Check out Carice Anderson online!

• LinkedIn - Carice Anderson

• Twitter - @CariceAnderson

• Facebook - Carice Anderson

• Instagram - @cariceanderson

• Website - cariceanderson.com

Full Transcript:

Note: This is an original transcript–edited for sense, length, and clarity.  If you have any questions or concerns, please email our host, Doria Lavagnino, at doria@sheventurespodcast.com.

Intro: 

Doria Lavagnino: Today, this Harvard MBA facilitates leadership and organizational development. Her clients include names such as Google and JPMorgan Chase. She’s worked as a consultant, a workplace facilitator, as an entrepreneur, as a freelance writer, and as a book author. She’s written the book Intelligence Isn’t Enough: A Black Professional’s Guide to Thriving in the Workplace. She’s here to discuss her journey and provide insight on how to overcome some of the professional hurdles facing Black professionals. Carice Anderson, Welcome to SheVentures.

Carice Anderson: Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited about the conversation.

Leaving for Love

Doria: Me as well. I always research my guests, and I noticed that your work life seems to be split between the American South and Johannesburg, South Africa. And that is a pivot, moving, that people normally don’t think about.

Carice: I do.

Doria: I just wanted to ask what was your decision behind working on different continents?

Carice: Well, I mean, I wish I could say it was a much more, you know, liberated reason why I went. But I went for a man, Doria.

Doria: I already knew the answer.

Carice: I went for a man, you know. My husband, who I met when I was at Harvard Business School. He’s class of 2005; I’m class of 2006. We met there, but we didn’t start dating until three years later, and, in that time, he had moved to South Africa. We were long distance for three and a half years before we dated, were engaged, even married for a year before I moved to South Africa so that is the reason in terms of the decision. You know, he could have moved to the States because my husband is American. But I thought to myself, if I don’t do this now I might never do it and I might look back later and regret that I didn’t do it. I try to make decisions with a very long-term lens. I try to think 20 [to] 30 years down the line. Will I be upset that I didn’t take this opportunity? And if I am, then I say go for it. That’s pretty much how I thought about it and I’m so glad I did because I don’t know if I would have wanted to move now. My parents are older.

Doria: Right.

Carice: My father has passed away and his mom is, you know, in the U.S. by herself. I’m so glad that I actually did it when I did, because I don’t know if I would have done it now and I would have always had to live with the “what if?”

Doria: Isn’t that the truth? You know, I realize that too now that in one’s 20s when you have less responsibility, everyone has certain pressures, obviously. But you have a lot more flexibility and it is an ideal time if there’s something that you are kind of like, I’m a little afraid of this. It’s a big change, but it is a great time.

Carice: Yeah, absolutely.

Doria: I think it’s also awesome that you were young and able to think with that long-term lens because I think that’s uncommon.

Carice: I don’t even know where I got that from, to be honest. I don’t even know if it was an original [idea or] it was something that I read somewhere, but I’m glad I was able to have that perspective. I don’t know if I would have had the courage to do it because it’s a huge change.

Doria: Huge.

The Pivot of Moving

Carice: I mean, I think when I moved to South Africa, I knew four people and one of them was my husband. I knew people from business school, but I didn’t have a network and, you know, I left everything behind. I had a job that I loved, I had a church, family, friends, a house, everything.

Doria: Yes.

Carice: To keep all of that up and to move there was, you know. I’m not someone who’s a huge fan of change.

Doria: Yes.

Carice: You may not know this about me, but I kind of like to keep things the way they are.

Doria: The status quo, yeah.

Carice: Exactly, and that’s why I talk about it in my book. About if we can get over that discomfort of that change, there’s so much on the other side of it. And I’m so glad that I didn’t miss out on meeting all these interesting people, writing this book. I wouldn’t even be talking to you, probably, if I hadn’t gotten over that discomfort.

Doria: Absolutely. 

Carice: You know, working at amazing companies, I would have missed out on all of that if I, you know, if I leaned into my comfort as opposed to leaning into that discomfort.

Doria: Yes, and leaning into discomfort is difficult, but you’re right. That’s where we grow the most.

