Kumi and thank you so much for attending my session. Uh I am excited to talk to you all today about the lessons of perseverance in leadership as women. Um And I wanna thank women. I wanna thank women in Global Tech for having me uh speak.Thank you so much. This is such a great forum. So I want to talk today about why we need to persevere as women and how we must have not just perseverance but fortitude and I'm gonna talk about why those are important. So I'm Rocky Maji. A dui, I'm a director of product at prom for most of my career. I've worked in Fintech. I've worked on B to B products and B to C products uh that I've helped to build. Um I've also worked on B to D as well. Um In my spare time, I write blogs in my uh also spare time. I like to give back to the product community and I teach at product school as well. Um I wanna start with Maya Angelo's quote. I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refuse to be reduced by it. The reason I want to start with. This quote is because I live by this quote, this quote, I read it all the time because when I'm down and I feel like, oh, I can't, I can't function. I can't, I, I don't know how I'm gonna make it through today. I've gotten some bad news.

How do I persevere? And I always, always read this quote and it reminds me of what Maya Angelo has been through and how she became Maya Angelo. So I also want to share this quote with you all. Fortitude does not howl it does not clamor nor growl. Instead, fortitude is the hushed voice that plainly says, get up and try again tomorrow. Um I have been through a lot. I'm an immigrant. I moved to the United States when I was 11 years old. If I, every time I got to know if I stuck with that, no, I wouldn't be where I am today. And this are the quotes that helped me there that helped me to persevere. Um And then I wanted to share this with you guys. I stand on the shoulders. The reason why my story, Rocky Magic. A do me story can be told the reason why my even in its messy brilliance. The reason why my story, I can tell it to help the next generation of women coming, coming behind me to help them is because I stand on the shoulders of women who they were the embodiment of race, gratitude, strength, and brilliance. And this women, they use their voices to transform my life so that I can have a seat at the table so that I can help to create opportunities for the next generation of women that are coming behind me.

So this is why it's important that I must not only use fortitude, but I must persevere as well. So today we're gonna talk about what is perseverance and now we're gonna talk about my own experience of perseverance and some final thoughts. So what is perseverance? So perseverance to me is that persistence? It means that persistence, that resoluteness, that determination that I'm gonna accomplish my goal or my objective, regardless of anything that is on my way, regardless of any challenges, any difficulties and any delays in reaching my goal.

As I mentioned, I'm an immigrant. I moved to the United States when I was 11 years old. I'm here today because I persevere not only before I got to college after college, I'm in corporate America and I'm still here today. So I want to talk about my own experiences with perseverance. I had to, for starters deal with my imposter syndrome, it is not gone, it is still there. I still deal with my imposter syndrome. Occasionally, those feelings still come back. I had to lead with authentic with authenticity, right? I had to be myself and I had to use my leadership voice to make, to make a difference. And kind of shine the light on some problems and look for a way to fix them. And then, of course, I learned how to lead fearlessly. So we're gonna talk about my own experiences today and then uh we're gonna talk about some final thoughts. So let me start with my own experiences with imposter syndrome. So I, I used to um incorporate meeting in skip level meetings. For instance, I remember when I was, when I was first starting out in corporate America, I would just skip level meetings. And the first thing that would go into my mind. The first thought is why do they want to talk to me? I don't belong here and I would be in conference rooms.

And one of the first things I would, I would, I would be thinking throughout the whole entire meeting is someone's gonna tap me on the shoulder and tell me I don't belong here and they're gonna tell me to leave or they're gonna discover. I'm secretly, I can't, I can't handle this. You know, I, I'm not worthy of being here. How did I deal with my imposter syndrome? For starters? I have four incredible women in my life who have mentored me since college. And they were instrumental in helping me deal with my impostor syndrome. They were instrumental and help me figure out my SAT analysis, my strength, weakness opportunities and threats and figure out what was it that was scaring me so much. And preventing me from making decisions.

And I, and I had to figure that out and I did that exercise. I did that work on myself. I literally wrote down my own s a analysis and try to figure out what was, what was that crippling fear that prevented me from moving on and achi and achieving my goals that was preventing me from applying for positions because I didn't think I was worthy. So I for the impostor syndrome itself down how I dealt with that was that swot analysis and then starting to chip away at it. So I'll give you an example. One of the things on my weakness on my swot analysis was on my threats was what if a product I worked on failed, then that would be the end of my career, right? Nobody would hire me. Turns out not so much. I've worked on a product that failed. I survived. I'm sitting here in front of you guys today. Um What if my, the sales team doesn't think I know what I'm doing? What if the engineering team doesn't know what they don't think? I know what I'm doing. Well, how like did I fix that? Transparency equals trust? I started to share with them what I knew and what I didn't know I was comfortable with saying it. I didn't know it and I would go figure it out and that's what some of the ways that I sort of dealt with my imposter syndrome.

And finally, I stopped second guessing myself. And whenever those, the other thing was I stopped comparing myself to my, to my colleagues and saying, oh my God, this person has it so much better than I did it. So confident. What I learned was even the people who look confident didn't have it at all. They were just as scared of being in those rooms in those environments just like I was. So I learned to fade it on to fake it until I could make it. And then finally fear. Every time I get afraid every time I'm like, oh my God, I can, I can't handle this. I don't belong in this room. I really try to remove that fear and I try to focus on the fact of how come, how far I've come along in, in my career and how I deserve to be in that room and I need to use my voice. But most importantly, what always, always always gets me through. It is my grandmother didn't have what I have. She sac my grandmother was an orphan herself and she sacrificed just to make sure I have the future that I could have. And so therefore I must overcome my fears so so that I can pave the way for the next generation of women. And then when it comes to leading with authentic authenticity. Well, first dealing with my impostor syndrome, then I can really be myself. I could really be wonky.

