Episode 121: Don’t believe everything you think – with Elaine Montilla

Elaine Montilla is an accomplished senior executive who has been an IT leader in higher education for two decades. As an immigrant, Latina, lesbian woman, Elaine has overcome many challenges to build her successful IT career. She is currently Chief Information Officer and Assistant Vice President for Information Technology at The City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, a Forbes Technology Council member and contributor, and an AMA Women’s Leadership Center presenter.

Elaine is also a TEDx speaker and the founder of 5xminority.com, a company and social media brand dedicated to empowering women and minorities, especially in tech, with a mission to demonstrate how businesses can be powerful platforms for social change.

During this episode, you will hear Elaine talk about:

• What inspired her to start 5xminority.com
• Her story of moving from the Dominican Republic to New York and discovering her interest in IT while attending college, where she learned English and programming language at the same time
• How her first job working in a restaurant kickstarted her IT career
• The obstacles she overcome to build a successful IT career in the US as an immigrant, female, Latina, lesbian human being… and how she battled imposter syndrome while advancing in her career
• Why you can’t believe everything you think, and how challenging your own thoughts is critical to overcoming imposter syndrome and unconscious bias
• How important it is for your career development to “be comfortable being uncomfortable” and have difficult conversations
• Why it is important for leaders to admit their mistakes and to be vulnerable

Learn more about Elaine and her work at 5xminority.com and on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Subscribe to the FREE Beyond 6 Seconds newsletter for all the latest news and updates about my podcast!

 

Watch Elaine’s TEDx talk: The Value of Mentoring Women and Minorities in Tech

 

The episode transcript is below.

Carolyn: Today on Beyond 6 Seconds…

Elaine: You cannot believe everything you think, you know, and that’s a sign in front of my door. Now everyone that comes into my office will see it. Don’t believe everything you think because you have to challenge your thoughts.

Carolyn: Welcome to Beyond 6 Seconds. The podcast that goes beyond the six-second first impression to share the extraordinary stories and achievements of everyday people. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel.

Carolyn: Now you can see the video of this interview and many of my other recent interviews on the Beyond 6 Seconds YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and search for Beyond 6 Seconds, and while you’re there, please click the red subscribe button under the video. Thanks so much.

Carolyn: I’m happy to be here with my guest today, Elaine Montilla. Elaine is assistant vice president and CIO for Information Technology at the Graduate Center CUNY, a Forbes Technology Council member and contributor and an AMA Women’s Leadership Center presenter. She is an accomplished senior executive with two decades as an IT leader in higher education. Elaine is also a TEDx speaker and the founder of 5xminority.com, a company and social media brand dedicated to empowering women and minorities especially in tech with the mission to demonstrate how businesses can be powerful platforms for social change. Elaine welcome to the podcast.

Elaine: Thanks for having me Carolyn. I’m delighted to be here today.

Carolyn: I’m thrilled to have you here today. So, tell me a bit about 5xminority and what inspired you to start it?

Elaine: Yes. So you know, 5xminority started as a blog just because I love writing and I did a TEDx talk a year ago and I started getting so many emails from girls telling me that they feel exactly the same way that I was feeling, that they don’t feel like they could be themselves in the workplace and so I decided to share my experience and start helping some of them with the wisdom that I’ve accumulated over the years. And then it just grew from there and now I’m all over social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and we now created workshops and courses and so I meet with companies in private. I meet with small groups and I do a lot of public speaking.

Carolyn: Oh, that’s fantastic. And so it started as a blog, do you write all of the content or do you have contributors?

Elaine: I write 90% of the content.

Carolyn: Wow!

Elaine: Yes. And I invite others to write but I’m really mindful about the content being connected to either IT or education because those are my two loves, my two passions, and so I would have a contributor if it is aligned with that.

Carolyn: Okay, fantastic. Wow. So, as we mentioned in your bio you are also a senior IT executive and your story about how you got to this point in your life and career is really incredible. You know, you’ve overcome a lot of very large obstacles and challenges to achieve the success that you have today, so I’d love to hear more about your journey and you know, maybe starting when you moved to the US as a teenager for college. Would love to hear more about that.

