Speaker 1: Welcome, I’m so excited for you to meet our guest this week. We have Daniela Pierre-Bravo, a bilingual best-selling author, speaker, contributor, and best known for her work on NBC’s Know Your Value platform. She was also a former on-air reporter for MSNBC’s Morning Joe and Cosmos Magazine columnist, and her reporting has focused on underrepresented communities, immigration, and women’s rights. So, she’s going to talk with us about career advisement, mental health, and wellness, with an emphasis on women of color, and her work has been featured in a plethora of places. We’re also going to talk about her book, The Other. Welcome, Daniela.

Speaker 2: Hi, Julie. Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, thank you for being so bold and vulnerable in sharing your personal story and your book. As somebody that also grew up in Ohio, I appreciated your roots and just your gumption to have this big vision. It was really inspiring, and I think our listeners can learn a lot about the challenges and obstacles that women of color certainly face. Your work offers really practical tools for other historically marginalized groups to learn from. Daniela, I’d love it if you could share a bit of your story to kick us off, you know, how you got to where you are. It’s always fun to hear people’s journeys.

Speaker 2: Well, thanks again for having me. It’s been a big, long journey with a lot of zigzags, as I’m sure you found out with the book. It started when I was in high school. I lived in a small town in Ohio. I’m the oldest of five kids, so your typical older sister for first-generation immigrants. I had a lot of firsts in my life, and I was very scrappy and felt a lot of responsibility, like most first-gens and immigrants do, to make your parents’ struggles worthwhile. What I didn’t realize was that doors were going to continuously close for me because of my immigration status. Long story short, by miracle, I ended up getting into college because back then it was very isolating. Undocumented people didn’t talk to each other. It’s not like we had a community. There’s more awareness of it now, but you just felt like an outlier back then because you felt like something was wrong with you or around you. I grew up in a community of mostly all white; I was the only Latina in my high school. So, I didn’t have a lot of mentors to learn from or to show me what this life as an undocumented person was going to look like. Fast forward, I go to college, semesters off here and there. It was a whole family effort; everybody was paying cash little by little. My parents were working at movie theaters at night with my brothers and sisters. I knew that I had to do something with it, but there was no light at the end of the tunnel saying, “Well, if you go to college, then you’re going to get your legal paperwork to work.” There was none of that. So, I really had to take it like my mom has always taught me: one step at a time, “when you go sideways,” is what she says. It was a summer before I graduated college where everything sort of changed. I was still undocumented, and I was like, “I’ve got to get out of Ohio.” Ohio is a great place to live, but the thing was that I needed people like me. Again, I felt very alone and siloed. So, I literally told myself, “Okay, if I’m going to make it, where would that be?” And I thought, “Okay, New York,” because I knew that there was more diversity. I just wanted to be a sponge in my environment, just learn from people. So, I lied on my resume and said that I lived there so that hiring managers wouldn’t make excuses not to give me an interview. Because when you’re from a marginalized community, you know that people are going to make excuses about you and put you in a box. I was so used to that. So, I ended up doing that, and I ended up getting a call back from Sean “Diddy” Combs’ marketing agency at the time. They ended up calling me, and we hit it off on the phone with the HR manager. They said, “Can you come in for an interview tomorrow?” and I said, “Yes, of course.” So, I got off the phone, and I remember studying for an exam and just kind of figuring out what I was going to do. How was I going to get to New York? I didn’t have a license; I couldn’t get on a plane. So, all right, let me get on a bus, the next bus. I called a friend, and I said, “Can you please drive me to Cincinnati so I can get on a Greyhound bus?” I got on a Greyhound bus, eighteen hours later, nine stops along the way, very sketchy in the middle of the night, I got to Port Authority, and I ended up getting into this internship interview. They looked at me like I was crazy. They were like, “You know, we could have done this over Skype.” I share that story because it really is kind of like the grit and the scrappiness that most people with our backgrounds just have to have in order to get an opportunity. That’s the beauty and the struggles of being the other. But to answer your question, it started with that summer of doing these little unpaid internships and really trying to create a narrative about yourself and just being a sponge to your environment. That was the summer when everything changed. DACA came out, which gave me a work permit, and then my confidence was through the roof. I was like, “Okay, what can I do next?” I’ve always wanted to be a storyteller and a journalist, but when I was undocumented in college, that felt like a luxury that I couldn’t let myself dream about. It’s one of the reasons why my major was something that was a little bit more practical; I thought I could go to law school, for example, because I was thinking if I could go to law school, I could extend the time in school, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about being undocumented. So, I ended up applying to the NBC Page Program, moved around the company, worked for SNL for a bit, did Morning Joe. I was at Morning Joe for about a month and a half, and they gave me a full-time offer, which I thought was great. From there, I really worked my way up through all of the ranks, starting behind the scenes and then ultimately in front of the camera at Morning Joe, wrote a book with Mika, who’s a co-host of the show, and then eventually wrote my own book about two years after that. I’ve been doing projects here and there and left MSNBC last year, which was very bittersweet, just giving myself an opportunity to practice everything that I’ve preached these last few years about owning my space and finding projects that give me value back and just really diversifying myself a little bit while still doing what I love to do, which is being a storyteller and a journalist.

