Tricia Montalvo Timm on Breaking Barriers: DEI, Silicon Valley and a Latina Leader's Journey to the Top

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Welcome to the A World of Difference podcast. I'm Lori Adams Brown and this is a podcast for those who are different and want to make a difference. Does it feel like your whole world has just been turned upside down? Are you having trouble remembering to drink water or eat? Does it feel like you're walking in quicksand?

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You can't even concentrate on normal things. You may be walking through trauma. There may be a crisis in your life or in your government that is causing you to feel that you don't know how to put one foot in front of the other. I have walked through Timmes like this and it really has helped me to walk with a professional therapist through these Timmes. I highly encourage you to find a therapist and@betterhelp.com difference you can get 10% off your first month today.

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I myself have benefited from a therapist I've worked with there. You can message your therapist in between sessions, go to extra courses around grief or trauma, find support groups, and also also really have a person to help you walk through some of the most difficult parts of your life right now. You can get 10% off your first month today by going to www.betterhelp.com difference you deserve to heal Today I have the honor of interviewing an incredible woman here in the Bay Area who has not only broken glass ceilings, but she has such a compelling story that's going to be so inspiring and encouraging and I have been I I've read her book Embrace the Power of Owning youg Identity at Work and it is not only an Eric Hoffer Award finalist because it's a well written book about her authentic story of leadership and growth and her immigrant story. Being born here the daughter of parents from El Salvador and Ecuador, but she's also just an amazing authentic leader. And on this podcast we love to listen to authentic leaders, real life stories, the real life lessons they've learned as they inspire us with who they are and the work that they're doing to make a difference in the world.

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She's bringing her differences around the table today with us to share her perspective and I cannot wait for you to hear what she has to say. Tricia Montalvo Timmm is a corporate executive, a board director, speaker, thought leader and author of this book. She's a first generation Latina who rose to the ranks of Silicon Valley advising high tech companies both big and small, culminating in the sale of data analytics software company Looker in Santa Cruz, California to Google for $2.6 billion. Tricia is one of the few Latinas to have attained the triple achievement of reaching the C suite, joining the boardroom and cracking the venture capital ceiling. Her career has spanned from working with some of the largest and most well known publicly traded multinational companies in the world to to stepping on as the first lawyer at several high growth startups.

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Tricia currently serves on the board at Salsify, a top business to business software company whose Commerce Experience Management platform helps brand, brand manufacturers, distributors and retailers collaborate to win on the digital shelf. Tricia's industry recognitions she has many awards include the 2020 Women of Influence and Latino Business Leadership Awards from Silicon Valley Business Journal and the title A Diversity Champion from the Silicon Valley Business Journal Corpor Awards. She's won multiple awards. These are just a few of them. Tricia is an advocate for women and girls, serves as a mentor, advisor and investor in female founded companies which I love.

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And with her new book Embrace the Power of you Owning your Identity at Work, she hopes to inspire more people to embrace their true selves, own their heritage and achieve more Very warm welcome to the show today. Bienvenidos to Tricia Matalvo. Timm hello Tricia. And a very, very warm welcome to the A World of Difference podcast today. Hi Lori.

00:03:56
So excited to be here. I'm really excited for our conversation, largely because I've really enjoyed your book. It's such an important book and Timmely for, I mean all Timme, but especially with a lot of the geopolitical events that we're facing. And it seems that every day something happens in the news where the conversation around belonging, hearing from each other, bringing our differences together and making work and the world a better place is not going out of style anyTimme soon. But I really wanted to start off with you.

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Your background is so interesting and it's not something you've always openly talked about, which is kind of the point of your book. But we love cultures and places and people that have multiple cultural backgrounds. We love people who travel or who have lived abroad or immigrated. And your story has some of that in it. And so I'd love to know from you what cultures and places formed you as a person.

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Well, I love the premise of this podcast and I think there's so much power in storytelling. So thank you for letting me tell my story. So I am the daughter of two immigrants. My mother is from El Salvador and my father's from Ecuador. Both immigrated here to the United States when they were young and I was born here in the US So I would say Spanish was my first language.

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I learned. I spoke Spanish at home until kindergarten where I learned English. And so I would say, you know, the. The person that probably formed me a lot as a person is my mother, probably because she was just, she was a working mother. So she started.

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She actually graduated high school early. She could have gone to college, but didn't have the resources. So she started as a teller at a local bank and then just worked her way up and she came the bank manager and went on to win like all sorts of sales awards. And I mean, she was just really incredible. And watching her as a young person be so successful in her career, also prioritizing her family.