Elaine: Yes, yes, yes, and you know, I wouldn’t say that I moved to the US for college. I moved to the US out of necessity more than for college. But you know I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. My dad passed away when I was 7 and so my mom was a single mom with three kids and she realized that in order to get a better future for us, she needed to leave because the opportunities were not as great. And so she decided New York is the place to go. A lot of people from the Dominican Republic come here, and so I came here right after finishing high school and she actually waited until I finished high school and I’m so grateful for that decision. And I came here to go into college and I did not speak English, so I took a lot of ESL courses in my first year and I love languages so that helped me pick up the language a little faster. I would read everything I saw on the streets so that was fun for me. And so I learned English and I went into Liberal Arts for my associate degree because I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I ended up working in the computer lab and that’s where my passion started for computers. Besides the fact that my brother is the oldest and he is a web designer and he also loves computers, so it started there and then in school and that’s how I decided, let me go into IT for my Bachelor’s Degree after that.

Carolyn: Oh, wow. Yeah, so you’re learning a new language and you’re studying a new topic and just everything, just so many new things to get used to, like tell me more about that. How did you find ways to succeed?

Elaine: Yeah, it’s funny I felt like I was learning two languages at the same time. So, I was learning English and then when you’re going to technology, you need programming language so I was trying to learn that too. I think I was lucky because I went to a community college that was predominantly with Latin students, so I had a lot of students from Puerto Rico and Colombia and the Dominican Republic and so I think it helped me get started because I was surrounded by people who spoke my language. It was challenging. I could tell you that sometimes people will speak to me and I would understand 60% of what they were saying, but I would always ask questions like, do you have another word for what you just said? Is there another word that you could use? And so that was challenging but, but you know, for me in a way I try to make it fun. I would walk around with a dictionary-

Carolyn: Oh, wow.

Elaine: -all the time so that I could look up a word if I didn’t understand it. But you know, I think because of my age and because I had Latinx people around me, it made it a little easier. The programming language was not as easy. I remember my first C++ course, I wanted to just leave the room on my first week which a lot of technicians don’t like to admit to, but it was hard but you know, with dedication you could get through anything. And then I went to my 4-year college degree and that was a bit easier. It was computer science and I have a passion for knowledge. Still today I have a passion for learning, and so I’m always reading, and I’m very curious about how things work. I think that’s what pushed me to move that forward.

Carolyn: Okay, so then after you got your Bachelor’s Degree did you continue your schooling or did you go start your career in IT from there?

Elaine: No, I did not continue. I actually took a break before finishing my Bachelor’s Degree because I wanted to help my mom and so I wanted to get a job and it’s funny, I used to work at a restaurant as a hostess when I first came here, and they had a point of sales system that was running, you know, the menu items on the computer. And this lady came in and said you know, if you need a job or you wanna do something else because we need an assistant to take care of the front desk? And I said, yeah, of course, anything to leave from here and do something better! And so I went there and the front desk was not ready. So, they said, why don’t you sit at the helpdesk and just help answering the phones from there? And I did that and I never went back to the front desk! I was a helpdesk support person because you know, because I love technology and I was able to learn so fast that I was a desktop support technician for a few years there. I used to create menu items in the database for their menu items in the restaurants and then I was promoted to management and I was there I’m going to say maybe 6 years before I moved to work at another company called AIG. I was there for some time also. Always learning and always growing and from there I went to the City University of New York where I am today and I’ve been working there for 16 years now. And I would always work and study at the same time. So, I completed my Bachelor’s when I went to work for CUNY and I was lucky that they cover the tuition for employees and so they helped me a lot. In a few years after that I went for my Master’s which I completed also a few years ago while working at the City University of New York.

Carolyn: Wow, fantastic. Yeah, that’s amazing how you started off in one type of role and then found a good connection between the type of work you were doing and what you’re studying and what your passions were.

Elaine: Yeah and you know, I love people, I love people and so for me customer service was an easy way into tech. And I know a lot of women struggle with this because there is so much you could do, you know. You could do networking and database and web design and helpdesk support and I think that because I’m so connected to people and working with people I didn’t mind being on the phone with them for hours just trying to fix a problem. And then naturally because of my degrees, I learned more about what else is there in IT, networking, project management and my curiosity just helped me learn more and more and more and because I was able to acquire new skills which I needed as a Latina because it’s not easy to move up when you belong to a minority group and I think knowledge is what helped me 100%.