Speaker 1: That story about the bus, it’s so fun to have read it and then to hear you say it, Daniela, because I imagine what it would have been like taking this bus across the country through the night and the look of somebody like, “Who is this?” Instead of internalizing that fear of being the other, I love how you saw it as a two-sided coin. Being the different person, as you were so used to growing up, being undocumented and having these fears, the flip side of that is knowing how to navigate hard situations because you’ve had to live that your whole life. So, having this challenge of being in New York, you were like, “I’ll figure it out, I’ll get there,” and then the rest is kind of history. It’s really cool to see those progressions through your career. The other story that stuck out to me in The Other was, of course, with Mika. I think a lot of people know her, a household name kind of thing, but that opportunity you had with her and the question you asked, I’d love it if you could fill us in on that story too, and then we can kind of unpack some lessons for folks that are listening and what they can do for their careers.

Speaker 2: My relationship with Mika Brzezinski has been one that I have really cherished. It’s one that really catapulted my career to the next level and really fast-forwarded a lot of success. She saw my potential, and as somebody who comes from a marginalized community and didn’t have mentors or professional guides, she really made a difference in my career. One of the reasons why we decided to write that book was because we wanted to show that if you can match the potential of young people who come from these backgrounds, who are hungry and scrappy, with career sponsors that can really take their career to the next level just by letting them do what they do, and speak about them when they’re not in the rooms, we could really see a different workforce, which kind of ties into everything that we’re seeing with DEI nowadays. It really does make a difference. But I had to work to get her trust. She’s a world-renowned journalist, super well-known, and I was a nobody. I was just grabbing her clothes, printing her script, and I literally could not have been happier then to do that job. There’s a funny coffee story in the book, but as someone, and this is the power of people who are “others,” even though I hate the title of the book, I ended up keeping it because I did find it unifying. Everybody can relate to feeling like the other. White women in the workplace, for example. It was really important in the book to talk about those experiences where I was empowered by being the other. Early on, the cool thing about being the other is that your spectrum of emotional intelligence is just a little bit wider because you’re so protective of cues and finding ways to belong, you’re also really good at reading people, and you pick up cues that most people don’t. I tend to really harp on that point for people who feel marginalized in the workplace: let that work for you instead of making it feel like it’s a weakness. For Mika, coffee was really important. This is a woman who wakes up at three in the morning, does a five-day-a-week, three-hour live show, and has speaking events in the afternoon. Coffee was a real lifeline. When I first got into the workplace, I thought, “How can I build my value? How can I build my trust with her?” It was as simple as getting really good damn coffee, a really strong black eye Mika, extra hot, extra foam. She really took notice because I did it with such intensity. It started with the coffee, but then obviously, she gave me more responsibilities very quickly, brought me into her world, and would take me to events after the show as staff because she felt that trust. That can be replicated in any sort of industry. It’s just about finding those needs and wants that you can help fulfill. Whether you’re Gen Z, Millennial, or a different generation, there’s always a way that relationships can be a two-way street that can build trust, but we just have to use the power of understanding that spectrum of emotional intelligence. That’s really kind of what started a conversation between me and Mika on working together more closely, and the book that we wrote together really started from a conversation we had on a plane ride together.

Speaker 1: You hadn’t worked with her that much aside from the coffee, and so you saw the window, and you’re like, “I’m going to pitch something, I’m going to take advantage of this opportunity,” which I think for historically marginalized people, we don’t get those windows that often. It’s like, “That’s your chance,” and I just love how intentional you were in that moment.