Carice: Absolutely.

Doria: I wanted to also ask you this before talking about your book. As a Black woman in the American South and as a Black woman in Johannesburg, were there any contrasts or similarities as a professional?

Carice: It’s such an interesting question, Doria, I must say. It’s a bit of a loaded one. I think, you know, obviously, growing up in Alabama, I spent the majority of my career in Atlanta, which is also where I live now. And, you know, as a Black woman, you face some of that discrimination on multiple fronts. From a race standpoint and also from a gender standpoint.

Doria: Right. 

Carice: When you go to South Africa, I definitely think as an American, when Black South Africans would see me, they would think that I was Black South African. They would just be like she’s just another Black South African. Then, as soon as I open my mouth and they hear my accent, they become much more interested in me and want to know how did you get here and why did you leave there to come here, which is something I’m not used to in America. I definitely think my American-ness trumps my blackness in South Africa.

Doria: That’s interesting.

Carice: Yeah, if I had been a Black foreigner from another country, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, I don’t think I would have received that warm welcome that I did once I opened my mouth. It’s just very weird to me because I didn’t experience that here.

But something about being American, people are really interested and fascinated by the country. I think we’ve done an excellent job of selling the really great parts of American culture to the rest of the world. People have bought into that and that is probably the biggest difference. I definitely think, in African culture, the patriarchy is much stronger there, I must say.

Doria: Yes.

Carice: Like I mentioned, my husband is American, but he’s first-generation Zimbabwean American. So when we go to Zimbabwe, especially in the rural areas, I have to be a little bit more deferential. People ask me why I don’t have children. 

Doria: Well, you brought this up in an interview that you had that [experience]. I think it was when you got married. You had to [do] something about [it]. Was it washing their feet?

Carice: Washing the hands of my husband’s elders as a formal way to introduce myself to them the night before we got married. It’s wildly different than how I grew up, right? But it’s making those sort of cultural adjustments, and I think we have to do that at work, too.

Doria: Yes.

Carice: To be able to bridge those gaps and make those connections and build those relationships. We might need to, you know, step outside of what is familiar to us in order to be able to do that. And that’s exactly why I washed their hands, to be able to make that connection between them and me. 

Doria: Exactly, and I’m sure that it started to foster that kind of genuine, authentic connection.

Carice: Absolutely.

Being a First-Generation Corporate Woman

Doria: What were some of the professional and personal challenges you faced as the first person in your family to enter the corporate world?

Carice: I mean, I think, you know, some of the challenges I faced, I didn’t even know I was actually facing them at the time, right.

Doria: Right.

Carice: I thought I had it all together.

Doria: Don’t we all!

Carice: You know, it’s that youthful ignorance and arrogance, right. You’re 22. I got the degree in the right subject. I majored in marketing, had really good grades, started working for a really great company. I’m thinking my work here is done, you know. I’m ready to conquer the world, and I don’t think it was until probably a decade, maybe 15 years later, where I realized, oh, there were so many mistakes that I made. I saw them in other people. I saw other people making the same mistakes that I made in 1998.

Doria: Interesting.

Carice: I was really surprised, Doria, because- I’m about to date myself, but when I graduated from undergrad, the internet was five pages long and you could get through it in about seven minutes.  

Doria: You and me both!

Carice: It was not a resource that we could turn to. But fast forward, I’m thinking, well, these young people have the internet. They have social media, they have online courses, they have audio books. You guys have everything at your fingertips. What I realized is, if you don’t know what you don’t know, you don’t even know what questions you should be asking or what information you should be seeking.

Doria: Yes.

Carice: And that’s why I wrote my book, to just basically put it in people’s faces and say, look, read this!

Framing Success

Doria: Let’s talk about the framework of your book.

Carice: The framework for my book is “know yourself, know others, know your environment.” Bring the three of those together so that you can build a personal brand and a communication style that allows you to have maximum impact. Everything I’m talking about in my book is driving toward you having [an] impact, but being able to do it in a way that is authentic to who you are. But that is also value-adding to other people and that works in that environment. 