Carolyn: Absolutely. And so you started out your IT career in helpdesk and customer support but IT obviously is a huge area so what other areas of IT did you move into from there?

Elaine: So, I did desktop support for a few years and then I was promoted to supervisor. So I supervised helpdesk I’m gonna say for probably 5 or 6 years. I had a team of 9 desktop support technicians. From there I got promoted to assistant director and so my team grew because I had the front desk support staff and the senior staff and that’s when I learned about managing large projects. I decided to go for my PMP certification at that point, it’s a project management certification, because I always like to know what my employees are doing and I was doing that work for a few years before I got promoted to director full time and then the opportunity came in to move up and I was promoted to CIO and AVP a few years ago overseeing the entire IT department. And you know, I would say that you don’t have to know all the details of everything that’s happening in IT to run an IT department, but you need is to be passionate about and curious about it. And I think that’s where my drive comes from, that if there is a firewall issue and it needs to be fixed, I’m gonna read about it, I’m gonna understand it and I think that helped me connect with all the different parts of IT that I manage now.

Carolyn: Wow, that’s fantastic. Yeah, congratulations on just an amazing career in IT!

Elaine: Thank you.

Carolyn: Oh, that is amazing. So, you mentioned a little while ago that it can be very challenging to move up when you’re a member of a minority group and I know you’re a member of several minority groups, so I’d love to learn more about your experiences maybe some of the challenges that you had in your career or just some of the obstacles that you had to overcome.

Elaine: Yes and I speak a little bit about that in my TED talk, you know, it’s hard enough to just be a female in tech. We have so many challenges and so being a Latina just added to that pain and then I also belong to the LGBTQ community and so that’s another one on top of that and some people like to call me a professional unicorn and I’m running with it, I’ll use it. But I can tell you my accent initially was a big problem. I think sometimes it was a bigger problem for me, not from other people, because I wanted it to be better and I wanted to speak the language better. So in my first years I know my language was a problem. The fact that I was a female was a problem because sometimes people don’t think you’re as smart as you are or you could understand as much as you can, mostly because of unconscious bias, you know, I think a lot of us grow up with a lot of conditioned thinking, and so we hear a lot of messages coming from society and from teachers and from your friends and we don’t question it at times and I think that’s what drives all of the unconscious bias that we see today. And so being a female and going into a meeting for example with a lot of senior executives, it was daunting at the beginning because I didn’t feel that I had a voice or I needed to scream in order for people to hear what I needed to say, but I think with time and practice, you learn that you do have a voice and that if you’re persistent people will listen to you. I always tell young girls, you know, be assertive but not aggressive. You don’t need to be aggressive. And so I learned how to make sure people will listen to me while being respectful and trying also to understand where they were coming from. So I think a lot of the emotional intelligence helped me deal with my surroundings and being a female. And then you know, coming out is not something that’s comfortable for a lot of people, regardless of your age. And so for me the first challenge was coming out to my family, which didn’t go as well, but you know, it’s just part of the process. But then in the workplace I was very scared to come out and tell my boss that I was gay and when I finally found the courage to do it, he looked at me like I had 5 heads, he’s like “So what? What’s the problem?” I was like, oh my god, you don’t know how happy you make me right now and that was a few years ago and he was also my mentor so even more reasons to love him and so I am now so comfortable because of the love that I have received from everyone around me, but not everyone has the luck that I had to be able to be myself and be one person everywhere I go. You know, a lot of people need to have different versions of themselves especially when they enter the workplace which is really sad.

Carolyn: Mm-hmm, yeah, so you mentioned emotional intelligence being an important part of your success. You mentioned, you know, having a mentor in your boss and that being part of your support network and also using your voice. And I think it can be very challenging especially for young women maybe just starting off in their career, you know, when you start your job you’re trying to understand you know, how it works, how the professional world works and what’s normal and maybe what’s not normal, what’s okay, what’s not, and it’s challenging to learn. But you’re saying, really use your voice.

