietnam and how it has shaped her career and leadership style. Blessed or cursed, everything she has been through has led her to where she is now. All it takes is a change in perspective and mindset to see learning experiences as blessings.
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Blessed Or Cursed: Leading Your Life Without A Playbook With Dania Buchanan
I interviewed Dania Buchanan who is a Founding Member and Head of SmartVault. In her role, Dania is responsible for overall revenue growth, product management, marketing, strategic partnerships, and customer success. She has many years of experience in the technology sector, holding leadership positions in both small and venture back startups and large public companies. She was President and CEO of ChatYat, providing instant messaging applications to mobile consumers. In this interview with Dania, we discuss her personal story of growing up as a child of a fallen commander in Vietnam and how it shaped her career and leadership style along the way.
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I am with Dania Buchanan. She is the Head of SmartVault. Do you want to give us a little bit of background on yourself before we start?
Thanks for having me, Amy. It's been a long time. I know we've run into each other at shows, but this is super fun. I'm Dania Buchanan. I look after SmartVault. I am a Founding Member of the SmartVault team, which I'm proud of. It's exciting to be here.
What we'd like to do is get into your background, know your story, how you even came to be where you are. I’d like to start more in the beginning. Where did you grow up? What was your family background?
I'm a Texas girl. I'm a Southern girl, so all of that implies, I'm sure. I'm the daughter of a Navy pilot who unfortunately lost his life when I was young at two years old. He was the commander of a squadron in Vietnam and a member of his team did not want to fly on a mission. He took the mission. He demonstrated at that point his leadership commitment. There was a high cost to that. I do not have a unique story. There are lots of children out there that grew up without a mother or father who was called to service. In the way that he lost his life, which probably if I have to be honest and look back at some of the things that make me. At 29, she's with two kids. The way that he lost his life was during the Tet Offensive. He flew January 1st on a mission. He probably shouldn't have been flying, but those were his orders. Long story short, there was not a lot of closure that my mom had at the time. The plane disappears. No one can tell her anything.
She was frustrated with her government. It’s relevant to the women in my family that don't seem to do well with playbooks and went to Paris and can't camp outside the North Vietnamese embassy with a question. She wrote letters after the letter, "I'd like to know where my husband is. That's a fair question. Are you holding him or has he been killed?" She got a ton of press, grabbed another one of the wives of the pilots that were lost on that aircraft. She's the toughest lady I know at 90 pounds, wringing wet, but no playbook for that. She stood outside the Paris embassy and it ended up 3 or 4 days had gone by and it was the wife of the ambassador that got her the meeting. That is such a strong and powerful statement that in the face of that diversity you have women that understand where she's coming from. I have Southern roots.
What did she find out?
Nothing, they wouldn't tell it. They stonewalled her. She went for a few years and no part of the plane was ever found. He was never found. After a few years, the world was declared over and anyone who was missing in action was declared killed in action. They stayed sealed forever. My brother was an infant at the time. I was about 2.5 years old. It's there. She was frustrated with our government. It's a fair question. She wasn't alone too, but mostly the tragedy when military men and women lose their lives is there is an account of it. You watched the plane get blown up. He was in the Navy. Things happen flying off the carriers and you had an accounting. There was no accounting. It left her with no closure.
She doesn't know if he's suffering somewhere or if he's dead.
Do I move my life forward? Do I not? She and my father were friends with McCains, John McCain and his wife back in the day. They each had respective friends of theirs whose husband was missing that they got a letter from him and he had been a prisoner all those times. It's difficult. When I have closure, I'm sad. I go through the stages of grief and I picked myself up and I moved my life forward and I have no closure. I got to pull some strength. I’ve got to figure it out.
With that story, you're two. Number one question that comes to my head is, "She's going and fighting for this, she must have had to help."
We stayed with my grandma and she went over there several times. She was about to move us over there. She was frustrated with this country. She had it. She felt like she was being lied to. Records were sealed. They were sealed until the open records went into effect.
You feel like you should be fighting for that person too, not knowing like, "What's the right thing to do?"
