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Wine Down Friday #3 - Reflecting on AAPI Month

Wine Down Friday #3 - Reflecting on AAPI Month

Andrea Misir Velazquez
May 31, 2024

Happy Friday! Let’s unwined with a real or virtual glass of wine

Lesson learned this week - speaking up
Raise our glass/cheers to Leena Nair, first Asian …
Jobs I can refer people to! Send me your resume, L …

There’s so many awareness days/weeks/months, it’s so hard to keep track. May alone has quite a few, one being AAPI month. And is it just me, or was this month a little quiet on the AAPI front?

I’m going to fix that 🙂

Lesson learned this week - speaking up

So this is an older lesson that I had to learn when I was going through a quarter life crisis of sorts, but I want to reshare it especially as I had a moment this week where I made my younger self proud: by using my voice.

When I was younger, I wasn’t sure how or if I should voice concerns about certain challenges. Mileage certainly varied as my audiences either acknowledged those concerns and we put corrective measures in place or they were discarded altogether. But…I never once regretted NOT speaking up.

More often than not, women (especially women of color and almost every single AAPI woman,) struggle internally about when to speak up and what to say. We want to make sure we’re not ruffling feathers, speaking out of turn, or branded as bad in any way.

But more often than not, that struggle is in our head and does not always translate to the real world. If we were trained to not speak up, to be the good girl in the family because no one will like or respect a woman who speaks out of turn, it diminishes the power of our words. We will be caught in a vicious cycle thinking that our words have no meaning and that no one will take what we say seriously.

THAT. IS. WRONG.

Words have meaning, and if you’re reading this then you KNOW that you can speak from a place of power and expertise. So don’t be afraid to say what you mean and share your knowledge so you can move forward!

Giphy

Raise our glass/cheers to Leena Nair, first Asian CEO in fashion!

Leena Nair is Chanel’s new CEO, the first Asian woman to be at the helm of a luxury brand. Way to close out AAPI month by acknowledging some brown girl magic ✨