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She encouraged me to be a lawyer. My grandfather back in El Salvador was a lawyer. So she planted the seeds. And they very much wanted the American dream for their kids and they prioritized education. And so, you know, I had a very good education.

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And I saw them, I saw their work ethic, you know, the Latino culture in general, and you'll hear this across the board is like such a strong work ethic. And I saw that with my parents. They worked multiple jobs to give us a good life and to give us education. And that work ethic has definitely shown up in my life as I navigated my career. So I think I owe a lot, a lot to them.

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I think the combination of work ethic and culture, you know, and family really resonates to how I live today. It's so beautiful to hear. And I read that throughout your book. I felt that your connections, the way, I mean, your mom, like mother, like daughter, I will say, because award winning, award winning runs in the family, right? I think that.

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But there are so many parts of your book that just really stood out to me. And I related to, as somebody who was raised in Central and South America. But you talk about there's a Colombian woman who's I think, an engineer and she comes to the States, has to start all over again. That reminds me of my sister in law, who's Venezuelan, so intelligent and engineer as well, and had to learn English when she came here and married to my brother. And even though she's married to my brother, who's white and lives in New Mexico, where Spanish is largely spoken, the amount of racism, I mean, this is years ago that was going on and now she has an mba and there's so much that has just been whitewashed here and it's unfair and it's not right and the systems are broken.

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And then there's a part where you talk about being in the law office and the men coming in to change the trash cans out because you're working late, you're having to work twice as hard, probably three Timmes as hard as a Latina. And that you felt so much more culturally connected to people in there because you remind you of your dad. The book is so vulnerable and so beautifully written. And I just, it's so courageous and I just really connected to your heart through it. I think that one part I really loved is you Talk about your LinkedIn post where you reveal your Latina heritage.

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It's sort of like this coming out, this powerful moment that made you nervous. But for so long you had been really code switching, right? And masking in order to assimilate to this very predominantly white male work culture. And so what led you ulTimmately to share that LinkedIn post and what was the response that you got when you dubbed? Yeah, it was.

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It took a long journey. I would say that one of the strategies, my mom, you know, so when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, El Salvador was in civil war and there was a lot of discrimination at the Timme. So she was worried that I, you know, she was discriminated against. She has strong, she still does have a strong Spanish accent. And so she recognize an opportunity for me to pass as white.

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And so she would encourage me to, you know, just don't let people know where you're from. Sort of downplay that, you know, because you don't want the added, you know, just the added barrier and challenge. And so that's kind of where it came from. And so I did that. What I didn't realize is what was being lost, not only for myself and my own sense of self worth, but also, you know, what I'm not bringing to the table in my perspective or my life and all of that.

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And so I would say that that moment of sharing my story probably wouldn't have happened had it not been for a prior moment, which was when I first told my story at my last company Looker. It was National Hispanic Heritage Month. At that point, I had really leaned into diversity, equity, inclusion work. I had helped form ERGs at the company, and one of them being the Latino erg. And they'd asked me to tell my story.

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And I'd realized when they asked me that I had never publicly really talked about my family, where we came from, the struggles, the vulnerability, like. Like nothing ever. And so I remember being nervous then, but I said, you know, I'm going to tell my story. And when I did that, it was a company meeting. It was like cultural awareness month.

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It was the moment after where all of a Sudd these employees, particularly Latino employees, came up to me and some in tears that were saying, I've never heard my story be told in a corporate office setting. I've never seen a leader who's Latino, a Latina. And it just dawned on me that when I was coming up through the ranks, all I wished for was to see somebody that looked like me, that had a similar background, that came, who had immigrant parents, that, you know, had just a similar story. And there was nobody that I saw who was talking about where they came from back then. I never saw that.

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And I realized that by me not telling my story, by me not being so openly visible as a Latina, as a first gen, that I was depriving the next generation of the same exact thing. And that's where the seed was planted that I need to tell my story wider. And so that led to. I don't know if it was months later, but that LinkedIn post where I said, you know, I. Because I realized if you looked at my LinkedIn back then, there was nothing in there that you would look to and say, she's Latina, you know, I had.

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My maiden name wasn't on there, so I was Trisha Timm. I didn't have any. I didn't talk about being bilingual, I didn't talk about the organizations I was part of. And so you really couldn't identify me as a Latina. And I just thought I need to change that so that I can be more visible and own my ethnicity, not only for myself, but for others who want to see themselves in me and be inspired and know that they can also achieve a position in leadership.

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And so I did that LinkedIn post, but at the same Timme, I was so nervous because I knew that I had downplayed this part of my ethnicity. It felt risky because I had such a vast network of C suite members, board members, venture capitalists, all the. All the like. So I didn't know if there would be any repercussions. It was, it was, it was nerve wracking, actually.

