The costume of confidence is a powerful tool that can transform the way you approach your career, especially if you’re tired of feeling like an outsider. In this episode of the podcast, Rosie Zilinskas talks with Naeemah Elias about how the costume of confidence can help you take risks, build connections, and break career barriers. Naeemah shares her personal experiences and insights on navigating workplace challenges as a woman and person of color, emphasizing the importance of mentorship, networking, and self-advocacy. Tune in and learn how to create your costume of confidence! It’s time to transform your career and step into your power.
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The Costume Of Confidence: How To Show Up And Stand Out With Naeemah Elias
Have you ever felt like you are doing all the work, but nobody notices? You are not alone. I vividly remember being 40 years old, and it was like it was yesterday. I am looking at my keyboard, typing away and I’m thinking, “Any day now, somebody is going to notice my hard work. They’re going to come and tap me on the shoulder and hand me a promotion.” Guess what? Nobody ever came. Again, you are not alone.
My guest is Naeemah Elias and she’s here to talk to us about why working hard isn’t enough and what you can do to stand out. Welcome back to another empowering episode of No Woman Left Behind. I am so glad that you can join us for this conversation. We are going to be talking about some big questions like what does it really mean to thrive as an outsider in the corporate world?
I can relate to that being a 100% Mexican female in the corporate world. I also moved from Mexico City to the United States a few times and I always felt like an outsider when I was younger. We’re also going to be talking about how you can build your confidence and advocate for yourself even if it feels tough. Stick around because you are going to get some actionable advice that you can use to elevate your career.
Let me tell you a little bit about Naeemah Elias. She is not only a Speaker and a Career Advisor, but she’s also someone who’s navigated the complexities of corporate life with resilience and grit. Here’s a fun fact about Naeemah. She has been everything from a Harvard graduate to a puppeteer, to a performer in the arts. Naeemah has a unique way of helping people break through their career roadblocks, and I am thrilled to have her here. We have such a great episode coming up for you. Let’s go ahead and dive into the juicy conversation. Trust me, you will want to take notes. Stay tuned for my conversation with Naeemah.
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Naeemah, thank you so much for being here. How are you doing?
I’m doing great, Rosie. Thanks for having me.
DEI Programs In The Corporate Space
Yeah, we’re going to have a really great conversation. I think the very first thing that I want to start is in the corporate space right now, a lot of programs are being eliminated, reduced for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. I would like to get your perspective because I know you’re also a Career Advisor and a Speaker and you do a lot of work with younger people as well. You do a lot of advice for younger people, younger professionals. We’re going to talk about that. What is your perspective or your outlook in what’s happening in the corporate world where these programs that were so crucial, obviously at the onset of 2020, the pandemic, George Floyd? What is your take on what’s happening right now with those programs?
I have to start by saying when I started my career, there were no DEI programs. Most of us had no scaffolding and support in that way to be able to jumpstart our careers. I think of those programs as a jumpstart. They’re an incredible benefit to the organizations, but not having them doesn’t mean that we stop moving forward. It doesn’t mean that we stop doing the work. I was never in a DEI function, but I spent a lot of my career helping women, helping people of color, sponsoring and coaching young professionals. There are always going to be people within organizations who will help you. Feeling like, “This company doesn’t have a DEI program and therefore, they don’t value me and I can’t work there.” It’s not true.
There are always going to be people who are going to help you to move forward in your career if you know how to find them and if you know how to ask them for help. It’s unfortunate that the companies are starting to devalue this, but I think it’s also a harbinger of, we think about the legislation that’s been passed across a number of different states around DEI and the concerns that people have about the disenfranchisement of folks who are not included in that umbrella.
Again, it’s an unfortunate perspective, but it doesn’t mean that those of us who have been doing the work are just going to stop doing the work. We’re going to continue regardless of the climate, regardless of the background. If you’re a woman in the workplace and you feel like, “Now that there’s no DEI program, I’m not going to be able to progress,” look for other women. Look for other women in senior places and build those relationships because they will help you to move forward.
If you’re a person of color and you’re working in an organization that has eliminated their DEI and you feel like you’re not visible, we can talk about ways that you can create visibility for yourself, find other people of color but also reach out to people who don’t look like you. Reach out to people who have different backgrounds than you get to know people who are in leadership, who are in senior positions because those people are going to be able to help you to move forward in your career. They don’t have to have the same background. They don’t have to have the same experience that you have to be able to help you to thrive in your own career.
