How Identity Has Influenced A Senior Vice President's Career At A Fundraising Consultancy
Polly, a senior vice president, emphasizes self-awareness of privilege as crucial to navigating a career, citing a mentor's example of "pausing to let people...empower them to lead." This commitment to lifelong learning, including participation in ally resource groups, informs their approach to fostering inclusive leadership by actively encouraging less experienced colleagues to share ideas and "showing up better" daily.
Executive/Leadership, Communication, Self-awareness, Allyship, Lifelong Learning
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Polly Breit
Senior Vice President
Fundraising Consulting Company
University of Wisconsin, Madison
N/A
Classics, Spanish Literature
Nonprofit, Foundations & Grantmaking
Consulting
Honors Student
Video Highlights
1. Polly's commitment to self-awareness regarding her privilege and its impact on her interactions and worldview.
2. Her mentor's strategy of empowering others to lead by pausing and encouraging less powerful voices to speak first.
3. Polly's dedication to continuous learning through engagement with resource groups and a commitment to allyship.
Transcript
As someone who identifies in a position of privilege, how has that impacted how you navigate your career?
I would start with self-awareness. Coming into my work, I strive for a strong understanding of the privilege I come from and how that impacts my perspective, how I treat others, and how I interact with them. This has been really important.
A second example of this, which I learned from a mentor at CCS, is someone who is thoughtful about pausing to let people who might not have the same position or power as he does. He really empowers them to lead and to respond first in a meeting.
He often says, "I will see people intentionally or unintentionally defer to me because of my age, because of my background, when oftentimes there are people sitting next to me who have much better ideas than I do." So, he practices a lot of restraint and self-control, not just coming forward with what comes to mind, but sitting back and encouraging others to lead with their ideas. I really admired that about his leadership.
I've tried to weave that into my own approach. Obviously, we're all complex humans with many different identities. In my work, even just a title can be one of those identities. So, someone who's recently out of college, who hasn't been with CCS long, and might tend to defer to me, I've tried to really empower and encourage them to come forward with their ideas. I think that has worked over time.
The other one goes back to my commitment to being a lifelong learner. We have many opportunities at CCS to engage with different resource groups, including a group for allies. I try to prioritize learning in that space. How can I be the most respectful, humble, but also effective ally to all of my colleagues? There's so much great instruction and advice out there about how we can show up better in this world than we did the day before.
So, I really hold myself to showing up better for my colleagues and for myself every day.