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I can only imagine, you know, because you were being told growing up in very overt and subtle ways to show your true self and a mother even caring for you. And I hear this story over and over again since I've moved to California or back to California from being overseas to Asia 20 years. I've talked to a lot of people who were raised with families where they didn't even learn Spanish because they really didn't want them to know. Like, the grandmothers were like, please don't teach them Spanish because it's an easier way for them to assimilate. But it just breaks my heart because for those of us who know Spanish, it, oh, what a loss.

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Like, it's such a beautiful language. It's a beautiful way of looking at the world, at the music and the cultures and all of it. And so it's, you know, I can imagine how I read, as I read that part in your book, I could imagine how nerve wracking it would be, even though I haven't had that exact experience. And also I could imagine the people who came up to you and were so connected because that's the power of story. Right.

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Your story might be different in the details, but the immigrant story or the story of being told to not bring your full self, especially in the Latina community, is so powerful to connect you. And I could imagine why on LinkedIn so many people reached out and said it was like a me too moment. Right. For people it was, yeah, yeah. And that it really allowed you to have influence and leadership in a way that you probably hadn't thought about before.

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And so in your book, right, you write about in your book, embrace the power of you. You're really talking about owning your identity at work. I want to know kind of what are the biggest barriers professionals tend to face in doing this and how you found that they can overcome them. Yeah. You know, I will say the first barrier is really yourself.

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I think that the journey to owning your identity begins with self acceptance. And that sounds really simple, but for anybody who's ever downplayed or hidden or masked anything, you'll know that you start internalizing that belief. You start internalizing that maybe I'm not good enough, that I don't belong here. That negative story just continues in your mind, unraveling that, unpacking that, and really recognizing that who you are at your core and your identity is beautiful. As you mentioned, all the different aspects of, of the Latino culture is beautiful.

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And to believe it yourself is really the first barrier like, to overcome. I would say the second barrier is the environment that you find yourself in and who is surrounding you. Not all workplaces are going to be inviting of all identities, you. And I think that searching for organizations that celebrate you rather than tolerate you is very important. There's a big difference when someone celebrates who you are and your identity.

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So. But not all of us are lucky to find those environments at first. And so I think agency over recognizing whether you are or not or not in that environment is important. And that's kind of to your question, to your question of how do you overcome it is, is one recognizing what kind of environment are you in. And for some reasons, financial or otherwise, you may need to stay in that for a it, but have agency over that, know how much you can bring into that environment of, of who you are and, and make a plan, and make a plan to go find.

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There's so many organizations out there that really are leaning into inclusion, and I think those are the companies that are really going to be successful in the long run. So finding those companies and the second part of this is finding community. I did not realize how vital community is. Whether it's an employee resource group within your organization, whether it's an organization outside of your work. There are so many organizations that, you know, they just.

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There's nothing like being in a space of people that have a similar lived background that, where you don't even have to explain what it feels like. People just know. It's just like, oh yeah, that that happened to me. I get it. And we don't have to explain explain it.

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It just, it's so validating. It's so comforting. And I think being validated for some of the challenges we might be facing and not feeling alone in that is so important. Absolutely. It's so important.

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Even just the moment of, you know, having a conversation with somebody coming in to clean and speaking Spanish with them is something that has meant a lot to me also as somebody who gets to interact with people in my workplace that often speak Spanish. SomeTimmes people will come in and I'll be late at work and they'll be on the phone with their daughter in Venezuela or somewhere and they're like, oh my gosh, you know, it's that connection, you know, that human connection that we need now more than ever in an era of AI that we're partnering with and we want AI to do its job and it does it so well. And we need to increasingly be human with all the different beautiful ways to live this human life. And as we bring that around the table, I agree with you that inclusion, that's the future of work. If those who are not including voices around the table, cognitive diversity, cultural diversity, they're going to miss out on new markets, they're going, going to miss out on decision making.

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They're going to have, you know, areas that they are completely overlooking because people who bring in another culture and another language, they really have a whole other perspective on things. And so I think that's the beauty, that's the additional beauty of it. Like we can do well at business and we can do well for humanity at the same Timme when we're inclusive, even though there's a lot of narratives going on geopolitically to kind of make us think otherwise. But you're a first generation Latina kind of leader in your family in this immigration situation, obviously. Like for example, my sister in law, she's an engineer in Venezuela and she was shocked when she came here and there's so few female engineers, especially Latinas and stem, because in Venezuela there's a lot, right?

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But here there's not. And so I was like, wait, what? That's a problem. My goodness. But you're a first generation Latina leader in this situation in the US Here in your family.

