Uncolonized Latinas: Transforming Our Mindsets And Rising Together - Softcover

Aloe, Valeria

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1637308442 ISBN 13: 9781637308448

Publisher: New Degree Press, 2022

Synopsis

*****Awarded 16 national and international awards, including First Place non-fiction at the New York Book Festival. Similarly, Valeria Aloe's work on women empowerment has received multiple awards, including being recognized as a Top 100 Latina in the US in 2023.*****

“Latina sisters: we are the best-kept secret in the history of the United States. Welcome home.“

Valeria Aloe’s Uncolonized Latinas: Transforming our Mindsets and Rising Together lays out an unprecedented, detailed map of the Latino mindset and what is holding the community back from achieving its highest potential. Along the way we meet immigrant Latinas and daughters of immigrants who, through trials and tribulations, have uncolonized their limiting mindsets and have found success in their lives and careers.

This book guides us to:

• Embrace our individual and collective greatness, as we honor our stories and our ancestry.
• Become more aware of the limiting cultural narratives that have been running us.
• As a Latina, thrive in your career and life from a place of self-esteem, as you learn from those Latinas who figured out how to navigate the system.
• As an Ally, feel confident and become more effective when mentoring diverse talent.

Through this journey we can learn how to experience transformational change—open our heart, mind, and eyes.

About this title

About the Author

Valeria is an award-winning Hispanic market and mindset thought leader, keynote speaker, and author. She is the creator of a bilingual mindset transformation platform for Hispanic and other professionals and entrepreneurs of color, who are first generation to academic and professional spaces.

Her work to empower and elevate the Hispanic community has earned her several awards, including "Top 50 Women in Business in New Jersey in 2020", "5th most influential Hispanic in New Jersey in 2021" and "Truth and Integrity of the Written Word, by Golden Door Global Awards in 2022."
 
Before launching her business, Valeria worked +20 years in business development, marketing, and finance in leading companies across 7 countries, including Procter & Gamble, Citibank, Reckitt Benckiser, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, and TIAA. Valeria currently serves as Board member of LUPE Fund, and as Vice President of Latina Surge, non-profits that advocate for Latina equal pay, access to education, and civic engagement.

She holds degrees in Business Administration and Finance from Universidad Catolica Argentina, an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and a Master in Spiritual Sciences. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Spiritual Sciences.

From the Inside Flap

EXCERPT. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Competition among us is real.

Have you ever played "el juego de la silla" (musical chairs) growing up? I find it to be a great representation of what we can find in our Hispanic community. As the music plays, we run around trying to be faster, better, more alert than others, but as the music slows we race to find a spot—if needed pushing past others for the seat. There never seems to be enough for all.

Lorena is the successful executive and immigrant from Mexico I briefly introduced in Chapter 2. She has recently held a director-level position in the pharma industry, serving the Latin American market from the US headquarter offices. Surrounded by Hispanics from multiple countries of origin, as well as US-born Latinos, she recalls how as soon as she arrived in the US, she was "the happy Mexican going around" making new friends and connections. As time went on and she got more settled, she started to feel competition from other Latin American colleagues.

It was as if she had suddenly become a threat.

"We were supposed to help each other, or so I expected," she told me, "and then I realized that we really weren't. At some point I understood why we would compete more than collaborate: people thought there was not enough for all," she said.

She added, "In my experience, you are constantly pushing yourself to be seen and to find a mentor or sponsor. But as you are doing that, all your Hispanic colleagues are doing the same. And there seems not to be enough sponsors and mentors for all."

With Latinos entering the workforce at increased rates, there is a need for organizations to cultivate sponsorship and mentorship towards Latino employees, particularly from non-Latino leaders. As we know now, there are not enough Latino leaders to mentor and sponsor the up-and-coming Latino talent, so allyship becomes significantly important to advance our Latino professionals.

As Lorena explained it, "With companies being more open about increasing participation of Latinos in C-suite and boards, we know that there are better opportunities for us, but we are pushing to see who is going to be the person to be mentored and sponsored to get to those positions," she concluded.

Competition among us seems to have gotten fiercer lately, and this is an uncomfortable topic that has not been openly discussed among us.

As we expose it, it feels like we are entering vulnerable lands, showing our dirty laundry to the world. Truth is, Latinidad is not the brotherhood or sisterhood that we wished it were, at least not yet, and this fragmentation is holding us back and diminishing our collective impact and power.

A 2020 poll by IBM Institute for Business Value conducted among Hispanics showed that only 16 percent of respondents believe the Hispanic community is unified. A vast 84 percent think there is still work for us to do.

Similarly, I recently conducted an anonymous poll with Hispanics via social media, and 80 percent of them claimed that we can do a much better job at helping one another. What was very interesting, is that when I publicly posted the question "Can we do better at helping one another?" just a handful found the courage to voice their opinion, while the majority of those who viewed my post remained silent. A few contacted me in private to share their thoughts.

It seems we are afraid of having these controversial discussions because the stakes of speaking up are too high. With that, competition is not only real and uncomfortable to admit, but it also becomes a silent disease.

Before we continue, let me add some clarity: I'm not saying that absolutely no Hispanics are willing to help others. That would be a false claim as so many in our community dedicate our lives to elevate and support others. Also, I'm not saying that competition and rivalry only exists within the Hispanic community, as it is quite a universal disease. What I am saying is that, in general, we are a culture where jealously and competition seem to be present and inhibit us from making a much-awaited collective leap.

A few years ago, I joined a series of online classes that brought together people from all over the world. In those classes I met Adriana Aristizabal, who shared with me her story of immigration and her experience of working with other Latinos.

Adriana, a war reporter back in Colombia, came to the US as she had been targeted by the terrorist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Not speaking fluent English but with strong credentials that would later on open opportunities for her as news anchor and spokesperson in multiple organizations, Adriana describes her experience of working with Latinos as one of the most challenging ones in her adult life.

"As part of my job, I used to be reporting while standing in the middle of paramilitaries and guerrilla terrorists, with bullets flying all around me. But I never felt so attacked and vulnerable as when I stepped on US soil." For Adriana to express that walking in the midst of bullets felt safer than her initial experience with our own people, is very telling of how hard it can get for some of us.

Competition manifests in multiple ways, but it seems to have one general root cause: scarcity. We believe there is not enough to go around so we need to fight for the crumbles. And underneath it all, there is a deep-seated fear that crawls across our Latin American countries: poverty. Because many of our ancestors come from poverty, it seems that we try to avoid that experience for ourselves at all costs, even if unconsciously.

I am not ready to claim that the US, the largest economy on the planet, will not have opportunities for us. Despite what our lenses of lack and ancestral narratives may tell us, the reality is that almost no company operating on US soil can continue doing business if all of their Latino employees quit and if all of their Latino clients walk away. We are a large group that will only become larger.

Perhaps it's time we stop fighting for that one chair available for a Latino, and collectively claim for a more representative number of chairs assigned to us. How? Once you get one of those chairs, you become very intentional about creating new chairs for other Latinos to join you. This is not about charity or asking for favors, but about equal representation based on an unbiased evaluation of our individual accomplishments.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1637308442
• ISBN 13: 9781637308448
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 310