Not everyone is interested in the Dania story, but the other dynamic is my father was the commander of this unit. He had flown his mission, landed the plane, called my mom. It was New Year's Eve on the 31st, "I'm home. I'll talk to you in the next couple of days." She wasn't aware that he had gone back up and someone in the squadron would not fly the mission. At that point, what do you do? The mission needs to be flown. You're not willing to fly it. He got in a plane and flew it with two other guys. It was a story that we talked about as we all have origin stories, but it was a constant ask of my mom. It's like, "Did you ever hear from that guy?" Certainly, he knew what happened that the plane had gone missing. He never did reach out all these years. She was covered on the news. We have scrapbooks of articles. She was from Corpus Christi, Texas. She had not purposeful but in her attempt to try to find some answers. The press got a hold of her and she was well-covered. He never stepped up and said, "I'm sorry."
Can you even imagine? People are not strong enough people sometimes. Your mom is frustrated, angry, sad and grieving. How does that affect you growing up?
If I look back, which I had to do. I have two kids and my daughter's twenty. We go through this blessed or cursed, which is a Gen Z question. Whether I was blessed or cursed, that's my origin story. Growing up, I was inspired by strong women. I was the daughter of a strong woman who built a life for herself. Fortunately, the military through the benefits that we did have, I don't think she had to work, but she found something fulfilling and working. She sold commercial real estate. She was a consultant for a while. She loved people. I get a little bit of that from her. When I was 16, 17, Diane Sawyer was my idol, the first woman on 60 Minutes. She represented much of what I was inspired by storytelling, finding truths, being around people. For a variety of reasons, I did not follow my dream of going to the University of Texas and their journalism program, even though that's where I applied and was accepted to.
Why didn't you do it?
There was some personal calling. I ended up moving to Corpus Christi. My grandmother was not in great health and I felt a family call. My mom was struggling with some health issues too. It didn't feel right. I looked back and was that regret or not? I don't know. I found my calling somewhere else. Blessed or cursed, I was part of three fundamental paradigm shifts or evolutions in the professional world being part of. In the early 1990s, my first job was made-to-order PCs in Austin, Texas, the biggest competitor to Dell. I was 23, barely knew what I was doing and there was no rule book for the amount of productivity software coming out and bundling. The rise of personal computing use for something other than business. That was the first place I cut my toe.
Was that before college?
That was after.
Leadership Style: The big lesson that everyone has to learn at some point in their lives is who they are and that they are good enough.
What did you end up going to school for?
I was an English Lit major because I love stories. I string this guy out, I've told my kids this story a dozen times. I started as a Lit major because I loved writing and stories and I love scenes, describing people, describing the environment. What motivates people? What inspires people? I'm drawn to that and people that create that are amazing. Somewhere along my junior year, my college advisor got a hold of me and it's English like, "Are you going to teach?" "I don't know. I thought I was supposed to be in college because I was studying things that I had a passion for and was interested in. I don't have my life figured out if that's what you're asking.” He scared me enough where I switched to business. It took me a couple of more years to graduate. I ended up with a degree in Marketing that at the time was advertising and brand-oriented. Marketing primarily sits in the business school and is data-driven and all those things that have come up. For me, I found a little bit of a home there, although if I look back, I could have been an English Lit major. I could have been a Psychology major and done the same job, but he scared me enough and I've been pissed ever since.
I was listening to Tim Ferriss' podcast with Brené Brown and she had said to her daughter she wasn't allowed to declare major starting college, but the whole point of college is to take anything you ever were interested in and see what hits you. I've got a son starting college, but he went into something he's passionate about since he was a little boy, but most people don't know.
I have a son who did that too. My oldest was from five on, he knew he wanted to be a filmmaker and that's the thing. He went to UT film school and he's a unicorn.
My son was writing about how to fix the years in his journal at five years old. They're living their passionate but like you, I got shifted from going into art into accounting because it was safer.
Women right inside, "I need to get a job. I don't know. I don't want to teach, but can I not get a job with an English degree?" No.
I find it interesting thinking at that time when you're talking about seeing your mom, but your example of Diane Sawyer struck me. Because when you think about our generation and being shifted into certain careers, it was because women were like, "How am I going to have a career? What would be a safe career?" If someone told you "That's a goofy career, you don't know what it's going to be."
It sounds good at parties. If you’re getting married, it's like an Art History degree. I can talk about a lot of things. None of it is useful.