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And what's your perspective on the geopolitical tensions that we kind of mentioned just now? You know, we have immigrants that are in the news for all kinds of political narratives. There's descendants of immigrants that are facing birthright citizenship that's up for on the chopping block. How are these challenges affecting and impacting people in the workplace? Wow, it's heartbreaking right now, Lori, I have to say, it's just really tough being Latino right now.

00:18:48
You know, I was speaking with a good friend of mine who I went to law school and is now a partner at a large business immigration law firm. And she was just telling me about all the, you know, what's happening right now with the ICE raids, the stops at the borders. They're stopping people even intrastate, you know, crossing just within states. You know, they're going down into big box department stores and asking for papers from all the employees. I mean, people are frightened.

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I'm hearing stories of people, of kids not going to school, of parents not going to work, everyone afraid that they're going to be grabbed and deported. And I'll have to say, as I was hearing these stories of people being stopped and questioned about, you know, having their papers, it was the first Timme in my entire life where I had the question come up in my mind, which was, do I need to start carrying my passport around? Like, never in my life have I ever had to think that. And that just really made me just sad that this is happening across the country right now. The rhetoric is so damaging.

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So in addition to all of that, like in the workplace, we've already had the challenges. Even just being a woman already is tough. And trying to overcome gender bias, trying to prove that you belong at the table and then you add a layer on that of being Latino, and it's it's just a double whammy you're constantly trying to prove with credentials. You know, when you, when I go to some conferences, when, you know, like I go to the lcda, the Latino Corporate Director association, for example, and I talk to other Latinos, they're like, yeah, I've got my MBA, my PhD. Like, like we all have a number of different degrees because there's this need to prove that we are educated, we know what we're talking about.

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And that's the invisible tax that people don't recognize that we carry because others don't have to carry it. And, and so anyone of color has to carry it. But, you know, that's an additional tax. And you know, for me, people are always surprised to learn that I'm a general counsel, I'm an investor, I'm a board director. It's, it's, it's always the really, you know, like the surprise, like, and because I don't fit the mold of what you see in the media, of what the rhetoric you hear.

00:21:08
And so it's just, it's, it's hard in multiple different. It's so hard. It's just, I'm with you. I know so many stories, like just the amount of stories that started rolling out from the moment the inauguration happened. It was just, you know, we were just holding our breath because knowing what was about to happen but not knowing how it was going to happen and the shock and awe was going to come, but we weren't sure how.

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And now it is here. And for my family, they live on the border. My mom, Freda Adams, she was the director of border health for a long Timme under with the governor of New Mexico. She worked along and that was during the Obama administration and then the first Trump presidency. He defunded Border Health to build the wall.

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So, you know, all these things happened. And then. So in the last four years under Biden, she's been able to do a lot of work again and was working in a FEMA funded asylum seeker kind of shelter, receiving Venezuelans, which is great because she used to work there and started a clinic there. So many of the people she was helping, they had been treated there for free and then came across the Darien gap. I mean, 90% of them are sexually assaulted, men and women.

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It's a horrible journey. But people are so desperate to make it and they're seeking asylum for a regime that has destroyed their lives and economy and that's how desperate they are. And so she receives them and it's been great but then we knew January 31st it would be over. Right? So.

00:22:25
And then I have a family member who's been working in food stamps and is bilingual, in training and helping people who are trying to, you know, build their lives back after maybe losing a job. And all of a sudden that's, you know, been on the chopping block potentially. There was a day there's so many people living in fear. My husband works out at Orange Theory, and there's a woman there we were speaking with the other night. She's Venezuelan, lived here for years.

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She's a citizen of the US now, and she's also carrying her passport now. And they're worried about kids in school. They thought, should we have a meeting with the parents? But they're worried if they have a meeting with the parents to inform them on what their rights are, that people with nefarious means might show up and take advantage in that moment. And I have kids in schools here in Silicon Valley that their classmates are afraid to show up to school.

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And it's just so many people living in fear and anxiety for no reason at all levels, whether they're, you know, like you, the general counsel of a corporation and sitting on boards, or it's when people, you know, cleaning offices. The amount of fear is so inhumane and so it can feel like such a dark Timme, which I showed you earlier is, why keep a light lit? Because I want to be reminded that even a small amount of light and the darkness can shine a path forward, and that if we bring our candles together, even more illumination can happen. And I think that when people look at your life, you've broken some glass ceilings, you've broken barriers in Silicon Valley, you've reached the C suite, the boardroom, you're in venture capital. As you've walked this journey of being one of the first and often the only in the room, what are same key lessons you've learned about leadership along the way?

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You know, what I learned is the importance of authentic leadership. There were many jobs along the way. Actually, most of them were. We didn't. I didn't have authentic leadership at the top, and there was toxicity.