The first three main chapters in my book are “Know Self,” “Know Other,” “Know Your Environment.” I talk about them as the three corporate muscle groups. We’ve all seen people who work out, but they have [a] really big upper body and they have their legs [really small] like this. I heard this personal trainer talking about when we don’t exercise all the muscle groups in our body, we put ourselves at risk for injury and we don’t create a body that can reach its full potential. I thought “Oh my God, it’s the same thing” when we don’t exercise those corporate muscle groups. 

When you don’t know yourself, you can’t show up in an authentic way that’s sustainable for you and that gives you energy. When you don’t know other people, if I don’t understand what you need, and what your aspirations are, and what keeps you up at night, I can’t really craft and shape and show up in a way that’s helpful to you. And if I don’t know that environment, I can’t show up in a way that works there because what works somewhere else may not work here.  

You have to integrate the knowledge of all three to be able to show up in a way that works for you, and works for other people, and works for that environment. 

Doria: Going back to what you said before. I think it was so important that you didn’t even know what questions, or people didn’t know what questions to ask. With your framework, how will they position themselves to know? Will it happen automatically as a result of knowing oneself, knowing where they’re at, et cetera?

Carice: Well, I think it’s something that is going to evolve over time. I was giving a talk the other day and somebody asked me, “When did you know that you knew yourself?” and I said I know myself better than I did 10 years ago, but I keep evolving and I keep getting into new situations that tell me new things about myself or tell me things I still need to work on. It’s a lifelong process, but I think if people can start to sort of figure out “Who am I, what are my strengths and areas of development, what energizes me, what are my boundaries, what is the authentic version of me?” then I think you can position yourself around people and in environments that value. What it is you bring to the table. I think It’s an evolutionary process. I don’t think it happens all at once.

Doria: Definitely not.

Carice: You’re constantly having to check in with yourself to say, “Okay, how am I feeling? Is this the right environment? Are these the right kind of people?” And I think, you know, to at least know that. I don’t even know myself.

Doria: Right.

Carice: I think giving people some clarity in terms of asking themselves those questions so that they can get those answers in each of those three groups, you know. Kind of bringing that knowledge together so that they can show up in a way that works for themselves and others.

Everyone Has a Personal Brand

Doria: Have you received push back with the term “personal branding” because I feel like that has a negative connotation today?

Carice: Absolutely. And you know I, even, I’ll admit, the first time I heard the term, I thought it was complete garbage. I was like, “personal branding?” I thought I am not [that kind of person]. I’m an authentic person, Doria. I’m not going to fit into somebody’s box.

Doria: Right.

Carice: What I realized is we have a personal brand whether we want one or not. If I’m going to have one, I might as well shape it into what I wanted to be. For me, you know, we think about a brand, it’s just, what are the words and emotions that come to mind when someone says your name? What space do you occupy in people’s heads? What is the value that you bring? What is the promise that you’re trying to deliver on? That’s your brand. It’s not your logo, and your colors, and all these sort of superficial things.

Doria: I love that.

Carice: What I also tell people, especially a lot of women and people of color, I think [they] struggle with personal branding because it kind of goes against how we’ve been socialized. We don’t want to stand out and talk about ourselves. I tell people the better your brand is, the more likely you are to be in the rooms where the decisions are being made about the people that you want to serve and have [an] impact on. When I say it like that, that resonates with people. They’re like, “Oh now I can get down with it, as opposed to just making it all about me.”

The “Isms”

Doria: That’s interesting because it’s a segue into a statistic I found with McKinsey & Company. It’s [from] 2021, where it says that Black employees encounter what they call a “broken rung” from entry-level jobs to managerial jobs, and that Black employees account for just 7 percent of managers, and the majority of them have a distrust of the workplace. With all of that in mind, I guess what I’m wondering is, how do we address the issue? How do women of color address the issue of the hurdles that they are facing to get into that room?

Carice: One of the things I say at the very beginning of my book is, all of the “isms” exist. Racism, sexism, all the phobias, they’re all there, right. [An] unconscious bias. All of it is there, and I definitely believe there’s a shared sense of responsibility. I think about [how], you know, organizations have a role to play. Your manager, but also you, as an individual. My book is directed at the individual.