It is, if you're passionate about it. That's one thing I've seen over time is if you're passionate about a subject, you will be successful. You will find a way. Women were fearful that there's not a written path for that major but the business has it or engineering or certain degrees have it where you know there's an outcome versus that. I'm not sure if there was an outcome and you're a woman and you need to make it.
That narrative has followed me around. I've got two kids. One that knew, my son knew he's older. My daughter is a junior in college in Austin and she didn't know and still doesn't know. She's an English major and an art minor. I'm like, "Please, stick with it." Not that it doesn't matter, but her dad, my husband is a college professor. Better than anyone is like, “Everyone who watches this, it's going to kill me,” but your undergrad doesn't matter as much. You're supposed to figure it out and then specialize in grad school. Figure out how to live on your own and go through all of these first. For your son going through it, there's no bigger change in their lives. You're taking everything familiar away from them and sticking something unfamiliar and they're not emotionally equipped for it. I hope it works out and also picks your career.
Even with picking a major and graduating with a major, I wouldn't know to be a CPA, I'd be doing what I'm doing. It's being open to all the pivots in your career.
That's the no playbook theme I inherited from my mom indirectly from observing her, trying to figure it out and trying not to buck the norm, but she's a tough Southern lady too. Let's say we don't take a lot of no. My first job in tech morphed into a second job in tech also.
Was that in marketing?
Yeah. I started as a temp in accounting. I moved in with a girlfriend, I had my degree, had my resume in January, no one's going to hire anyone. I'm sending it out and dating myself, but back in the day you registered the substitute teacher and you went and filled the form out. I did that. You registered with a temp agency and that's what they were called, like Kelly Girls and all of that. I did that and I told them, "I don't want to teach, I don't want to sub in high school because everybody's taller than me and I don't want to do that." They called me for a high school job the same day they called me for a job at CompuAdd which is where I ended up going, which is a big competitor to Dell in Austin. It was in accounting. I was like, "That class did not go well for me." It had a thing, like, "Will I be doing accounting?" I did some temp work. They ended up hiring a VP of Marketing. He was building a team. I went and talked to him and he ended up being the most awful person ever. I could have written the #MeToo playbook back then. We had to look a certain way and wear skirts all the time. I look at the women that worked for me.
At 23, I was in full makeup and skirts. We could not wear pants. "If you can't figure it out, I'll get another blonde who can." It’s all of those things. One analogy would be that back then there was no helicoptering. We go out of our way to mentor our teams. I pride myself on trying to do that and being a role model, but it was not how I was raised. I came from the school of you’ve got out of the house on Saturday and you came back, your mom's like, "Bye, I'll see you at 6:00 because I need some time." It’s the same with the job like, “Go make a trade show.” I'm not here to explain what a trade show is. That's your job and if you can't do it, I'll get someone else who can.
There's no playbook and I believed him that he would find someone else who could. I figured it out and that morphed into a job with another internet, build to order PC company but we went vertical. It was a startup. I fell in love with the small company. We sold personal computers to gamers and that was the closest I got to. We would go on all these college campuses and hold these big gaming things. The second evolution I was part of that nobody had a rule book for was the internet and advertising. I had a call with Mark Cuban at Broadcast.com because he was trying to sell internet radio. I didn't know he was about to be a billionaire. He was a dude that was trying to help us get our computers into a customer audience that would want to buy them. That strategy early on with internet advertising nobody had figured out.
We were doing banners and interstitial that was a thing. That was an advertising thing. Anybody reading this over the age of 45 will know that. That was no rules, figure it out. There's a lot at stake to figure those things out because businesses rise or fall off the back of that. That morphed into the early-mid-2000s with Sachs in a subscription-based business model specifically for business-to-business, figuring out a way to engage in a way to be relevant in that space. Those were all examples and I was part of the beginning of all three of them. I'll go back to blessed or cursed, timing, I don't know. Whether I want to admit it or not, something in me likes to figure stuff out and likes to work in a collaborative environment along with other people who like to figure those things out. That's a big reveal. Whether I saw myself as Diane Sawyer, but what I ended up with was something different. I also saw myself as a ballerina when I was ten. That's what a lot of little girls do that are overly involved with dance.