I love your perspective because a lot of people are saying, “Corporations are not investing money in DIB and they’re not really valuing
people.” When do you think the diversity, equity and inclusion formal programming really came about in the corporate role? Do you know?
I think a lot of companies have become aware of the need for these types of programs in 2020. I think in 2020 when everybody was flailing, there was some awareness and a lot of companies started to build off these programs in that time. There were a lot of companies like the one that I was at that had the program for years before that. I think each company came to it either on their own or because of the heat and energy around the topic during that time.
I think a lot of companies have this propensity to do the flavor of the month like what’s popular? What’s the trend? They jump on the bandwagon and then they’re not familiar or were enough as to all the work that goes into it. They don’t have the funding, which is I think the biggest thing. I think if all companies had funding, I don’t think it would be a matter of not wanting to do it. It’s just a matter of do we have the funding and do we have people that are knowledgeable enough to run the program so that they run properly? To your point, I love that you say it doesn’t matter if your company has or doesn’t have a program. There are always things that you can do.
Also, reaching out to somebody that is not like you will open up that perspective because I remember when I was in Mexico City, because I’m 100% Mexican, we lived in Mexico. When I moved to United States, I started high school, I had no idea what a freshman, sophomore, junior, or senior was because I was completely lost. Obviously, by hanging out with people who were different from me, I started learning and evolving and understanding the protocols.
I think that’s a great point. Try to go out of your safety zone and comfort zone and reach out to other people who are knowledgeable. It’s always better to reach out to people that are like 2 or 3 steps ahead of you. Maybe not like an executive, but maybe somebody that’s just has a 1 or 2 level seniority over you that has been down the career path a little bit.
Thriving As An Outsider In The Corporate World
With that being said, you are obviously a Black woman, I’m 100% Mexican female. When I was in the corporate world, I was pretty much one of the only Hispanics in the executive realm. You went from living in South side of Chicago to Harvard. Talk to me a little bit about your definition of being an outsider and how we can thrive as outsiders in the corporate world.
Sure. I think I started with a narrow definition. I spent a lot of my career being the only woman or the only person of color in the room. As a Black woman trying to climb the corporate ladder in finance, I faced lots of challenges. I brought together communities of Black women who were trying to figure this out and we were trying to find our path forward. I remember being in a room where there were a bunch of Black women vps, vice presidents, and we’re talking about the challenge that we’re facing.
I realized we were trying to solve the problem, but there was nobody in the room who had already solved the problem. How are we going to answer this question for ourselves when all of us are at the same place or against the same wall? That’s where I started with this concept of outsider. We are not able to move forward and we don’t understand why. As I started doing the work and as I started doing the research, my perspective broadened. I did a faux TED Talk for my college reunion years ago and my classmates asked me to talk about Imposter Syndrome, which is something that I’ve dealt with my entire life. I got up and I did this five-minute presentation. It’s on YouTube. You can find it.
I talked about my personal experience with Imposter Syndrome and the struggle that I would be found out. This expectation that like, “If I don’t keep moving, people are going to realize that I’m a fraud and I have no idea what I’m doing.” After that presentation, one of my classmates came up to me and on first glance, this is a White male legacy who came from generational wealth and whose name you would recognize because you’ve seen it on buildings. He came up to me and said, “I feel like you told my story.”
I’m like, “I’m sorry, what? I’m confused because you seem to have everything that I have been working to try to figure out my entire life. I can’t create generational wealth for myself, but maybe.” He said, “I was born into this. This is my grandparents and my great-grandparents’ legacy. I have been raised my entire life to do this thing. If I had my choice, I would be an artist. If I had my choice, I would be doing X, Y, and Z. I have been raised to do this thing. I have no choices in my life and I have the pressure that if I break it, I have destroyed my family’s legacy.”
“I have to operate in this narrow box. I have to sit in this place every day for the rest of my life. I have no choice because if I don’t get it right, I break my family’s legacy. I don’t know this stuff. I don’t want this stuff. This doesn’t come naturally for me. This isn’t my life. It is, but it’s not the life that I would’ve chosen.” It blew my mind. Really, just thinking about we all have a struggle that we have to face and some are more substantial than others. I’m not saying we should cry for the person who has enormous wealth and they can’t have the job that they want. I am saying that a lot of us are stepping into spaces for various different reasons where we don’t feel like we belong or we’re treated like we don’t belong.