00:24:10
And I saw how really terrible that can be, not only on an organization, but on its bottom line. And so, and I think one of your earlier questions and like, what. What forms you? I would say that having worked in organizations that are toxic actually formed me because I now know what I don't want to build and the kind of environment that doesn't work. And so I would say that finding leaders that are authentic leaders is where you'll see the best organizations.

00:24:41
And those are leaders with characteristics such as a self awareness around, you know, about themselves, about their strengths, their weaknesses, their motivations. I mean having sort of a deep self awareness about who you are as a leader is one characteristic. Another is just being grounded in integrity and ethics and understanding your values. There's a great program that I went through called True north and it's taught by Bill George, he's a Harvard business professor and he has a book actually called True north and he talks about what is your true north, what are your values and where are you grounded and really understanding what those values and ethics are and understanding them will drive all of your business business decisions. So that's super important.

00:25:23
And the next is being, being a leader that is motivated by serving rather than being motivated by power and wealth. And I think that if you're motivated by serving, power and wealth will come, will come like you will be successful. But if you're solely motivated by power and wealth, don't think that creates the rewards that you're, you're. And lastly I will say relationship building. The importance of building trust and creating an environment where people trust each other, people trust their leaders.

00:25:55
And once you build that trust is how then you can create an inclusive environment because people feel safe. Creating that psychological safety allows people to bring their whole selves to the environment. So creating an environment of trust is critical. I feel like you. We just are in each other's same wavelength right now because so I feel like these are kind of the things I talk about so much and I think it's because it's true.

00:26:21
Those of us who've worked in business long enough, we know people, we know cultures and you can see over Timme what works when you get to a certain point in your career and you've been a leader, you sort of know even from learning from toxic environments. I mean absolutely true. That is absolutely. No, I don't want to be. And I think that when I came across Google's project Aristotle Research where they we're trying to figure out what's the key to successful teams, it was psychological safety.

00:26:42
So I train globally and our company on cultivating psychological safety. And also you know, self awareness is one of the four key aspects of leadership. And of course we have called fundamental four and it's so interesting how few people it's self awareness is hard. It's hard work. I mean and living by your values when in a world that wants to just take you and make you what they want you to be.

00:27:03
I mean, I keep my values here. I did a values exercise years ago with a coach. And so I keep these values on my desk. And right before our interview, I have these little cards. I love that.

00:27:12
Is it great? That's great. Yeah. So it's a reminder to me because even I can forget, even as values driven as I am as a businesswoman and a person and a, you know, person who's on boards and all that, right before this interview, I just like pull them out because, like, I want to make sure I'm living those out. And I have on this side, you can't see it, but I have five little cards with another coach I worked with years ago where she was an enneagram coach.

00:27:34
So when I learned what my Enneagram was, I have these words that describe me because the world tries to shapeshift you into somebody that you're not. And so our job as leaders is to know ourselves, to show up as ourselves, as hard as that is, and bring our difference. Right. And allow other people in that authenticity of leadership to bring themselves to. And I think that's the beauty of it all, is that when we are authentic, then it gives people permission to be authentic.

00:28:02
And it's actually good for business too. It really, really is. I love these lessons that you've learned and you as a mentor and an investor in female founded companies, which I also love and invest in. What advice do you have for women, especially women of color who want to advance in leadership with all these obstacles? Well, for women, so they'll take maybe two different things.

00:28:24
I think for women that are started, that are entrepreneurs that are starting companies, a couple of things. One is really prepare for. It's a long journey. It takes years to get a company off the ground. So make sure you have a long Runway of cash and support to get you through that.

00:28:45
Because as you know, as the data shows, women are the least funded. Women of color even less funded. So you might not get seed money right away. So you need to be able to get to a position where you can have revenue coming in and product market fit. Just, you know, prepare for that so that you have enough Timme to get to that level.

00:29:03
Second is like network. And this I would say for both entrepreneurs and if you're in the workplace, building your network is the number one, number one thing. And I never really. These are the sorts of things that, you know, my, my immigrant parents, you know, they just like, head down, work hard. That was the advice they gave me.

00:29:21
And, you know, head down, work hard. Works. It's part of the answer, but not the whole answer. You need to have relationships out there. And whether it's relationships sponsors within an organization, whether it's relationships with people that might open doors for you, you want to be able to call on people to be angel investors.

00:29:39
You want to be able to call on someone to be a beta test customer when you are starting a company or when if you're trying to move up within the ranks of a company, it is other people's relationship with you that is going to open doors and help you. And that relationship doesn't happen overnight. It is nurtured over years. And so I really believe it's not like go to the happy hour with, you know, with your before it was a business card, now it's your like LinkedIn QR code. But it's genuinely building a relationship with somebody, cultivating it over Timme.