Doria: Right.

Carice: I fully acknowledge organizations need to work on themselves. They have not been designed with this phase or people who look like me in mind.

While those organizations are fixing themselves, we can work on ourselves, as well. At the end of the day, practically speaking, we have financial obligations so we need these jobs, whether we like it or not.

Doria: Yes!

Carice: How can I find a way to make this work while that organization is fixing itself?

Doria: Well, there’s so much power in what you’re saying because, when you think about changing yourself as an individual, that lies within things you have control over. Whereas waiting for the organization, waiting for society [can’t be controlled]. Yes, those are all problems and they’re very real and serious problems. But to your point, there is self work that we all can be doing at any given point. I really like that. 

One other question it brings to mind, though: You had mentioned that, oftentimes people of color don’t want to stick out in a professional environment. My question is what is the difference between cultural intelligence or sensitivity and assimilation? And whether or not someone is a person of color, how should we start to think about these ideas in a day-to-day way?

Existing Authentically at Work

Carice: Such a good question. I mean, I heard somebody say there’s maybe a difference between assimilation and acculturation, or trying to be a culture fit, which means I’m going to try to fit squarely into this box versus a culture. I think it’s something that we have to really wrestle with individually to see what are my personal boundaries and what are things I’m not willing to compromise on. Then everything else is potentially up for grabs. I’m willing to step outside of my personal preferences and my comfort zone. I think we have to figure out what that means for each one of us. 

One of the things I talk about in my book is the idea of the continuum of authenticity. I don’t feel like authenticity is binary. I feel like it exists on the spectrum. We have to figure out where are we willing to exist on that spectrum. I say, being my most authentic self is level-10 Carice. I’m loud, I probably have a deep southern accent, you might not even understand what I’m saying. My husband, who’s from New York, doesn’t understand what I’m saying sometimes when I’m with my family! I’m not going to bring that version of me to work. I’m just not. 

Doria: Right.

Carice: I’m probably going to be a level seven or eight. You know, I’m still going to be fun, I’m still gonna crack jokes and bring the laughter, but I’m gonna keep it a little bit more professional. Now, if I say to myself, I’m never going to go below level five, I don’t care.

Doria: Right.

Carice: But if my organization needs me to be level two, maybe that’s not the place for me and I have to start to develop that exit plan. What I cannot do is stay there and be bitter because they’re trying to get me to be something that I’m not. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad place, it just means it’s not for me.

Doria: Right.

Carice: It’s asking me to do things I’m not comfortable with. I think we just have to figure out where we want to play on that spectrum and then, you know, try to position ourselves in places and around people who value where we want to range on that spectrum.

Doria: Has anything changed on that range for you from being a young Carice to being an experienced Carice?

Carice: When I was younger, I used to straighten my hair and that for me is one of my hard and fast boundaries. I don’t straighten my hair any more. I mean, I will get it blow dried straight.

Doria: Sure.

Carice: But I don’t chemically straighten my hair anymore. I think back in the day I couldn’t understand my sister when she went natural. I hope she listens to this. I thought she was crazy when she returned to wearing her hair [natural].

Doria: You hear that!

Carice: Yeah, exactly. I literally thought she had lost her [mind]. I was like, “Are you okay? Do you need to see a therapist? Like no one wears their hair like that.” And now I’m so committed to wearing my hair in a natural state because I don’t feel like I need to straighten it. There’s nothing wrong with the way my hair grows out of my scalp.

Doria: Absolutely.

Carice: I know that’s a huge struggle for a lot of Black women. For corporations that are listening to this, you have no idea how much of our cognitive capacity we use thinking about this hair and how we need to wear it, so people don’t think that we’ve been radicalized.

Doria: Right, God forbid you have an Angela Davis.

Carice: Yeah! The thing I want companies to understand is there is a cost to try to make people fit in. All of that mindspace we’re using to think about this hair, we could be using to solve the problem or serve the clients or the customers that you want us to serve.

Doria: Absolutely.

Carice: So there’s a cost to that. To that pressure, sort of.