“We all have a struggle that we have to face, and some are more substantial than others. Most of us are stepping into spaces for very different reasons, where we don't feel like we belong.” – Naeemah Elias Share on X
My definition specifically, if you are the first in your family to step into a space, so if you’re going into corporate and your family worked in labor, you’re an outsider. You have a lot to learn. It doesn’t matter if you went to business school, it doesn’t matter if you went to an Ivy League. None of those things matter. When you step into corporate world, this is new for you. You have a lot to learn. You don’t have the instincts, and you don’t have the network already built in to be successful there. If you are a woman, if you are a person of color, if you identify as queer, if those things are part of how you carry yourself in the world, then people will treat you as other, so you are an outsider in that way.
If you’re carrying Imposter Syndrome, if you walk into the room and for whatever reason you feel like, “I don’t belong here and somebody’s going to realize that I don’t belong here and everything’s going to blow up in my face,” then you are an outsider. I think those are the areas that I think about when I define outsider. I think anyone could sit in that space. I think about outsiders and then I think about insiders. Insiders are people who are legacies, people who come into spaces with a built-in network with relationships already in place, people who look like the status quo and, therefore are not as likely to be challenged. If you don’t look like the status quo, there’s this concept of being promoted on experience versus being promoted on.
This idea that you can figure it out versus the idea that you have already done it and so therefore, we can trust you to do it again. People raise their hands and say, “I can do that.” For some folks, you look at them and you’re like, “Yeah, you probably can. Let’s figure it out.” For other folks, it’s like, “Let me look at your resume. It doesn’t look like you’ve done this before, so I’m not going to hire you.” That’s the outsider versus the outsider experience when you step into corporate roles.
You said a lot there. It’s interesting, I was watching a show and they said this term of a nepo baby. I was like, “What is a nepo baby?” I looked it up and it was like nepotism baby, where it’s like what you were saying, it’s like they’re legacy child in this situation. They’re going into the same type of career as their parents.” One of the examples was Miley Cyrus. Her father was in the entertainment industry and she went into the entertainment industry, so she’s considered a nepo baby.
It’s so interesting when you’re born into something like that gentleman that you were talking about. All right, yeah, he has money, he comes for this legacy, but I think the sad part there is that he has no choice or he thinks he has no choice because he doesn’t want to disappoint his family. Being a Hispanic Mexican woman, we have a lot of traditions. When you think of not honoring those traditions, specifically for me, I can only speak for myself, it’s like, “What is my mom going to say? What is my dad going to say?”
My parents really don’t care. It’s like that hold that the traditions have on me that like, “I can never not be here for Christmas and see my parents.” My husband is like, “Let’s go away for Christmas.” I’m like, “Are you insane?” That’s just an insane statement, but it’s interesting because as I get older, I’m starting to slowly understand that it’s okay for me to make my choices in spite of the traditions. My parents would probably be like, “Okay, have fun. Be careful. No big deal.” It’s really hard to break away from those emotional ideas and traditions.
Imagine if those emotional ideas and traditions were tied to a corporation or a family business and that you were the only person who could take the family business forward. Making the decision to break out and go your own way means that they have to effectively take the business out of the family and find somebody else who will love it and honor it and bring it forward without the ties, without the connection, the history. It’s a lot of pressure to be the person who does.
As an outsider, circling back to the woman in the corporate space that is feeling like that outsider, what are some things that you recommend so they can continue to climb the ladder? You are a career advisor. I’m a certified high-performance career coach. We have mutual interest in empowering women. What are some things that you recommend to your clients as far as their advice is to figure out how to not feel like an outsider? How does that blend?
I think the first thing is about relationships. The reality is that there are limited opportunities as you move up the ladder, the triangle. Start off and there’s space for everybody. As you move up, there are fewer and fewer roles. How do you move up and find those opportunities? You have to be willing to take a risk. That means that you’ve always been here and you’ve come up on this path. You might need to jump over here to be able to take a promotional opportunity or even to take a lateral opportunity to expand your skillset. Taking risks and raising your hand when you don’t know 100%, I always say that you should know about 60% of what’s on a job description. If you have 100% of the skillset, there’s nothing for you to learn. What’s the point of taking that job?
Taking a risk and stepping outside your comfort zone is really important. Building relationships is really important. One of the ways to do that, I had a conversation with one of my proteges and she was saying, “Naeemah, the first time we met, you recommended that I join these two groups.” These were employee resource groups, like outside work. She’s like, “The work that I did in these two groups completely changed the trajectory of my career. By stepping into this space, I was able to work shoulder to shoulder with executive vice presidents and senior vice presidents who were in the trenches getting work done that really mattered for the organization. They were able to see my capabilities, and one of them said, ‘I’ve got a role over here that I think you’d be great at. Would you be interested in doing this?’”
