100 Takeaways from Brown, Immigrant, Working Women

“Do the exact opposite of what brown culture taught you”

Sundas Khalid
8 min readDec 8, 2020
Created by Sundas Khalid

Being an immigrant in the corporate world has its own unique set of challenges. When you move to a new country, the process of learning and unlearning becomes critical to succeed, whether that is learning a new language or the work culture. Learning and adapting to the work culture is quite exhausting, plus it involves trials and errors where you break your tiny bubble of social stigma. Sometimes, this can be a huge shift too.

If you are a woman of color that fit in the above equation, things only become challenging in the new country and work environment. For example, when I started my career journey in the USA, being comfortable speaking up in meetings is something I struggled with for a long time because, from a young age, I was rewarded to be the quiet one. There are many things I had to unlearn and learn to adapt the new culture after I started working.

Though experiences like mine are spread out, the current digital world makes it easier to connect with people who share similar struggles — it has made the world less isolated. In an effort to learn from other women’s stories, I surveyed 100 women on Instagram and asked them to share one-sentence takeaway from their careers. The responses are absolutely…

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Sundas Khalid

I write about data science, diversity & lifestyle | currently at Google | more learning content at sundaskhalid.com