Elaine: Yeah and you know, the biggest challenge I think is we have this people pleasing tendencies that are hard to get rid of and that’s only one issue. For me it was people pleasing at the beginning but the biggest part was impostor syndrome because especially when you get promoted to some people, fast, right? You start to question yourself and I remember going through a period where I would ask myself, oh my god, am I ready for the next promotion? Even before becoming as CIO I never had a dream of becoming a CIO. I never thought I could do it and when it happened I would tell my partner, oh my god, am I ready? Do I know enough to take on this challenge? And so it’s not easy. I can share with you that I had a therapist that worked with me for quite some time and I was able to start writing things down and journaling and understanding that you cannot believe everything you think, you know, and that’s a sign in front of my door now. Everyone that comes into my office will see it, don’t believe everything you think because you have to challenge your thoughts. There’s unconscious bias somewhere in there and there is an ego who always wants to be right and so I know a lot of especially women go through impostor syndrome and I write about it a lot because I wanna make sure everyone understands that it is perfectly normal and CEOs go through impostor syndrome all the time. I think we need to normalize it.

Carolyn: Yeah, absolutely, and especially you were mentioning and that it really comes out when you get promoted because a lot of times you get promoted it’s a stretch position a lot, you know, for a lot of people you haven’t done the job before, it seems like understandable and yeah important to normalize that.

Elaine: Yeah. And I always say do it before you’re ready, just you have to do it before you’re ready. My number one tip that I give especially young girls is you have to find a way to be comfortable being uncomfortable, because I know from my own experience that the moment I got uncomfortable I would push back and I would go into hiding and it was painful but I knew that you have to have this difficult conversations when they come up and not shy away from it because then the opportunities don’t come and they become less and less and so I learned more like I also meditate a lot. I learned to be uncomfortable and let it go through my body and just sit with it and it helped me a lot in a lot of meetings with all the executives and even asking for a promotion and I think we need more of that just knowing that, you know, fear is okay and is usually here to tell you something. It tells you that you care about what’s coming next. It tells you how much it matters to you, and so I tried to keep that in the top of my mind all the time.

Carolyn: Yeah and I think a big fear of impostor syndrome, any time they are going to a big position especially the higher and higher you get in your career, you have to take more risks and there is a higher chance of having failures or just having things not come out right. So how did you handle the natural challenges maybe some risks that didn’t work out and balance that with managing through impostor syndrome?

Elaine: Yes. I’m gonna give some of that credit to my boss and my mentor. I think that we need to be able to create psychological safety for our employees and now I try to do that for my teams. And I believe that my mentor helped me so much understand that, first of all I’m not perfect and there’s no way that everything I do would be perfect, but also that it is okay to make mistakes and it is okay I would say as long as you learn the lesson, right? Because you don’t wanna just make mistake after mistake and just move forward like, okay, well, that happened. We don’t want—I don’t wanna promote that either, but he was able to show me that, okay, I made a mistake. We would sit down in his office and talk about it. I remember sending an email once a few years ago when I was really upset and he would—he called me to his office and he said Elaine let’s read this email together, what do you think about it? I was like, okay, I guess I could have said this in a different way. And it’s small tiny steps like that that we can use to help our staff to be better and so I’m hard on myself I know that and you know, I like for things to go well, but I learned that if you learn the lesson then you are a better person on the other end. The other thing that I learned through my spiritual practices is that that’s one of the best ways to grow is to fail and to do something wrong and then to meditate on it which is what I do just look back and say, okay, what did I do? What happened? What can I do better next time? And I try to share that with my team now, my directors and managers that, you know, we are not perfect but let’s talk about it. What happened? How can we do better next time? I think as leaders we are sometimes afraid of being vulnerable because a lot of leaders think that is a weakness, but it’s actually the opposite and so I try to be myself and say, you know guys I messed up, you know, I forgot about this portion that needed to happen or you know, I made a mistake and I’m really sorry. I will work on that and make sure that I check with all of you before I make the next step and so I think we have to be more human. I think we need to be more human. I think we are trying to be so perfect and I think COVID is helping with that because now you see people at home, you see their family, you see their environment, you see what they really look like and we are not being two different people, we are being one in front of the cameras and I’m hoping that it changes things moving forward.