Going and doing the non-paid work, and yes, it takes time and yes, it’s a toll and it’s taking away from your time with your family and all of those things, but what it does for your career is extraordinary because the exposure that it creates is really incredible. The skills that you need to build to be able to take that next role, you can build in an ERG. You can do that project planning, you can run events, and you can do major things in those organizations in a way that’s less stressful than if your business lead gave you a huge project that was revenue-dependent. That’s one thing. Just join some organizations, some teams within your company and expand your skillset and build your relationships in that way.
The next thing I would say is to make some friends. Make sure that you have people in your network who are more senior than you and who have had different kinds of experiences than you have. When I talk to women about finding mentors, yes, you should absolutely have a senior woman mentor. You should also absolutely have a senior male mentor because the likelihood is that there are more men in the leadership of your organization than there are women. If you have male mentors who are in the leadership, they’re potentially going to have more access. It’s unfortunate, but it is the reality.
If you are building those relationships with senior people, male and female, then you’re in a position to have opportunities presented to you. Share what you care about. That would be the next thing, what you care about. I had a lead senior leader say to me, “Whenever people introduce themselves to me, they always talk about what they do, like what their current business line is. I don’t really care about that. I want to know if you have a passion for travel. I want to know where you want to be in your career 30 years from now. I want to know what you’re excited about.”
“If you are building relationships with senior people, male and female, then you're in a position to have opportunities presented to you.” – Naeemah Elias Share on X
“If you tell me that you’re excited about travel and I have an opportunity for somebody to move to France to help to launch a new business line, and I know you speak French, then I will come to you and say, ‘Do you want to move your family to France for two years?’ I want to know what your aspirations are because if I understand those, then I know where and how to sponsor you.” You want to make sure that you are building relationships in the more senior ranks and that you are letting them know what you care about.
I got my managing director promotion and it was a huge deal. I had gone from executive assistant to working my way up, and I got the managing director position. My daughter painted my portrait and it was like this whole thing. It was very exciting. When I got the offer, I said, “Thank you. I’m really excited. Give me 48 hours to think about this.” I called my mentor who was a senior vice president, and I said, “This is the offer that I received. If you got this offer, would you accept or would you negotiate?” He was able to say, “I think this is an excellent offer. It’s not at the bottom of the band,” because he’s more senior, and he knows what the bands are like. He was able to tell me that it wasn’t at the bottom of the band.
He was also able to tell me the climate around hiring and promotion at that time. This was a reasonable bump for me to not feel like I would be at risk when the next layoffs happened or that kind of thing. Asking him, “What would you do,” gave me the insight that I needed to be able to comfortably go back and accept the offer or to challenge the offer if I needed to do so.
Negotiating In The Corporate World
With that being said, my recommendation is always negotiate because the corporation always has this much, and then they give you this much. What is your position on always negotiating for something?
I think you come into the room with a number in your head. I think that you should say it out loud before you walk into the negotiation conversation. What’s the number that you want? What’s the number that you can get excited about? Also, what’s the lowest number you’ll accept? You have to say that out loud, too, because when you say it out loud, you might be like, “I didn’t like how that felt. Okay, raise it.” You’ll get to like, “This is actually the lowest number that I’m comfortable accepting.”
When they make the offer, it’s rare that they actually hit the number you have in your head. I think you land at always negotiate because they rarely actually hit that number. If they do hit that number, then you can make a decision. “They’re offering me what I asked for. I did my research. I understand what this role is worth. I understand what I’m worth, and so I’m comfortable.”
I always tell people, “Never accept anything on the spot.” Walk away and think about it because in the moment, there’s this energy and adrenaline that you’re getting the offer. That might confuse itself with the actual salary. Never accept on the spot. Say, “Thank you, I’m really excited about this opportunity. Give me 48 hours.”
You take the 48 hours and you think about it. Two things will happen. One, you’ll decide that you want to come back and counteroffer or two, they may come back to you and say, “We thought about it and we’d actually like to offer you more.” I’ve heard that happening a bunch of times. I’ve had young people say to me, “I actually want to ask for this.” I could say to them, “Based on offers that I’ve helped people to negotiate, I feel like that number is high, but ask for it anyway. A couple of times, they’ve gotten it. They didn’t even counter offer. The company was just like, “Yes, absolutely. We’re happy to give you that.