Were you a dancer? Did you dance?
That was the thing that I did if I had to pick a thing. Now, kids are different. My daughter was a dancer too, but her version of it and my version of it are completely different. These kids are immersed in their extracurricular. I messed around with the theater. I messed around with anything in the arts. The live theater still makes me cry at the end of every performance. It's watching people leave it all on the floor for a live audience and that energy that takes place is intoxicating. I love it. That's super fun.
Going from the difference of journalism to what you do, how do you think you've incorporated? Something that hit my head, you can tell me if I'm wrong but with your father missing, I can only imagine as a child you are creating stories in your head or imagining.
Leadership Style: Having more women in business leadership and political positions will start to change the narrative.
When you were a kid, all you want to do is fit in. That is the thing that made me different. I didn't realize it was the thing that made me special. Kids don't look at their differences as being special and that's when people look at it and being different. My mom had other relationships. She got married, I had a stepfather for a little bit and that didn't work out. She had her love is what she'll tell you. She sought companionship. That's natural, but I don't think anyone could ever replace what she had. We accept that. I had lots of proof. I was at a particular time with women building their careers and being somewhat accepted in the workforce for a specific role. I had a 1, 2 then I had a personal background where I'm sure I needed to do something. That dictated some choices in my life. I stayed places longer than I should have because I feared leaving. That is part of learning how to advocate for yourself and learning that big lesson that everyone has to learn at some point in their lives is who you are and it's good enough. It has been historically more difficult for women to say that because we've had to try to be someone else. We've tried to be someone's version of who we should be and I lived through a lot of that. I can smell it a mile away. I don't live through it anymore, but in the early '90s, those were tough. I'm not the only one that went through some tough experiences as a woman, especially a woman in tech.
What you're saying about knowing who you are, this can be for men and women, but especially from a female perspective. When there weren’t a lot of women to look to, you thought you had to act like a man. I speak at a lot of women's events and a lot of things that come up for women is he does the same thing and no one says anything to him, but they say it to me. We have to find who we are and not model because it doesn't look the same on a woman as it does on a man. You have to be honest about that outside perception. Being the head of a company and being one of the founders, how have you broken past that and been able to bring who you are authentically into your leadership role?
I use my story as an example. I'm open especially women that have ever worked been in a leadership position for most of my career with a small team, big team, it doesn't matter. The dynamics are slightly different, but the culture's the same. For me, it became individual. I had a point in my career where I felt like or was made to feel like I didn't know what I was doing or that I questioned all of my decisions. Maturity and confidence and those are hard. They’re individual. There comes the point where the number twos and for every number one, there's usually a strong number two and those number ones rely on the number twos to make them stronger number ones. At some point, if you're sitting in a number two position. You're sitting at a director position reporting to a VP, VP reporting to a C-level, something like that. You're looking around and you're wondering or questioning why you are being questioned much when you have the answer. The number one, the C-level, the top guy in the business, the big politician, the president, anyone in these senior positions, they're people. They're no different than you, they're no different than me. They have an origin story. They made choices in their careers.
I'm extremely passionate about diversity being the new X factor because the more women in business leadership positions and the more women in political positions will start to change the narrative. These norms are ingrained. We've taken a step. We've not taken huge steps. I'm not just saying it. Saying it starts a conversation and that work is involved down the path with that, but there's got to be more action. That is why I am the way I am with my teams. I have a personal story. I broke through some barriers and I can be a tangible example for anyone in my circle or anyone I have the opportunity to touch with those stories.
For however many, you and I are there are in the world that made changes and pivoted and found success and own who we are. There are a lot of people that are struggling with that. A more diverse team makes a better decision, makes a better outcome and makes it easier for people and businesses specifically to start changing those narratives. BlackRock has come out with, "All of our portfolio companies are going to have two board members." It was Goldman Sachs that has come out and said, "For us to participate in an IPO, there's got to be one woman on the board." Those are great, strong things to say but the reality is most companies go public without a woman on the board. You have a homogenous board and you don't have a different personality.