Carolyn: Yeah, I think in recent years that push for leaders to be whether you call it authenticity or just more open about failures so that it helps build trust I think ultimately in leadership over time.

Elaine: 100% and innovation too I mean if people are not able to be themselves and they are not able to make a mistake then you may miss out on that new discovery of that next step that was needed to make the product better or to change the service. And I think in the world everyone wants to be more human and collaborate with people who are more human without all of these walls that we put in front of us sometimes or boxes that society tries to put you into and so I see that change and I hope it stays. Additionally, I think with COVID what we’ve seen is that you are able to work from home which is a lot of what keeps women outside of the workplace and especially in tech because a lot of women are caregivers and they care for their children and they care for their parents and so if we don’t have flexible work schedule and flexibility in the workplace then a lot of them even now are just leaving, they are resigning and I’m hoping that COVID has shown that already and that when we go back to whatever we’re going back to, this can remain because we are able to do the work and a lot of my staff are actually working more now than before when they were going into the office.

Carolyn: Yeah, I’m hoping that one of the lessons, the long term lessons that we learn from COVID that we continue when we go back to whatever we go back to is that more of these roles that for some reason there was no way they could ever be done remotely we found out that they can and while it’s not ideal, you know, especially for a lot of women because they’re still caregivers so they are doing now multiple jobs at the same time but I’m really amazed at how many of my co-workers are seems to be pulling it off where they are doing work and school and working more hours as you said.

Elaine: Yeah, I know even my sister I speak with her and she’s working from home and she has two kids and I’m like, you’re like a hero right now. I don’t know how you’re doing it. I wish I could help. But I have some staff members that are going through the same thing and we have switched some of their hours, okay, instead of 9 to 5 why don’t we do 11 to 7, we have to do that. There’s no way of going back to a productive work environment if we are not flexible.

Carolyn: Absolutely. You know, you mentioned that your boss was a great mentor to you and a great member of your support network and I would imagine that mentorship must have a huge role in well I guess all of our careers but certainly in yours as you moved up. So can you tell me a little bit about the roles of the different mentors that you’ve had in your career?

Elaine: Yes, definitely. You know, for a lot of people in the Latinx community it is hard for us to envision a future where we can go very high because we don’t have role models and that’s another reason I founded the 5xminority, so that I can demonstrate that, you know, I’ve done this, it’s great and you could do it and here it is how. And so, you know, my first mentor was in college. I remember taking a computer networking class where we were learning how to configure a router and my professor was female Latina from Colombia who had an accent and I remember looking at her and just thinking, wow, she is doing this, this is her part-time job, she works full time as a network administrator and I was able to see myself in her and she was the one that told me, you know, there’s this exam, the civil service exam, why don’t you take it? And that’s how I ended up working in CUNY because of the advice that she gave me and we are still in touch today. And you know, she was able to show me that there is room for me in IT, that it is okay to be yourself and to have an accent and so that helped me keep moving forward. And then when I got to work for CUNY I was able to find a mentor that was also my sponsor which is not easy to find, and I feel so blessed because he was able, by the way, he’s a white male which I know a lot of people think that your mentor is someone who looks like you — not necessarily. And so he was able to guide me and in a way he would show me the things that I could do that I didn’t think I could do and it helped me even have a bigger desire to continue studying and to be better and so I would always recommend that if you can, the first thing you could do is try to find a mentor and if you don’t find it in the workplace, there’s a lot of websites where they can pair you with a mentor online and you can have a few hours with someone who would guide you and I will still call him today. He no longer works with me but I would call him today and say, you know, I’m struggling with this, what do you recommend? And he would do it and I’m now doing that for other people and so it’s hard for minorities to make it to the top without a mentor. From my experience what I’ve seen is that it’s really hard because you don’t know which path to take and if you don’t have guidance it is difficult to even understand what’s possible.

Carolyn: Yes, that’s definitely important the role of having the mentor to help guide you and then you also mentioned having a sponsor or several sponsors which is important to moving up and that part of your career too.