Young Professionals Advancing In Their Careers
I love your advice of pausing. Yes, you’re excited, but pausing, saying, “I love the offer. Give me some time to think about it.” I think that is a perfect advice because then you can go and do a little bit of research. I think the thing for me, when I say always negotiate, I don’t want the individual to feel like they’re leaving money on the table. If they do some research and feel comfortable with it and then accept it, then at least they have had that time to figure things out. I know you also give great advice to young professionals and you’ve already given us some, but is there any other piece of advice that you typically give to young professionals when they come to you for advice? “I’m looking to advance in my career. What are some recommendations that you have?”
Again, it’s the take the risks. Early career professionals. I’ve run programs for high school interns, for college interns, for early career rotational professionals. There are a couple things that I do with those groups. You’re just getting started. You’re new with the company. You’re new in your career and you have a lot to learn. For my summer programs, I tell those people, “You need to meet four new people every week. Go to town halls for businesses in your company that are not your own.”
If you’re in a large corporation and they have town halls, go to the town halls for other businesses. Go to an ERG that’s not your group. If you identify as Irish and there’s an Irish professionals’ group, you should go to that. Also go to the Black professionals’ group. Go to the women’s professional group. Go to a group that is not a space where you identify and expose yourself, learn and build some relationships. You should meet four new people a week and start to build your network efficiently at the beginning of your career.
Don’t narrow yourself to people who are at your level. You should be reaching up at least 1 level, if not 2, so that you can talk to people who’ve been where you are, who can advise you on how to move forward. Two questions that you want to ask in every one of those conversations are one, what advice do you have for me? You shared something about yourself. You want to collect advice and you should have a notebook where you’re collecting all of this.
“Don't narrow yourself to people who are at your level. You should be reaching up at least one level, if not two, so you can talk to people who've been where you are and can advise you on how to move forward.” – Naeemah Elias Share on X
Two, can you identify 1 or 2 people that you think you should meet? If you do that, then eventually, you don’t have to seek people out. Your list of people that you should meet will grow faster than you can tackle it because if every single person gives you 1 or 2 people they think you should meet, then it grows pretty quickly. A lot of times, those folks will be willing to make those introductions for you. They’ll send an email saying, “I want you to meet Rosie. She’s pretty fantastic and I’d love for you guys to just have tea and chat.” I did that all the time. If you do that early in your career, then you build relationships.
I’ll tell you, I’ve never gotten a job based on my resume and I’ve never gotten a job based on posting someplace. Every single role I’ve had has been because I had a conversation with a person, I talked about what they needed and we figured out how I might potentially fit in that space. I had many conversations, but with twenty different people before I find the place that makes sense. Of course, I have to apply for it. Of course, I have to go through the interview process, but I don’t get into the interview process because somebody looks at my resume and says, “Naeemah would be perfect for this.” Those relationships can completely change the trajectory of your career.
Confidence And Imposter Syndrome
We talked a little bit about confidence from the perspective of Imposter Syndrome. I talk a lot about being intentional with your career, especially for someone that’s already been in the corporate space and they feel stuck. Some women come to me, and they’re like, “Rosie, please help me gain confidence so that I can start advocating for myself.” I always say, “It’s not really either/or. It’s a process that goes hand in hand.” You say there’s this costume of confidence. Talk to me about that.
Costume of confidence is a final portion of my public speaking workshop. My focus is really on what you look like when you stand in front of the room. In the workshop, the workshop’s 3 hours long and I have each person in the room to get up and speak for 30 seconds and they tell us a story. I ask a couple of questions. “How do you feel about your presentation? What did you do well? What would you change?” Those kinds of things.
I would say 50% of the people say, “I was really nervous.” My question there is, “How does your anxiety display itself? How could we see that you were nervous?” They would say, “My knees were shaking,” or, “My voice was shaking, or, “I was fidgeting with my hands.” I’ll turn that question to the audience. “Did you see Rosie fidgeting?” ‘No.” “Could you tell that Rosie’s knees were shaking?” “No.” This idea that everybody can tell when I’m nervous because they can see what’s happening in my body is actually not true. You have to recognize that confidence exists on two planes. There’s what I feel and there’s what you see. When you’re presenting yourself in front of an audience, in front of a senior leader in an interview, in all of those spaces, they can see what you display.
If you have a concept for what confidence looks like and you can perform it and it’s not some dramatic thing. It’s don’t fidget. It’s put your shoulders back, put your head up, don’t close yourself off and make yourself small. It’s smile. It’s feeling comfortable saying, “I don’t know.” That’s really powerful. I’ve had a number of conversations about that lately. Being able to say I don’t know is really important because if you bluff and they call your bluff, it can go really sour.