00:30:16
And not always like, what can they do for you, but what can you do for them? I'm always asking what can I do for you? And that has really paid dividends over Timme. Great advice. Yeah.

00:30:29
Especially when we see invisibility being such a key part of women, especially Latinas work. You know, some of the DEI conversation that's been so polarizing is narratives that say, oh, that person is a. And I'm putting this in air quotes for those who are on the podcast, just Audio DEI hire. I mean, to me it's like a polite racism. Maybe not so polite.

00:30:49
Yeah. Because honestly, nobody gets to that point typically, very, very rarely with absolutely no credentials. Usually they're overqualified. It's just that if people have a narrative that that seat and that job, the default is, you know, a white man or a white person or person who went to an Ivy League school or whatever that narrative is. And then somebody gets brought in for their different perspective, for all their experience.

00:31:13
But especially we see with women typically aren't hired or promoted for potential only experience. And usually they've had way more experience. And with Latinas especially. So your advice is so good. Putting your head down and working hard, man.

00:31:27
We see Latinas working really hard and not getting hired or promoted or recruited. And so I think there's that extra advice that applies to all women, but especially for Latinos. For sure. You played a key role, however, in a very exciting $2.6 billion sale of liquor in Santa Cruz. I live in Los Gatos.

00:31:44
Santa Cruz is really close to me to Google, which is really big deal. What was that experience like and what insights did you gain from leading such A high stakes deal. It was an incredible experience. A lot of long nights, a lot of nerves. Yeah.

00:31:57
You know, anyTimme Google acquires a company, it is highly scrutinized due to their size, their influence, their acquisitions often attract attention from the regulators. So that meant that our approval process was lengthy and was complex. And if you even see the news recently, many of their acquisitions have been blocked. So I feel very proud that we got this through the system. We got it approved from the Department of justice through the UK's Competition Markets Authority, and we also got approval in Australia.

00:32:27
So it really was a complex global antitrust deal which, you know, we were able to get over the line. We had a great team. We actually notably had a primarily female team, both inside. Yeah, inside and outside. Our outside counsel was a black woman, was the partner of the M and A team, and most of our team were women.

00:32:48
So we worked really closely together and it was a collaborative team effort. And the other thing I'll say about that experience was again, sort of being driven in, you know, or grounded in your values. Our original founders at Looker and the executive team at Looker, and why join the team is they deeply valued not only the culture, but its employees. And so as we were going through that process, from the minute we were negotiating the term sheet all the way to closing and integration, we always kept our employees in mind. We wanted to make sure that every single employee was treated fairly.

00:33:26
And then everyone felt that there was a win. That wasn't just a win for a select few, but it was a win for everybody. And that made such a winning culture. It made such a difference. We made hard decisions because we kept grounded in the fact that we wanted to make sure that this felt like a win for everybody.

00:33:44
And so, I mean, that's talking about finding real, true, authentic leadership in action. You know, really leading with integrity and commitment to serving the employees. So amazing. And what an opportunity. It's really great to hear that you had so many women on the team and yeah, just, you know, it's such a remarkable effort that you guys all were a part of together.

00:34:05
And I think that I'm thinking about people listening right now that maybe have aspirations to do some of the things that you've done. So maybe talk to that listener who's somewhere, maybe she's an immigrant here in California from a Latina family. Maybe she's in another country and speaks enough English to understand and is really hoping to build her career in such a way as to be a people first leader, but also wants to build wealth and wants to be successful. What is some advice that you could leave her with as she's listening to? Give her some inspiration or some steps ahead.

00:34:41
First of all, believe in yourself. You know, a lot of women that I talk to have so many doubts, and they let fear stop them from pursuing the next thing. And we've heard the statistic where, you know, there's a job requirement with 10, you know, requirements. You know, women won't take that job or won't apply if they don't have all 10, and men, you know, with three or four think they're, you know, qualified. And.

00:35:07
And I think that that's true. As I talk to women, there's this. There's this piece that holds us back because we want to be. We want to have the perfect resume, the perfect background, all the experience. We're not quite ready.

00:35:20
And so I would say, like, believe in yourself. Take a leap of faith. Go for it. Don't be afraid to fail. That's the other challenge.

00:35:28
Like, oh, you know, I'm afraid to fail, so I'm not going to try. So, you know, you've got to. You got to put yourself out there. Give it a try. The way I look at failures, it's just data.

00:35:40
It's information. It's information. It didn't work. Why didn't it work? We'll figure out another way and continue to just, you know, believe.