Speaker 2: Thank you for saying that. Especially with someone like her, she always has people around her; she’s always busy, and you really have to pick your moments. The timing is really key. I was pretty ballsy because I came up with this idea, and at the time, just a little bit of context, I knew that she had built this incredible outside brand outside of MSNBC with her platform called Know Your Value. At that time, it was just taking off. Know Your Value is a platform to empower women, incredible conferences around the country and now in Abu Dhabi, around the world, to really empower women and talk about how to know and grow your value. I also knew specifically some of the setbacks that were unique to marginalized communities. I came to her with this idea during the 2016 presidential campaign in South Carolina. Because I was a production coordinator, I was one of the very few people that got to travel and work on the campaign. She had to be in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for a speaking engagement, and she called me over on the break and said, “Can you come with me to Chattanooga?” I said, “Yeah, of course.” She said, “Like, right after the show.” So, we got on a plane, and I was so nervous because I didn’t know if she was going to be receptive to me. I was very much in a customer service mentality, and for me to turn the tables and say, “Hey, I want to pitch an idea,” was very ballsy. But one of the things that I could assess, and it’s something that I advise women or men to do when they find that big pitch they want to give people, when they want to assess the waters on when to do it, it’s always better to approach it as an opportunity for the other person to get something out of it. It wasn’t like I was asking her a question that had a yes or no answer. I came to her with this idea as a way to potentially collaborate, but it was important for me to approach it as, “Can you give me your advice? I would love to sort of see what your thoughts are on this.” I pitched this idea, which had been something that I had been toying with in the back of my head for years but was just too afraid to articulate. It was to create this platform, this mentorship platform, but at the time was for Latinas around the country that would help them understand their value and to create more mentorship opportunities for these types of communities around the country. Of course, to her, her ear perked up because, of course, it was so ingrained into that Know Your Value messaging. I gave her an opportunity, based on my personal experience as a Latina, to understand the intricacies and the setbacks and the unique struggles that were part of my community. That created a conversation that ended up turning into a book. She called me a few months later on New Year’s Day. She loves to FaceTime. She wanted to see my kids. So, she FaceTimed, super early on New Year’s Day. She’s like, “We’re going to write a book together. You are going to lead it and write me a list of everybody that you want to interview,” because, of course, this is a woman who has so much access to everybody. I gave her my wish list of everybody that I wanted to interview, which we did, and it all started from there. It was a great experience, but definitely something that was about timing and tone.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that’s just such a beautiful story of allyship and sponsorship. She had access to things you didn’t have access to, knew her time was valuable, and so you were really intentional with your specific “why” but really spoke to something that she would want, that she was already working on, a project aligned with that. It was mutually beneficial. Allies, we often get the misunderstanding that it’s like a savior or a charity type of exchange, and that’s not it at all—leveraging your power for good, and that means power shared and power with, not power over. So that’s just so cool how all that came to be. In closing, Daniela, thanks so much for sharing these stories with us. They’re so beautifully written in your book. It’s hard to tell a story in a way when you don’t know the reaction of somebody else. I always appreciate good storytellers and books because I felt like I was there with you on the bus, I felt like I was there with you on the plane, and hearing you share it now is just a special treat for listeners. If you had some words of wisdom, obviously now is a terrible time in history, and politically we’re in some real trouble, but I like to find the silver linings of the moments. Your story and how you’ve overcome these challenges that quite frankly shouldn’t exist but still exist sadly for people today, especially for women of color that might be thinking, “Well, that’s great for Daniela, but I don’t know if I could figure that out, I don’t know if I’m the one.” Your book chapters do a great job of kind of helping people through that process. If you had to pinpoint a couple of nuggets that you might share, I’d love to hear them.

Speaker 2: Yeah, also just for context, DEI is something that the state of it has really backpedaled a lot of the progress that was happening in corporate America, which calls for women who feel “other” to be a little bit more strategic. I always say it’s good because one of the things that I hear over and over again, especially with members of marginalized communities, is that our work happens in silos. Part of it is this mechanism of protection that we go through when there aren’t infrastructures and companies that speak to psychological safety. That’s partly what DEI does, but when that doesn’t exist, when you take somebody from a marginalized community who has that fight-or-flight mode and that nervous system sort of operating on all cylinders, you have to work harder not just to feel out that psychological safety and build protective mechanisms for you but to also do your job. What ends up happening, and I hear this a lot from young women in the workplace and not even just young women, women of all ages in the workplace, is that it’s hard for them to take inventory of the structural stakeholders around them. Often, because we’re just focused on code-switching and trying to protect our psychological safety, we put our head down, we do the work, and we don’t really take inventory on what’s happening around us. Who are the stakeholders in this company? Who are the people who are going to be