Aeris & Alba
How many times did you ever feel like you were on your own? Or didn’t know which step to take towards your career? We’ve all been there, but I am here to tell you that you aren’t meant to go through this journey alone.🙌🏽
Mentorship is so crucial to have in your life because you are able to broaden your network and also connect with people that will help you grow. Women Who Create values mentors and mentees because of the impact that it has had on so many lives.
As women of color, representation matters, which is why we’ve gathered different mentor and mentee stories that will give you a glimpse of different career journeys. We hope that while you read these different stories, that you are able to see yourself in them. :)
Today we have mentor/mentee Aeris and Alba who explain a bit more on their own career journeys and what they have learned along the way.
Mentor: Alba Rajanibala ✨
🌻 Tell us about what you do and what you love! I am a Data Strategist at Grey New York — a global ad agency where my day-to-day job is to find and analyze data to help our internal teams and clients answer questions as specific as what one word means to different people to more broad ones like defining a target audience or even testing strategy or creative options to launch into the market.
What I love most about what I do is first, the variety of topics I explore on a daily basis and second, the art of data & strategy — the storytelling and visualizations because it really helps make data easier to digest and less intimidating than it is sometimes made out to be.
🌻 What’s the #1 piece of advice you’d give to a woman of color entering your field? The advice I will give to any woman interested in advertising or data is to stay strong. Entering any unknown space can be full of moments of discomfort and anxiety, but perseverance and trust in myself really helped me keep my momentum.
A lot of my trust came from doing rather than worrying — little things like staying up to date with the industry news/trends or attending relevant events. My perseverance came from the way my parents raised me to believe in myself and also from people I met along the way who shared their own stories and were willing to give me honest feedback.
Which is why the most practical advice I can give to anyone is to network. Again, It took me some time to overcome my initial discomfort, but I would recommend starting small. Talking to and listening to people who were in the industry really helped me get an insider’s perspective into the companies and roles I was interested in.
🌻 Do you have a side hustle you’d like to share? I don’t have one side hustle per se, but I love using design to solve problems. Earlier this year when people started getting vaccinated, I designed a website — https://vaxand.me — that compiled data from the vaccines’ clinical trials into an interactive website to help people check which side effects to expect by their age group and dosage.
Currently, I am also helping a nonprofit design their online store and merchandise to help fundraise for their platform which helps make online education more accessible in rural parts of India. I haven’t done a good job of updating my design page regularly, but I post some of my art and design here: @designedbyalba
🌻 Why do you think representation is important for your industry? Representation is important to advertising because we use our influence to talk to & about people and culture — and neither of those are monolithic. Representation brings more realistic, more genuine, and more interesting perspectives to all creative work which ultimately makes the work we do more relevant and credible.
Mentee: Aeris Nguyen ✨
🌻 Tell us about what you do and what you love! I’m a filmmaker and freelance film and video editor raised in Saigon and based in New York. I love art. I call a lot of things art — if there’s a design to it, it can technically be considered art to me. I also love working with people and meeting new people, because there’s something special about two, three, or a group of individuals working together towards a goal, and I really thrive in that collaborative environment.
Meeting new people also enables me to get involved in community projects and get to know other like-minded filmmakers and artists. In my free time, I love to read, paint, play video games, watch all kinds of movies, TV, and content, and I especially love hanging out with my forever partner and our cat, Tsunami.
🌻 What’s the #1 piece of advice you’d give to a woman of color entering your field?
Understanding your priorities and setting your boundaries. I’m not a huge fan of hustle culture, but the mindset is appreciated. I understand the need of some to actively look for gigs and jobs to propel themselves forward, but I personally don’t function at my best like that.
In the past, I had major burnout from failing to notice whether I’m thriving or improving in the jobs that I was working on, and after a long time agonizing over this, I had to set my priorities straight in my personal life, then in my work life, before I could continue working.
By setting my priorities straight, I then realize my boundaries and actively respect that. For freelancing, I set my own work hours, and let everybody know that I only work for a certain amount of time per day. I learn to say no by referring to my boundaries and priorities. I could talk forever about this, but when I started listening to my own advice, I noticed that my clients and my colleagues respect the boundaries I’ve set and trusted that I will do my job to the best of my ability.
I understand that there’s a lot of nuance to this subject, and I don’t want to discredit or invalidate anyone of their work ethics and hustle mindset, but it helped me, and it might help another individual who might feel the same way as me.
🌻 Do you have a side hustle you’d like to share? I paint in my free time and post some of my art on Instagram @keriearts.
🌻 Why do you think representation is important for your industry?
I think in order for us to start telling stories about people from different cultures, backgrounds, and experiences, we need to hire and listen to people from those particular backgrounds. Otherwise, what is the point of listening to someone’s recollection of someone else’s story? It is like a huge, detrimental game of Telephone.
Since the rise of Web 2.0, we are starting to see a shift in cultural retelling and relearning, and every year, this movement gets stronger and better. Representation is important, because of the misrepresentation that was rampant and overlooked in our past, and we need to do something about that.
Representation can sound like fluff sometimes, yes, but its purpose is not lost on those who grew up not seeing themselves in the media, mainstream or otherwise. Representation matters because there’s space for everybody to exist.