The costume of confidence is a list of elements that focus on what does it look like to be confident? We talk about that first in the workshop. What does confidence look like? How do we recognize confidence when we see it? How can we wear it? When you wear it, people treat you as if you are a confident person because they see you as a confident person. When people treat you that way, you start to feel it. There’s this cyclical effect where you actually become more confident because people treat you that way.
Also, I think the biggest thing is the more you do it, the more you know what to expect. The bigger thing to me is like, think of a time when you’re prepared for, let’s just say an exam or an interview. You’re really prepared. You walk in there confidently versus a time when you were cramming and you didn’t really prepare for the interview. You’re like, “I’m not confident at all in this.” The difference there is the preparation, and of course the mindset as well.
I think without preparation, that’s where people, specifically speaking of women, don’t know how to articulate how they can help the other person. I heard you say this earlier, meet their goals. When you tell someone, “I can help you meet your goals,” they’re like, “Really? You can help me meet my goal?” This is about me, not about you. I think the conversation really shifts. It’s pretty incredible.
I love the costume of confidence. It’s just a process of elements that you can try on. You’re absolutely right because I’m a speaker as well, and the last couple of years, when I do a speech, I very rarely get nervous because I’ve done it so often. I know what I’m going to say, I know what my process is in my talk. I was part of Toastmasters, so Toastmasters is a great organization where you go and you can practice your speaking in a very safe space, usually with like fifteen people.
The cool thing is that you can be as nervous as you can or do great or mess up and you’ll still be supported. It’ll still be a safe space and you can get feedback from the evaluators on how you can start to improve. Over the years that I’ve been in Toastmasters, you see a person come in and they’re so nervous to do their icebreaker and then a year later, it’s like night and day. It is incredible. I love that you do that costume of confidence.
Naeemah’s Journey From Chicago To Harvard
I want to shift the conversation a little bit to you specifically. How did you go from Chicago living in Harvey and going to Harvard, and what was that process like? How did you end up where you are? I know you’ve been a puppeteer and you’ve been an actress. How do you go from one extreme to the other?
A lot of luck, a lot of I can’t stand down from a challenge and different things like that. I didn’t grow up wanting to go to Harvard. It wasn’t on my radar. I think not having spent my life prepping for it and wanting it, I think it was easier not to get in, but it was easier to go into the process because there wasn’t built in pressure. I was a junior and my dad told me, “You can graduate early if you get into Harvard.” Somebody else was like, “If anybody can get into Harvard, you can.” There was this language around, like Harvard, but Harvard was thrown around, as if it weren’t a real thing.
I applied to a bunch of different schools, but my friends and I applied to a number of schools because we had to apply to go to their homecoming weekend. We went to a bunch of homecoming weekends and we got to get as teenagers, get weekends away on college campuses. That was awesome. I ended up applying to Harvard because somebody said, “I don’t know. That might be a stretch for you.” Gauntlet thrown.
Even when I applied, I was like, “If I get it, I’m not going to go there. It’s Harvard.” I got in. I had done a lot of extracurriculars. I had really good grades. I knew that academics were the focus and that was the direction that was going to take me to the next stage of my life. It wasn’t the focus on Harvard. It was a focus on going to a good college. Once all was said and done, my choice was between Harvard and the University of Chicago and my mom was like, “All your aunts live around the campus at U of C and I can come visit you and hang out in your dorm,” and all that. I was just like, “Yeah, no.”
It was like, “I need space to go and spread my wings and do my own thing. I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to go something completely different,” and so I went. I had been doing theater since I was eight years old. I did theater at Harvard. I was in a lot of shows in the mainstream program. I ran the Black theater program. I did costumes for the Hasty Pudding. I worked on sets. I did all of this different stuff. Just after graduation, I was working on a show at the American Repertory Theater. It was an undergrad show. We shared this space. Again, like networking relationships. I was in a sports bra and biker shorts, and we danced for hours and hours every day. I had a six-pack. It was a beautiful thing.
I went running through the building to go to the ladies’ room and I ran past the casting director’s office and the casting director looked out, she’s like, “That’s the kind of body I want in my show.” Purely, they were looking for a specific aesthetic. One of my classmates happened to be an intern in that office at that moment. He said, “That’s Naeemah, I’ll introduce you.” That was the introduction that led to my first audition for a professional show. I did a couple of roles with no lines or one line. When they were doing the audition for the tour and they were looking for puppeteers, I raised my hand. I quit my job and I went on the road and I toured for a year and a half as a puppeteer.