I'm not just talking diversity with men and women, but all representation. Everybody feels like they have to see someone see themselves in their leadership. Busting through that, including our board is all male. Being fully transparent, I am a woman executive at the company running a growth-oriented and successful company, but we don't have a woman on our board. I'm hoping I can change that. The same with the political landscape, the more diverse we are and the more people underneath us coming up in these generations see themselves in leaders across the way, then we'll be better for it. You'll have real change. You'll have policy change and process change and things that make it easier for people that are struggling to have their breakout moment.
Having a woman leader that's helping others, I'm on the fence about the quota because it can hurt a woman or anyone diverse on the board of being taken seriously because they know they're the quotas.
It's the affirmative action of the modern-day. Don't pick me because you have to have me.
We have all this unconscious bias even there are women at leadership positions where then there are not other women. You see that all the time. To me, about women helping women and it goes both directions. There are the women leaders that need to be looking for opportunities and sponsoring women to get into those next roles. Also, the women in the organization that is being mentored or at a staff level or a manager level supporting the women leaders as well and not taking them down. If there's more collaboration amongst that it will help change the paradigm. The problem is that a lot of times because women don't see other women in those leadership roles or they think there's not another spot, then it becomes an issue amongst women. Changing that perspective and doing that outreach is important what you're talking about.
I want to be fully transparent. I've had many males supportive of my career too. We have to celebrate the men that are supporting the women who are looking for their careers. I leaned into Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In and I thought this is what's holding me back. I'm not leaning in enough, but I feel like I'm leaning in as far as I can without falling over. I can't remember what's it been like, Fortune or Forbes that women can't have it all. At least I felt like I couldn't at the time. I was working in a senior position and a VP position for publicly-traded companies. I had two young kids. I had to travel all the time. You’re no different. I'm the same story as a million other women out there except that we worry about our kids. We carry all of the motherness with us and then we try to cover it up, which is unnatural. We think we have to do that because we have to be in a job from 8:00 to 5:00. If there are a little bit more women leaders at the top bringing that diversity, then you'll have businesses adopt flexible schedules. In a way that I still want your brain, but I also understand that you have carpool and you can't do anything about it.
To not judge you that you want to career while you're a mother, that's been a hard part. I want to go back to the leadership lesson of your dad going up in that plane because someone had to. Have you found that lesson ever happened to you in a business where you've had to fall on the sword or take on something because one of your team members wasn't doing what they needed to do?
I've done that. That was his job. He was a commander and it was expected that he gets in the plane if one of his men couldn't perform the duties. Military aside, I do think that the lesson I've learned is that I stayed too long in jobs and was asked to do things that were counter to what I thought were good for me and for the outcomes we were trying to achieve. A tangible example would be a startup I did before SmartVault and we had a CTO at the time. It was a chat app and it was called ChatYat. It was text over VoIP before the iPhone came out pre-2010. He started opening up. It was great. It was cool to learn about the mobile industry and the whole ability to chat over voice-over IP instead of sending a text and having it go over the text side. Now, that seems ridiculous because we'd been doing that and no one remembers the time when we couldn't, but there was a time that we could do.
I was the head of that company and I was responsible for an outcome for our investors and our shareholders. We had a CTO who thought it would be a great idea to open chat rooms and not tell me, which also used to be a thing. Where they'd meet people in chat rooms. Except what you do when you turn that on and you don't monitor it is you have a whole lot of content out there that's not appropriate. My kids were using the platform because they were our target market at 14 and 15 years old. That day I resigned. If you don't turn this off, I can't do it.
I felt a whole lot of pressure from the board, from the other executives to this is going to blow up. This is what's going to monetize. He discovered the thing that is going to make this company money. The plea of like, "Turn your moral compass off and, “You had an emotional reaction, Dania. We understand how you feel. How about we go modify the woman in it?" It's a woman thing. At that point, I had a choice. I knew that if I pulled out, all of our investments would be lost and most of the shareholders and investors at the time would lose their money. That's a tough thing. It's not just me at stake, it is other people at stake that I'm responsible for but I did it anyway. I turned it off and I resigned and everybody lost their money, including the founder of SmartVault, Eric Pulaski. I lost his money too. He was an investor in that company and that's how we met. That's the origin story of how we found each other at SmartVault.