00:35:50
I got through with resilience and grit. Love it. That's great advice. Yeah. There's enough narrative in the world to make women, Latinas, especially here in the US feel as though they're less.

00:36:03
And yet that is the opposite of what's true. And so, so much of it is just opening your mind up to who you are, I think surrounding themselves with people like you who are going to support and reinforce each other's voices. Reading books like yours, that can help people really unpack that for themselves and be encouraged. And just your story in itself is very compelling. So thank you for sharing yourself with us today so vulnerably, so authentically.

00:36:26
I will have you hang out with our difference makers for one more question there in just a bit. But how can people find you in more of your writing and what you're talking about? Yes. So you can find me at trishaTimm.com, my book, Embrace the Power of Owning youg Identity at Work, you can find on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and probably anywhere books are found. Check me out on LinkedIn or Instagram.

00:36:49
Thank you so much for this conversation. It's just been a real honor to have you on the show today and I just wish you all the best. Thank you. This conversation is so, so, so important. If you are listening from anywhere around the world, you have probably seen or heard something in the news around some very polarizing conversations around immigration here in the United States of diversity, equity and inclusion.

00:37:16
All kinds of things that are being thrown around as political footballs back and forth to ulTimmately harm human beings who deserve to flourish, who deserve an opportunity to build their lives and their families in a place where they have left much often regimes that have been tyrannical, economies that have been destroyed at the hands of greedy politicians, people who have been given a choiceless choice to leave a place like Venezuela, to walk across the Darien Gap, experience what is 90% of them being sexually assaulted, try to avoid the cartel as they come through Mexico on the way to reach the US Border in a desperate cry out for help to seek asylum. And what we are seeing in the US Politically is that not only people who have come here absolutely with a legal process, even though our process is very, very, very difficult, and the path to citizenship especially is quite difficult, but people are who have been here absolutely through the proper channels, are now also experiencing fear of the mass deportation effort that is going on with ICE raids that really remind us of terrible, terrible things that happen in places like Germany and Poland, all over Europe and different places around the world who have experienced anything similar. That when a narrative exists that there is a hierarchy in society and when societal institutions and the history built on a lot of racism and even enslaved peoples and even unpaid labor and practices that don't work for human flourishing but only benefit those at the very top of an oppressive and really evil system, we're seeing the fruits of some of that, that thinking where it has become not just, you know, a broligarchy, but definitely people with nefarious intent who are seeking to harm those who pick fruit for us here in California, who clean offices, who are engineers, who are educators, who are parts of the community that we know and love and coach our kids soccer teams who are general counsels of companies that have done billions of dollars of business, people who are working in nonprofits, in tech and all kinds of industries that are experiencing incredible fear and their children experiencing incredible fear about even going to school, women having to carry their passports when they were born and raised here, birthright citizenship being up for grabs and on the chopping block. There is by the Timme this podcast episode releases, I honestly don't even know how much of A version of shock and awe will have been going between now and then. But what I do know is that the Timmeless truth of human kindness, of generosity, of being a caring leader and person in your community, of shining the light that you have inside of you as much as you can for however and wherever you can, in a Timme of so much darkness and fear and anxiety, that is absolutely unnecessary and horrifying, that that is part of our path forward.

00:40:34
There is a divide and conquer strategy in play. That when you look at history and you understand how this works, is a very, very, I would say, tale as old as Timme. But what's also Timmeless is authenticity as leaders, authenticity as human beings, to bravely be vulnerable with each other, to bravely support one another, and to reject together the narratives that would pit us against one another. We are all human beings. We are all beautifully diverse with different cultures and perspectives and personalities and job experiences and educational experiences.

00:41:14
Even twins in my own home, born six minutes apart, have completed completely different filters on life, even though they've had so many of the same experiences, because our filters, our perspectives, are as unique as our fingerprints. And I think that what we need to lean into now more than ever and is part of the call that Tricia was bringing to us today. PaTricia Montalvo, who, when she got married, became Tricia Montalvo. Timm her journey, her history, her cultures that form her, from her parents that brought. Brought their cultures together to form their family here in California, are a beautiful example of what can happen when we allow ourselves and each other the opportunity to know ourselves, to express ourselves freely and to bring those differences around the table together and make a difference in a world that needs that now as much as it ever has.

00:42:09
So if you have not yet encountered or Googled Tricia before, I hope that you look her up on LinkedIn. We will link all her information in the show notes and please pick up her book. Embrace the Power of you. It's about owning your identity at work. It's about her own personal experience of speaking out for the first Timme in front of her company, about her own experience as a daughter of immigrants born and raised here in California and going to schools that were predominantly white.