I came back from the tour and I came back, I don’t know, the week before 9/11. The whole world changed right after I got back. I didn’t have a job and I didn’t have a plan. We’re all in stasis. I came back to Boston and got an executive assistant role as I was figuring out like what was going to be next. I started doing local theater in Boston. I was able to build a career as an actress here while working a day job as an executive assistant in various different companies. I have been able to play and do things under the guise of, “I’m not looking for commitment, I’m not interested in the relationship. I want to come in, I want to do my job from 9:00 to 5:00. I don’t want homework. I don’t want any higher expectations. I’m going to the theater and I will not be reachable. You can’t ask anything of me after 5:01.”
I took these roles and I learned a lot. I did some jumping around. When I had kids and it was time to pivot and be more intentional about building my career, I had a foundation in corporate spaces. I had a foundation in nonprofits and in startups because I had worked for CEOs and leaders in these various different types of companies. Moving into finance wasn’t a stretch. When you think about it, an actress moving into finance, that’s really weird. However, my day job had really prepared me through all of those different roles to be able to step into where I started at stage three.
What was your degree from Harvard then? Was it in Fine Arts?
Psychology. You talk about legacy and family expectations. I thought I was going to be a doctor or a lawyer. That was all, “You’re going to go to college. You’re going to be a doctor or a lawyer.” I got to college and I’ve taken a couple years of chemistry in high school. I was very good at it. I really enjoyed it. I got it. I didn’t understand it on a frontal lobe level, like I didn’t fully understand what I was doing, but I got it. Somewhere in the roots, I understood it. I went to the first day. We had what they call a shopping period where you could go to a class for a couple of days and check it out. I went to the first day of the entry-level chemistry class, and they talked about things that I didn’t talk about until the end of my second year of high school chemistry.
I was like, “This is not entry-level. I’m not comfortable here. This is going to get terrifying.” At that moment, I decided, “I’m not going to be a doctor. What am I going to study?” My roommate decided she was going to study psychology. I’d always been fascinated with psychology. I was like, “all right, let’s do it,” and that was the path that I took. Child development and educational systems. My poor kids. “I understand what you’re doing. I get it.”
I read somewhere on your website, I believe, that your parents were like, “If you want to get out, it’s through education,” and that’s exactly what you did. You took advantage of that. Kudos to you. By the way, you got into Harvard, you have your beautiful degree behind you, so congratulations on your success, but let’s just be real. There was a ton of hard work behind that. There was a ton of intention behind that. Whether you had Imposter Syndrome or you had confidence issues, you were really good at getting out of your comfort zone and raising your hand.
I think that’s the biggest key to someone’s success, as long as they’re willing to get out of that comfort zone. A lot of people do the hard work, but they don’t want to get out of their comfort zone. They don’t want to volunteer. They don’t want to do anything that’s scary. I think that’s the biggest key. You can have 2 people that work really hard, but 1 of them is willing to take risks, to your point.
We have been taught as women for most of our lives not to make other people uncomfortable, to keep things even keel. If you challenge or raise your hand, then somebody else might not like it. Somebody else might be uncomfortable. Also, if you work really hard, you’ll be recognized for that hard work and you’ll be rewarded for it. None of that is true. There’s always somebody who’s raising their hand. There’s always somebody who’s saying, “I’ll do it,” and they get to it before anybody has time to think about who might be great for this opportunity.
If you’re not saying, “I’ll do it,” if you’re not saying, “Take a chance on me,” they don’t have time to think about you. I heard an executive say that. She’s like, “If you’re not asking me for a promotion, you’re never going to get one.” I don’t have time to look for people because there are plenty of people who are raising their hands and presenting themselves to me. I was an extreme introvert as a child. I spent most of my time sitting in corners with books. That was my happy place. I didn’t dislike people. I just had no interest. I had to learn to interact with people. I had to learn to step forward and to speak. I had to learn to raise my hand and say, “Yes, I can do that.”
I had people along the way say, “You are capable. You can do this.” The number of times I had people say to me, “Figure it out,” it’s insane. You have to recognize that the people who are saying to you, “Figure it out,” the people who are saying to you, “You can do it,” believe them. They see you. Back to your question about confidence, when you’re writing your resume and thinking about the language that you use in it, you should be talking about the person that you aspire to be.
When you highlight the jobs that you’ve had, the roles that you’ve had, the experience you’ve had in those roles, are you talking about the day-to-day, like, “Here’s my job description,” or are you talking about the things that gave you joy that you aspire to spend more time doing? If you’re intentional about that in your role descriptions and in your summary, you can create a vision of yourself, and it’s really very powerful. Once you do it, you need to share it with somebody who actually knows. They can tell you that you’re underselling yourself and they can push you to go further.