We competed for each other when he had his enterprise company in Houston and I worked for a company called NetIQ in Houston. We knew of each other because I was the VP of Marketing and he was the CEO of a company called BindView. He ended up through a friend finding out about this and he became a substantial investor. When I called everybody and said, "I'm out. I've lost your money and you're not getting your money back,” which is a tough call to make to 30 people who've given you a lot of money. He's like, "I'm sorry. I understand your reason for doing it. I started a new thing. Talk to me about this. What are you going to do next?" My Catholic guilt is like, "I lost all your money, but if you want me to meet you for lunch, sure. I'll find out what you got going."
They started talking to me about SmartVault saying, "I'm working on an integration for users of QuickBooks." I was like, "I can't imagine anything worse than that. I don't want to." The thing that got me inspired is the SaaS business and this was at the beginning of 2008. Apart from Marc Benioff and Salesforce and Omniture, you had big SaaS companies, but it hadn't dropped down. It was reconnecting to a customer base. That goes back to my storytelling years, talking to people that were running small businesses, which are much braver than anything I've ever done in my whole career, even though I've done some brave things. This whole country runs on the back of the small business and the comments that support them are the fabric that they are not in the pillar they lean on. You start realizing, I'm talking to users of technology, not IT people that may or may not buy it because they played golf with a sales guy on a golf course. That connection to me, I don't think I've ever lost. As soon as I went to the first Slither Show and talk to some accountants and bookkeepers, I'm like, "You all have me hooked. I have nothing more than to love you up and empower you to be the best you can be."
You made that hard decision, but he respected you for it.
He did. That is an example of I got pressure to do what was right for the business against my moral compass. I expressed what my moral compass was, I was treated as a woman, not as a leader of a business. Those are defining moments. I have not worked with any of those investors apart from Eric again.
It's a risk you take, but you can sleep at night, you can feel like you did the right thing for the children or whatever.
I've done the right thing overall. I chose a moral standpoint over an outcome that would have made and I certainly had a financial benefit for the company doing well that I sacrificed for that too. At some point in your life when you're faced with that inflection point, that's the test of someone's character too. We see that repeated in the business landscape and the political landscape. There are lots of chase in the money and if that is your motivation and you want to do that then be transparent about it, great. That doesn't mean it's my motivation too. That's a big towel.
Leadership Style: A more diverse team makes a better decision, makes a better outcome, and makes it easier for people and businesses specifically to start changing those narratives.
Your story is fascinating and I appreciate you sharing it. All of us need to figure out that through-line of what's important in our belief systems as a leader and how we breakthrough when we're not being true to ourselves and feel better about it. I'd like to end with some rapid-fire questions. Do you pick a category, family or friends, money, spiritual or health?
Health/wellness.
Things or actions I don't have that I want?
I would like more businesses to adopt a wellness platform that is more comprehensive than what we have. As a developed country that we owe a view on not only health benefits, which pay if you get sick but a wellness mindset that supports employees not only in preventative but support in of employees' balance and wellness overall. That would be a big one.
Things or actions that I do have that I want?
I'll keep on that theme. We have an amazingly comprehensive, robust and one of the best benefits programs out there for our team. I have it and it didn't drop on me, I fought for it hard. I don't think there's anything more important than any business realizing that life is going to happen to you at some point. You're going to have a family member that's in trouble that needs you to take care of them, regardless of your gender, you may welcome a new family member whether that's through birth or adoption or foster or whatever. Life is going to happen to all of us. Whether you're an hourly employee, a professional, whether you work at SmartVault or anywhere else, you deserve to have your income protected when life happens to you. I'm proud of what we have been able to do here.
Things or actions that I don't have that I don't want as far as my wellness or health?
I don't have it and I certainly don't want it, but I would categorize the bias that we can have against mental health and mental fitness. I've made sure that we don't have it here. It's something that I wouldn't welcome coming back into any culture I was a part of regardless of my role in an organization. Universally across the board, employee assistance programs, when life happens, we need to do a better job of putting a policy in place to support that across the board.
Last question, things or actions that I do have that I don't want?