Doria: A big cost.

Carice: That, for me, is one of my hard and fast [values]. I will not compromise on that. I think the older I’ve gotten, I’m just much more comfortable in my own skin. 

Doria: Yes.

Carice: I show up much more authentically than I did, you know, 15 to 20 years [ago]. My sister laughs at me. When she used to call my voicemail when I worked at Arthur Andersen. The first time she called she said, “Who is that white woman on your voicemail?” Oh, that white woman is me! I thought that’s what I had to do. I thought I had to have a white voice and be this stiff professional to be taken seriously and have credibility. I realized it served me in the short term, but that would not have been sustainable long term, because that’s not who I am.

Slow Moving Corporate America

Doria: It’s not who you are, absolutely. Do you feel that over the past decades, trying to be careful, but you know we’re about the same age, that there has been a positive shift?

Carice: Absolutely. I mean, the thing is sometimes you can look at where we are now and get despondent and discouraged. When you look back to where we started — when I started working nobody was talking about D, E, and I, nobody was talking about mental health.

Doria: It didn’t exist.

Carice: Well-being, whole person. No one cared. It was like: Get in here and do this job. Do it well.

Doria: Exactly.

Carice: Leave all that at the door.

Doria: If you don’t like it, you can quit. Bye.

Carice: Yeah! I mean, we’ve talked about inclusive leaders and leaders being vulnerable and authentic. This was language that we were not using 20 years ago. I think we’re getting there. I think we still have a long way to go. A long way to go. 

Doria: Amen.

Carice: But when I see young people now wearing their braids at work and wearing their afro, I’m like, wow. That was something we just didn’t do back in the day. And, like I said, we’ve got a lot of work to do, but there’s been a lot of progress that’s been made, too, so I acknowledge that.

Making the Grade

Doria: When you talk about work that needs to be done, I thought it would be interesting if you were to take the grade system: A, B, C, D, E, F,and you were to – this is a huge generalization, I realize, – look at corporate America today and its relationship with Black professionals. Where would you give it? An A, generally speaking, to an F?

Carice: Oh, that’s a good question. Honestly, I’d probably give it a D.

I don’t know if I’m a hard grader, Doria. I think, especially, you think about what happened in 2020 with George Floyd’s murder and a lot of the hype. I don’t think it sustained itself because I don’t think there was real substantive [change].

Doria: It was performative.

Carice: It was performative. I don’t think it was real substantive change. When you look at the percentages of corporate boards and people of color, Black people that are on those boards. You look at executives, whatever the industry is, nobody is killing it. Nobody.

Doria: Absolutely.

Carice: That’s what [grade] I give it.

Doria: Another stat that I found that was related to this, is what you said, corporate America that was not created with people of color or women in mind. On the current trajectory, this was the same report as before, “It would take about 95 years for Black employees to reach talent parity,” which is 12 percent.

Carice: Yeah.

Doria: That’s what it is right now across all levels of the private sector. We’re not doing a good job.

Carice: Nope, no. We’re not there, we’re not. We’re not there. We’re nowhere close to where we should be.

Performative Policy

Doria: Do you think it’s because corporations put money toward diversity, equity, and inclusion as kind of like a check the box? Or do you think that they, and it probably varies, are truly committed?

Carice: I think there’s probably a range. I think there are some that are just doing it to be able to put it on the website. I think there are some that are really committed. What I found is, a couple of things. People have to figure out what are some of those sacred cows that you’re willing to give up in order to advance. 

For example, you know certain companies I’ve worked for say we only recruit at the top 3 to 5 percent of schools in a country. If you look at South Africa, you’ve got a lot of people who are really poor. Who, maybe they got into those top schools, but they couldn’t afford to go there so they’ve gone to a second-tier school. Does that mean they’re any less smart? No, right. That is definitely a part of the legacy of apartheid, where people don’t have the resources to be able to afford to go [to school]. Are you willing to bend on some of your hard and fast rules in order to find that talent that is Black, or is a woman, or, Latino, or whatever it is? Are you willing to bend on some of those rules, or you’re going to stick to that? Because then, you say you want to find people of color, you want to find women, but you are recruiting in places where they’re not there.