When I go to meetings, I could really be myself with my leaders. They, um, they would really get to know the real me. And that started with dealing with my impostor syndrome being my true self. Because now that I've, in order for me to have authenticity, I must have worked on my impostor. I worked on my impostor syndrome. Right. My SAT analysis, strength, weakness, opportunities and threats. And that helped me to be able to just be authentic. Um And then of course, using my leadership voice. So now that I've dealt with my fears of failure of failure, we imposter syndrome. I've learned how to be myself. And therefore the other thing I wanted to mention about being your authentic self. If as a leader, as a product leader, if you are your authentic self, then your cross functional partners will be their authentic self. Your scrum team will be, will feel comfortable being their authentic self. So that actually really matters. And all of a sudden you find out the whole entire organization are all being their authentic selves. So now that I did that well, I can use my leadership voice, right? So that means if I see something that's not going well, I'm no longer afraid to speak up and say, well, we should change this. I'll give you an example in product management in the product field that I'm in.

There aren't a lot of women that look like me in product, not a lot of black women in product. And that's something that I'm really striving to change, not just women, but there aren't a lot of black men in product as well. So I'm using my leadership voice to help change how we recruit, not just interns or regular employees, how we interview them, how we find them. Where do we go to find them? Like, for instance, you know, asking recruiters to look at historical Black colleges because we have great people graduating from there from marginalized communities, right? I myself volunteering in programs to help kids from marginalized communities. So that there will be more rank, more people who look like me, there will be product managers because and why that's important is because we are building for a global market in that global market, a diverse demographic, that diverse demographic look like me, they look like you.

And if we don't have people in our organizations who are building products for them, who look like them, we're never gonna get it, right. So in order to build products for this next generation of diverse, of diverse people, we need people in the organization who look like them, who talk like them. We need people that have, you know, we need people who come from diverse circumstances who are diverse in gender diversity and thought diverse in circumstances. Because all their, all their ideas are what we need in order to build products for the next generation and the generation after that, we need to solve some problems. So I'm using my leadership voice to make sure that we are looking for cross functional partners, product managers from marginalized communities so that we can make sure that everybody's voice. We're not just building for one set of community, we're building for multiple communities and, and we are not just and that we are helping to solve real problems with the products that we're building. And then finally, I'm now fearless.

So I dealt the way I'm, I've persevered, I've dealt with my imposter syndrome. I fear of failure. I learned how to lead being authentic, right? I worked on my SAT analysis. I took out my fear, my fear of failure because I realized that I will be OK even if I fail. And then I started to use my leadership voice to pave the way for the next generation of men and women that are coming behind me that look like me and don't look like me so that we can have a more diverse uh demographic and product. And then I became fearless and I started to take chances. So then all of a sudden all these lessons I'm able to apply it and I'm able to build Rocky pm.com. I'm able to write blogs about how I feel and my real experiences coming up as a recent college grad or as an adult. Now in, in corporate America, I'm able to write about my fear of failure. I'm able to write about how authentic and how I've cultivated relationships. I'm able to write about how I'm being fearless so that I can pave the way for the next generation of product leaders. And then I wanna leave you with this because I'm able to do all those things.

I'm able to read purposefully and I am here as a resource to empower the next generation of women because I really want to see not, I want to see that glass ceiling shattered in my lifetime. And if it's not shattered in my lifetime, I wanna make sure there's a huge dent in it. And finally, I'm able to do all these things because it doesn't matter what happens. I'm going to persevere always. And what the reason why this means so much to me is the person who really inspired not just a blog for perseverance, but this talk for me was Supreme Court justice is Supreme Court justice Kanji Brown Jackson, who talked about how she felt out of place at Harvard. And another woman of color came up to her and said, persevere. And I think about how she persevered throughout her career. But she is able to become a first African American woman, Supreme Court justice. I have no reason to not persevere. I have no reason I can never give up. So I just want to challenge you all to make sure that you're given back to the next generation of women behind us because we need that gla generally is shattered. And how do we do that? We need to teach them how to persevere how to lead with fortitude.

And I wanna end this, I, I wanna end with this quote, our daily motivation should be to make the journey easier for the women coming behind us where there are opportunities we strive to make it easier for them and to attain it. And when there are no opportunities, well, guess what? We're gonna construct it for them and that is why we have to persevere. So on the really bad days, I pause, I rest but I never give up. So to become courageous, we must do the things that scare us that, that scare us. We have fortified as leaders by doing what is deemed impossible, allowing allowing us to release a change and make the journey much easier for others. We're going to work the same path as us and it doesn't matter where they come from. We really need to pave that way. So I wanna leave you all with this. Jon Meacham constantly talks about the portrait test, right? That even that what do we want people to see when they see our portrait? I'm not saying I'm gonna have a portrait one day, but I want to know that my legacy that when people see my picture doesn't matter where when they, whether they read my blog is from now I want that I want them to know I really cared and I made a difference while I was here.

So, thank you so much for having me today. Women in global tech. Thank you for the attendees today for attending this session. These are some of my resources. I love anything about leadership. It's originally anything that can help me be a better leader. And these are my, one of some of my favorites. And then of course, these are my favorite podcasts that I love to listen to. I love to listen to podcasts, regard, you know, everything I'm doing what I'm cooking with the cleaning. I always love to listen to podcasts. And if you go looking for some of this list down on my website Rocky pm.com and I wanna thank you, thank you for having me today. Thank you for coming to listen to this session. If you have any questions, please put it in a chat.