Everything I described costs businesses like us a whole lot of money. Being straight, I am fighting for it, but I don't have the assistance. We're not looking at it at a federal level, a state level to incent me to do that. If I want to offer what I believe is fundamental to employees coming to work that is giving you the majority of their time out of their day, I pay for that is a steep business cost. That's what I have that I don't want. Whether we're at a tipping point or not, the conversations that it started specifically from 2016 on have started conversations that I'm hoping that we can turn into some action. I don't think there's anything more important than treating people fairly that is giving you much of their time.
Is there anything that we haven't covered or some big takeaway you want people to walk away from this conversation with?
You'll have to help me when you read this blog. I hope that my story because I am the gender, I have the story I have as a little girl. I have the choices I made entering into my career and my profession. I hope I've done a good job balancing a diversity message, not a fill the slot with a woman because she's a woman message. I've certainly had a lot of men that have worked for me, that I've worked for or alongside that have been amazing and they are amazing men and supportive of diversity. I do believe my main message is if we don't start reacting, I do think that diversity is the X factor. For businesses that put that into action, they're going to be stronger in the long run. They're going to have a culture that they're proud of, which means they're going to have employees that are bringing their absolute best selves to work, to solve hard problems, whatever those problems are. It has a trickle-down effect that is hugely impactful. My story is that I figured out what motivated me and I figured out what my superpower was early on. That comes when it comes, you can't sit down and say, "I'm going to figure out what I'm good at and what I love."
You have to be open along the way.
Listen to those voices, listen to your experiences. Use people around you, get feedback, all of that is important.
Thank you for sharing.
It was fun. Thanks, Amy.
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For a segment called Mindful Moments where we reflect on this conversation that you heard with Dania and look at what lessons we can glean out of this. Her story about her father being killed in Vietnam or disappearing in Vietnam is powerful. Even though he wasn't a part of her life for long of how those stories and belief systems that happen along the way when we are children affect us throughout our lives and the decisions that we make as well. The story itself of her father disappearing and the impact that it had on her mother and watching her mother go after something as Dania puts it without a playbook, but to fight to get answers. To not back down until she was able to get the answers that she needed. Although she may have never gotten what she was seeking, she was able to talk to the people that she wanted to talk to by being persistent. That persistence and grit is something that you can tell Dania learned over time from watching her mother and seeing her passion for getting to an answer. The second lesson with her father in the leadership of going up in that plane because that pilot wouldn't go up. Knowing that you're the leader, that you're the commander and someone needs to go up and not give up.
It's important when we think about these leadership lessons and take it into our lives, that no matter if you're a commander in the military or a leader in an organization or a leader in your family. A lot of times we have to make decisions for the better of the whole rather than the better of the individual. Her applying that decision in ChatYat about when they were going down a path that was going to make them money, but at the end of the day wasn't the right thing for the whole and didn't align with the values that she had to protect children. That having to decide that and all of us can probably pause and think about those decisions we've had to make in our life. That we know that from a personal perspective, there is much on the line or people are depending on us and we have to make a decision that might not be popular.
A lot of times in business or as a leader, people don't understand all the extenuating circumstances when we make decisions. It's hard because you can't justify those decisions. You have to make the decisions that are right for the whole. Taking that leadership lesson from her father and applying it in her life and knowing that it's more important that you do right and you do good for the whole. Sometimes you have to sacrifice yourself along the way of where she was going to lose her job and people were going to lose money. At the end of the day, they protected people as well. I thought it was a poignant story to apply this into our life.
The other thing she talked about was the stories in our lives. We have a choice and her story is hard. We all have hard backgrounds or things that have happened in our lives that maybe weren't opportune or that we would have wanted. Her saying about being blessed or cursed is all perspective and it's a mindset of what we want to choose. We can use these stories in our life that are hard. Having a father dying, having a mother going and fighting for that father and having to live with a grandparent rather than your two parents is something that could be something that you feel cursed or used as an example in your life. That this why things go bad for you and so forth, rather than learning from those experiences and designing your life to look at it as a blessing.
How can those experiences that we've had that maybe weren't the best in our life? What can we learn from them? What can we step back and make sure that we take a different path? We break the generational pattern and intentionally make choices about how we want to operate. What is it that we want to put out into the world for good? Make sure along the way that we are aligning with our values and feeling good not only about ourselves but feeling fulfilled by the work that we do and the impact that we're making on the people around us.
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