We were lucky to catch up with Nancy Benter recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Nancy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Any thoughts around creating more inclusive workplaces?

I’m going to bring this back to my childhood for a moment. I’m a daughter of immigrant parents. I always find myself fascinated with curiosity as to why I announce myself in that way, yet what I’ve learned it’s such a critical part of my identity. Till this day, I only know a portion of my parent’s immigration story after they survived the Cultural Revolution. And I don’t blame them. It’s painful, it’s not really a story you want to relive. I do want to honor their privacy, and hope one day, I will learn every detail of their courageous journey.

As I interrogate myself internally as to why it’s important the community knows my ties to an immigrant lived experience, I think it’s my way of declaring to the public that it’s informed my purpose driven leadership. I’m all too familiar with systems, cultures, and society not geared towards the needs of my community. I grew up in Olympia, Washington, and when I entered the public school system, it was less than 6% API representation. If my memory serves me right, I can count on one hand the number of minority teachers I had in school. As a first generation, Chinese-American girl, I remember having the lunch box moment in 2nd grade where schoolmates teased me for bringing my slow cooked pork belly (absolutely delicious, btw) and from there on, I adamantly insisted with my parents that I’d only bring lunchables or order school lunch. I started to erase my identity to fit in at the age of six. I can still recall laughing off questions like “Does your family eat dogs?” I remember the pulling of eyes as kids played with me on the playground. These behaviors continued throughout my middle and high school experience. This was my lived experience, and I internalized all of these behaviors as normal. Many leaders in my community have started sharing these stories which I find as progress. Ten years ago, I couldn’t say that I felt comfortable sharing these stories.

Fast forward to today, I’ve been a leader in the tech industry for over 11 years. I think I start with that so you have a baseline understanding that I’ve seen a lot, gone through a lot, and learned many lessons on trust building. The marginalized behaviors I faced as a child are still experienced by my community today in tech. The main difference is I now have a voice to speak out against the disrespectful behaviors and how it creates hostile cultures in the working environment. If a leader is being ridiculed because of the sound of their native voice, their accent – it’s our responsibility as leaders to speak out against that. If someone is complaining about the smell of a cuisine they are unfamiliar with in the company cafeteria, then it’s our responsibility to make sure this individual is enrolled in cultural intelligence training. When I hear someone say “they lack executive presence” or “are not a culture fit” I ask follow up questions on what they mean by that.

The key lesson to take away from this story is marginalized identities know what it takes to create inclusive cultures, because they live battling against headwinds every day. It’s crucial to listen to them, and partner with them to design a working environment that centers on people who need the most support.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Empathy, empowerment, excellence. This is a leadership philosophy I embodied after experiencing first hand what people-centered leadership can do to change lives for the better. After leading in Fortune 500 companies and a start-up, these three verticals always ground me in what’s important. I lead with empathy in mind and building a trusted relationship with each member of my team is my first priority. I prioritize building trust in relationships before getting into the work because I’ve learned time and time again, trust is extremely hard to build, and can be shattered in a moment’s notice. I believe in empowering my team by supporting their ideas, getting out of their way so that they can truly be empowered to work autonomously and once empathy and empowerment is flowing through the culture of the team, that’s when I witness a high collaborating team where we’re demanding excellence from ourselves and those around us.

Growing up, there was a Chinese proverb that was often quoted in our community that stuck with me “A wise horse doesn’t eat old grass behind it.” What I took away from that proverb is the importance of always learning. Nothing in life remains the same, so I intentionally run towards the problems people tend to avoid or don’t want to talk about. The moment I start feeling comfortable in the work, is when I start researching if there’s an area with complex problems that needs attention. I’ve learned and taught others the importance of controlling your career before it controls you.

I believe this is why I have garnered a reputation for being a change agent leader. People are inherently resilient – they are capable of learning new skills, transitioning into entirely new industries, and being great at more than one thing. Some of my best hires weren’t a person with an ivy-league pedigree, and a roster list of fancy certifications. They were people committed to always learning and betting on themselves so that they grew to new heights.

I’ve watched as a leader shifted from a highly technical function into brand marketing strategy. A project manager who was responsible for drafting up retail channel communications for 10+ years shifting into visual brand marketing. An executive with over 20+ years experience moving from the wireless industry into consumer goods. It always brings me back to Empathy, Empowerment, and Excellence. It might be an overly flowery lens on humanity, yet I do believe it’s limitless what people can achieve when they break out of a mold.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I can detect when I’m being underestimated or undervalued fairly quickly. I’m thankful for my trusted advisors helping me hone into these instincts I’ve acquired from childhood. Early in my career, I had a director ask me what my career goal was. Answering honestly, I replied with “I hope I can be a VP one day so that girls who look like me know it’s possible.” I’ll never forget the look on his face seared with disdain as he replied “a VP of what? Aren’t you a little young to be thinking like that?”

I wasn’t defeated hearing answers like that. If anything, I registered it as data collection. Either a person understood my answer, or they didn’t. Being unapologetic about saying my dreams out loud helped me filter out the naysayers and guided me towards the leaders who understood where I was coming from. The people who have done their homework, know that shifting representation in leadership is bigger than me. When one of us rises, the entire community rises.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

That the right thing to do is likely unpopular – it’s still the right thing to do anyway.

There was a time in my career, I spoke out on culture opportunities and how employees lacked psychological safety, so they were having a tough time doing their best work. I was fortunate enough to learn from people-centric leaders early in my career, and they taught me that a healthy environment is where people are encouraged to take risks, fail safety, and continuously learn. When someone is struggling to do their best work, I’ve witnessed people jump to conclusions that it must be the fault of the individual – yet what about the environment that employee is in? Do they have a genuinely supportive manager? Do they have resources to do the work with quality? Is there buy-in from leadership? How intense are the office politics and are employees shielded from the chaos?

There was enough of a pattern forming where marginalized leaders felt morally defeated in this environment. I had the courage to speak out because of my position in leadership. I knew speaking up would come at a cost, yet I assured myself, the benefits of potentially a healthier working environment for marginalized identities in leadership was worth the cost and social capital I’ve earned. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the desired outcome of improving the culture, yet I’m proud that we advocated our point of view with integrity.

It’s why I continue to advocate for consent culture and being hyper-aware of power dynamics in the workplace. While I understand people have good intentions in what they say and do, what I’m learning after being in tech for over 11 years is how those good intentions can be received as abuse – more specifically, it feels like abuse of power when someone is coerced into behaving in a way that is not in line with their boundaries.