Elaine: Yes, and a lot of people think mentor and sponsorship is the same thing and it’s actually not. So my mentor work with me but your mentor doesn’t have to work in the same place where you work. I actually read a lot of books and I consider some of these authors my mentors even though they don’t know it, but your sponsor needs to be in the same place where you work because they would advocate on your behalf and put their name on the line for example to make sure you get the next promotion, and so my mentor was my sponsor and because of his care and his work and commitment to the IT department he was able to help me go from assistant director to director and from director to AVP and CIO.

Carolyn: That’s fantastic. So much great advice for my listeners in terms of how to help grow your career and overcome a lot of these challenges that people may be facing, absolutely. So, you know, you yourself are doing a lot of mentoring through 5xminority through writing and connecting with people that way. What are your long-term goals for 5xminority?

Elaine: That’s a very good question and I mentioned I journal a lot and I tried to write some of it. One of my goals is to write a book and so I am working on that. I feel that if I put it on paper in a more permanent way where people can actually have it with them all the time that would be great so I’m working on that and how to empower women and people from underrepresented minorities to thrive especially in a male-dominated environment, so that’s the first one. And then with 5xminority I am hoping that I can continue to educate others. I started doing workshops and I’m hoping that I can create courses that can be shown in places like LinkedIn and so that’s one of my goals and to continue to maybe have collaborations with other companies. So, you know, the possibilities are endless and I’m enjoying a moment right now. I love to be present so that I don’t miss out on what’s happening today but I’m hoping that I can get some collaborations in the future and perhaps find other ways to reach out to young girls especially in college before they go into the workplace.

Carolyn: Such great work and just any support that we can give especially to young people and young women as they are starting off in their careers and trying to find their ways just so valuable so that is really good.

Elaine: Yes. Thank you so much, you know, something else that I wanna mention is that I focus a lot on girls who are in college and women who are in the workplace but I wanna mention that a lot of this starts at home, and I don’t think we speak enough about it. I think that we worry so much about our girls even when they are in a playground trying to jump and in a way sometimes we try to force them to wanna play with a doll or to love the color pink and I think we need to be more open and just allow kids to be kids, just allow them to be themselves. Instead of trying to force them into you’re a boy you play with a truck you do this and you’re a girl and you do this, I think they already know what they want. And I’m hoping that we don’t force them to pick something that we want for them and we allow them to see all the possibilities including IT and being in STEM and then show them that it is possible and it is available to them and so a lot of the work that needs to be done starts at home and I’m hoping that more of that changes in the future and also with, you know, television and the commercials and the movies that we show our kids, I’m hoping that some change comes there.

Carolyn: You’re right it does start early, and sometimes it’s hard to come in once you’re ready for college be like, okay, here’s all these opportunities, when you’ve just been socialized and you’ve grown up in a certain way in society.

Elaine: Yes. Yes. I have had so many conversations about this especially with my Latina community because sometimes girls need to be nice and be quiet and not raise their voices and that is stopping us from finding our—not finding our voice because we have a voice but from using it in the workplace because we were—I was taught to respect my elders and imagine everyone that reports to me is, almost everyone that reports to me is older than me! And so I had to make that shift mentally to understand that I could respect them while also using my voice and making sure that projects get completed and things get done. So it’s a lot more challenging than we think but I think with the right resources and with people like you who are allowing me to use your platform and share this information change can come sooner.

Carolyn: Yeah, it’s so important. Wow, so Elaine thank you so much for being on my show. How can people get in touch with you if they wanna learn more about your work or 5xminority?

Elaine: Yes, so the handle is @5xminority and you can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or you can find me personally on LinkedIn just Elaine Montilla, I think I’m the only one! So it shouldn’t be difficult.

Carolyn: Perfect. I’ll put links to your handles and to 5xminority in the show notes, so that people can find it there too.

Elaine: Yes, and thank you so much for allowing me to be here with you today Carolyn, it’s been a pleasure.

Carolyn: Absolutely. Thank you.

Carolyn: Thanks for listening to Beyond 6 Seconds. Please help us spread the word about this podcast. Share it with a friend. Give us a shoutout on your social media or write a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can find all of our episodes on our website and sign up for our free newsletter at www.beyond6seconds.com. Until next time.