I think the other thing is we need to be measuring leaders on D, E, and I. We need to stop depending on the goodness of people’s hearts. People who want to do it out of the goodness of their hearts, they’re already doing it.

Doria: And probably always have been.

Carice: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But it’s like, you got to hit people where it matters. Hit people in their performance ratings, hit people in their bonuses, their, you know, calm. Make it matter. I think that’s a missing piece for me. I think the other piece is, sometimes I think people are waiting on a policy or a procedure.If you are a senior leader in an organization, and I’m going to just pick on white men for a second…

Doria: That’s okay, I do it all the time.

Carice: If you are a white man and all of your sponsees, all the people that you are sponsoring and advocating and defending, are all white men, but your company is 10 percent Black or, you know, 12 percent Latino. Your sponsee group needs to mirror the demographics of your organization.

Doria: Absolutely.

Carice: You don’t need to wait on a policy change, a procedure, a process. You can do that tomorrow. I’m not saying that you need to kick white men out of your sponsee group.

Doria: No.

Carice: I’m saying, can you expand? Can you expand the group to include some people who don’t look like you, who don’t come from the same background as you?

Doria: Absolutely, and you’re right. That is simple and does not require a mandate from HR.

Being the Change You Want to See

Carice: Exactly, but that’s the thing, people have to look. I saw this a lot in South Africa, too. The term they used in South Africa is “transformation.” You know, people want to talk about [how] we’re going to transform this organization, but you transform you. Think about what you can do differently.

Doria: Yes.

Carice: Tomorrow, next week, next month, next year that could move the needle forward. You don’t have to wait on the company to change its policies or procedures. Start with yourself. Transformation doesn’t happen out there, it happens here,  and we need to start with ourselves first.

Doria: You were saying [earlier], you hope your sister listens to this. I hope my 18-year-old daughter listens to this because there are certain lifestyle changes that she’s going to make when she goes to college. Well, actually, it could start even today with a baby step.

Carice: Absolutely.

Doria: It’s human nature to just kind of put off things that you’re scared of, but you’re going to run into the same things over and over again if you don’t address them.

Carice: Absolutely. That’s the whole thing I’ve tried to say in my book:focusing on what can you control and influence. All this other stuff out here –we’re waiting on other people to change;your organizations to change. They need to change,but what is it that I can control? It makes you feel more empowered.

Doria: Yes.

Carice: More like you’re in control of your own destiny when you focus on those things as opposed towhat a lot of these stats are saying. Or [what] the research is saying about this topic, so it’s important.

Working On or Working In

Doria: Absolutely. To get back to your book, one of the themes that you talk about is for people to work in their career versus on their career. Can you explain what that distinction is and give a practical example of what that might look like?

Carice: When I was living in South Africa, I ran a small business for a little while. In the entrepreneurial world, there are these terms, and one of them was working in your business versus working on your business. Let’s say, for example, I have a cupcake business. Working in my business is sourcing my ingredients, mixing up my cupcakes, baking them, [and] delivering them. Working on my business is taking a step back and saying, should I even be selling cupcakes? Should I be selling cookies or brownies? It’s asking ourselves those larger questions about the business. Am I selling the right things to the right people in the right places at the right price point? 

I realize that same philosophy could transfer to our careers. I think a lot of times we get so busy just doing the job, which is working in the career. But working on the career is taking a step back and saying, am I developing the right skills at the right time, at the right level? And building the right relationships with the right key stakeholders and decision makers? We need to take that step back.I think what oftentimes happens is we’re really good at what we do, but we’re not really thinking about the next step and what is the next set of skills that we need to be developing. 

Then we see other people who we don’t think are as smart as us advance. We’re like, well, how is this possible? I’m smarter than that person is. Yeah, but they have the right relationships and they’ve been developing other skills that are going to prepare them to be successful at that next level, and all you’ve done is think about what you’re doing right now. 

I actually saw a video on TikTok. This guy was saying he was passed over for a promotion twice at this bank and he felt like it was racism. My response to that video was, “Well, did you tell your manager you wanted to be promoted? Did you have a conversation about what’s the promotion criteria? What’s the gap between where you are and that promotion?”