00:42:36
She talks about in the book, you know, being near Hollywood. She had headshots made one Timme to audition as an actress and ended up having her agent tell her that she probably need to change her last name from Montalvo, which of course made her father upset because that's the family name. Why would we have to change that? But that's the Very reason that DEI is in place is because we do have bias. As different as our perspectives are as unique as our fingerprint, the cultural narratives and the family of origin that we've had and the teachers we've had and the environments we were in, if they weren't diverse especially, have given us a narrative that life should be lived in this particular way.

00:43:14
And yet we all bring different values to the table. As I mentioned, I keep my own values literally here on my table, my desk here, as I record this podcast episode and as I do my work. And I think that as we learn to appreciate each other's differences, then we're going to see not only business do better, we're going to see our government perform better. Our culture, our way of life is going to be enriched. My life is so much better.

00:43:39
And I will never, ever, ever stop being grateful for being raised in Central and South America and international schools with friends and teachers from all around the world. That whole upbringing serves me to this day, even though I still work through my own bias. SomeTimmes I find myself with internalized misogyny where I look at a position or I look at a. And I think, I think, man, I just have that default in my head. But we don't.

00:44:05
We don't serve ourselves or our industries we work in or the difference we're trying to make in the world if we only see every open seat as belonging to a man or a white man or any particular kind of person. Because the reality is just as we heard at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland recently, where DEI was a big conversation and many corporate executives and CEOs of companies were, you know, quoted as having their opinions on dei, diversity, equity and inclusion. And the CEO of Cisco was quoted as saying how diversity is good for business. And he would love to have diversity around the table making decisions, because he's seen the proof of it. And that's something I, and many of us talk about all the Timme because we've seen the proof of it.

00:44:46
So it's bad for business actually to not be inclusive. And the opposite is true. It's good for business when you include a cognitive diversity around the table. And so whether it's in business, academia, non profit government, whatever your industry, I hope that this conversation has been enlightening, that you just intentionally start to read and get to know stories of Latinas in particular, if you live here in the United States. In Latin America, we see Latinas doing all the things.

00:45:15
So it's really only an issue here in the United States, where They've immigrated to where we don't see them in all those same ways because of the history and how things have gone. And so that's the work we must do to overcome that. If that is something that you struggle with, which is a bias against that. And of course, like most people, you probably don't even realize that you have the bias and think that you don't like. When I do trainings on listening to understand in my global workplace, one of the most common things people say is, I thought I was a good listener before we started this three hour leadership summit training because most of us think we're good listeners until we realize, oh, there's facts, feelings and values we're supposed to be listening for.

00:45:50
Wait, we're supposed to suspend judgment when we listen. We're supposed to ask clarifying questions. We're supposed to use all these skills. Most of us realize, oh, actually I am not as great as I think I am. And that's typically how bias works.

00:46:03
We think things are much better than they are. We think we're more inclusive than we are. We think we listen more than we do. We think we're being more fair than we are. And so I think that being self aware involves taking a hard look at ourselves and working on ourselves so that we can be a part of the difference and bringing change for good, for our industries and for the world as a whole.

00:46:23
I know it's a hard Timme for a lot of you. I know some of you are scared, full of anxiety, not sure whether to send your kids to school, not sure whether to show up at work, not sure whether you should carry your passport everywhere, whether you were born here or not. And I just want you to know that you matter. Your voice matters. Your life is precious.

00:46:42
You are so, so, so loved. And whatever your decisions are that you're having to make today that are extremely hard because life is so unfair and there are so many systems that are broken. I want you to know that your difference is beautiful. Who you are is remarkable. You have so much to offer to yourself and to those right in front of you.

00:47:04
And whatever hard choice you're having to make today, I just want you to know that you are loved and you matter and your voice matters. So please keep making a difference for yourself and for others, wherever you are. Before we go, I just want to take a moment to thank you. Yes, you. The fact that you're here, tuning in, leaning into these conversations and doing the hard and beautiful work of making a difference in this world, it means everything to me in this episode.

00:47:33
If it spoke to you, if it brought you healing, hope, or even just a new perspective, I'd love for you to help us spread the word. Subscribe to the podcast, leave us a review, and share this episode with someone you think might need to hear it. Your support helps this community grow and also helps us to keep having these important conversations. You are such a vital part of this journey, and every Timme you listen, every Timme you share, you remind me of why we do this. Because you are out there making a difference in your own beautiful, messy, and imperfect way.

00:48:08
And that that matters more than you know. So thank you for being here, thank you for showing up, and thank you for making the world a little brighter, a little kinder, and a little more whole. Until next Timme, take care of yourself and keep making a difference. You are loved.