I love that piece of advice. That’s amazing. By the way, that happened to me. I was 40 years old and I was working really hard. I remember being at my desk with my head down typing, and I’m thinking, “Any day now, someone’s going to come and notice my hard work,” and then nobody ever did. To your point, it’s like people don’t have time to think about anybody if you are not saying, “I’m ready to be promoted or at least to be considered.” When I finally did that, three months later I got promoted.
The Importance Of Asking For Help
The next time that I went for an executive vice president position, I did it completely differently, which is now what I call my custom career roadmap because I was intentional. I was getting to know myself. I was being able to explain to people how I brought value, all those things. It made a world of difference. It’s so interesting how when you actually set the intention that you can actually make mountains move. That’s fantastic. Naeemah, can you leave us one piece of advice? You’ve already given us a ton, but could you leave us with one primary piece of advice that you think our readers can implement pretty much immediately?
Ask for help. We spend so much time thinking that we can get it done on our own, and I just have to keep working, show off, and then people will recognize. The reality is that there are lots of people who are waiting, hands outstretched to pull you up. If you don’t take advantage of that, if you don’t ask for help, then it is very likely that it’s going to take you much longer to move forward in your career than it should. Ask for help. That help can be therapists, a coach, a mentor, a sponsor, or any number of things. Get somebody to see you and to reflect to you how amazing you are and then help you to showcase that amazingness to move yourself forward.
“There are lots of people waiting with their hands outstretched to pull you up, and if you don't take advantage of that, it's going to take you much longer to move forward in your career than it should.” – Naeemah Elias Share on X
Thank you so much for spending this time with us. This has been wonderful. You have given us a lot to think about. Any final words?
I loved having this conversation. It was different from a lot of the other shows I’ve gone on. I appreciate that. Thank you. If people are interested, if you’re interested in coaching, if you’re interested in having me to come into your company to do the public speaking workshop or the Thriving As An Outsider workshop, you can reach out to me on my LinkedIn or on my website. Definitely reach out, and I’ll be happy to play.
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That was a powerhouse conversation. I want to quickly unpack a few golden nuggets from this episode. The very first one that I think is so important is Naeemah says to build relationships. In this situation, build strategic relationships. Your network is your net worth. Taking intentional steps to really connect with mentors, sponsors, and peers that are outside of your comfort zone, outside of your normal circles, is going to go a really long way.
The second goal and nugget is to take risks. We’ve said this a million times before, but it’s always a good reminder. Don’t wait to apply for a job until you have 100% of your qualifications or of the qualifications of the job description because, by then, you are overqualified. Apply when you have 60% of the job requirements and you’ll need to be ready to learn. That’s the second golden nugget, which again is a great reminder.
Third, practice the costume of confidence. Naeemah talked about what it would be like to be confident. Confidence is both what you feel and what you show. She says, “Prepare, practice and fake it until you make it.” Those are really wise words. Naeemah leaves us with one top tip. Ask for help. It’s one of the things that we always forget about, but asking for help is a good thing. Don’t feel that it makes you a weak person because you’re asking for help, whether it’s going to a mentor, hiring a coach or asking a colleague. You really never know when someone can give you something that will really turn your situation around.
I just loved my conversation with Naeemah. Before you go, I want to remind you, please don’t forget to take the Promotion Readiness Quiz. It is a quick way for you to find out if you are on track for the next big promotion. While you’re at it, please check out the Unlock the Leader Within Membership. This is where you can connect with inspiring women in a community that is just like you.
From this episode, I hope that you’ve learned how to build relationships and take strategic risks and show up with confidence. These aren’t just tips. These are literally game changes for your career. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I hope that you share some of this information with the women in your community. With that, remember to be brave, be bold, and take action.
Important Links
- Naeemah Elias
- LinkedIn – Naeemah Elias
- Promotion Readiness Quiz
- Unlock the Leader Within Membership
- Luckey Mommey Chaos – Naeemah Elias YouTube Channel
About Naeemah Elias
Naeemah started her career as a professional actress. She worked her way out of poverty south of Chicago and earned a psychology degree from Harvard. After an acting tour as a puppeteer, and few years on Boston stages, she became a mother.
She quickly became a Single-Mom with 3 kids under 6, and got serious about cultivating independent free-range children, while building a corporate career! After 13 years climbing the corporate ladder, Naeemah created Elias Presence Ventures to transform the universe of talent development and mobility.