Doria: Right.

Carice: And what are the opportunities that your manager could help you get access to that will help you fill those gaps? Instead of, you know, automatically thinking it’s racism or sexism or some sort of phobia. Focus on, did you do the right things to best position yourself to get that promotion? And once you’ve done all those things and you still don’t get it, then you can say racism or sexism or whatever the phobia is. But you’ve got to focus on the things that you should be doing to set yourself up for success.

Doria: And your book outlines those steps.

Carice: Yeah, I talked about, you know, getting that feedback. Making sure you know you’re having those conversations to progress in a way that is important in that environment. Because you’re thinking “I’m doing a great job at this job.” It’s like, yeah [you’re doing great,] but the next job, nobody’s going to pay you more money to do the same thing.

Doria: Right.

Carice: You’re going to have to do something differently. Have a different set of skills [that] are elevated at a certain level in order to advance. You need to be building on those because, oftentimes, people want to see you demonstrate those skills before they give you the title money to protect you.

Doria: Yes.

Carice: And to protect them and the organization. You need to be demonstrating those things now, but unless you ask those questions and have those conversations, you can’t do that.

A Story to Tell

Doria: I love that. It almost makes me want to jump back into the corporate world and give it a go, but not quite. I’ve spoken a lot about challenges, but you are a very accomplished woman and I wondered if there is one thing, either personally or professionally, that you’re particularly proud of?

Carice: That’s an excellent question. I think [I’m proud of] writing this book because it’s something I never would have [done]. This was not on my bucket list, and I’ve always been a pretty avid reader. I can remember starting to read books and thinking, how did somebody sit down to a blank piece of paper and write 200 [or] 300 pages? My mind was just always blown. To think that I’ve actually done that, it’s just crazy to me, you know. That’s why I tell everybody, I think everybody could write at least one book because everybody’s got a story.

Doria: Yes!

Carice: If I could do it, anybody could do it– I think just persevering through. I was working a full-time job and writing this book through Covid, and a move from South Africa back to the U.S. I continued to keep talking about it.

Doria: That’s a lot.

Carice: I’m really proud of that. I’ve stuck with it.

Doria: That’s a lot of tenacity.

Carice: Yeah, absolutely.

A Takeaway or Three

Doria: If there is one key takeaway as we wrap up for women of color to keep in mind, based on our conversation today about being a Black woman in America as a professional, what would it be?

Carice: Okay, I’m gonna cheat, Doria. I’m going to give you three.

Doria: Oh good. I always asked for three. I noticed that and then I’m like, I’m gonna ask for one this time just to be different!

Carice: I think the first one is managing your mindset. Your mindset is like your mind, and the way you think about things is the most powerful asset that you have. You can have two people in the same situation who view things so differently. Managing your mindset. I think that when you think about doing that, think about who you surround yourself with the materials you consume, what you watch on television. All these things feed into your mindset. I think that’s the number one. 

Number two, for me, is taking ownership. You know, really, focusing on what you can control, what you can influence, delivering your very best. No matter what set of circumstances you’re in, I think it is really key. Sort of pushing through obstacles which, you know, Black women were born to do. We’ve been doing that.

Then, the third one is that success requires collaboration. You will never reach your full potential, you will never have the type of impact you want to have, if you try to go it alone. You need other people. Whether it’s your manager, mentors, more importantly, sponsors,peers, direct reports, you need other people. Really taking the time to nurture those relationships. I think that is honestly the differential in terms of being successful versus not, and having the impact you want to have versus not. Those are my three takeaways.

Doria: Those are really helpful, I think, for anyone in corporate America and I really appreciate them. Where can the audience learn more about you and your book and the work that you do?

Carice: You can go to my website, cariceanderson.com. You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Carice Anderson.Go buy a copy of my book or 10, and write an Amazon review. Guys, I need my Amazon reviews to go [up]!

Doria: Yes, do it!  I think this has been an amazing conversation. I am so grateful for your time, expertise and authenticity.

Carice: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation.