Driving Buy-In

CHAPTER TENTHE MOVEMENT

I grew up in the Caribbean, where I never had to earn permission to belong. My mom was a lovely Aruban lady who was always optimistic and smiling. My dad was a Trinidadian mix of Asian and French who was always working. Between them, we grew up with about five languages.

Our house felt like the United Nations—food, accents, customs, and stories.

Diversity wasn't something you explained. It just… existed.

Then I entered Corporate America.

One of my first customer meetings in the United States was in New York.

I remember it like yesterday.

Small room. Dull fluorescent lights. Dark walls. Five people sitting around an old wooden conference table, most triple my age.

As I opened my mouth, I could see and feel the room change.

A raised eyebrow.

A half-smile.

A glance up from a laptop.

My accent was a distraction.

My gender was a distraction.

My race was a distraction.

Before I even finished my first sentence, decisions were already made about whether I actually belonged in the room.

I didn't have the luxury of hoping the data would speak for itself. Hope is a privilege. I couldn't afford to “just be confident” and trust that my polished presentation would win the day.

So I had to figure it out quickly—how to keep the room focused on my data, not my differences. It came down to having influence—not because I wanted to, but because I had to.

I needed to learn how to get buy-in—how to make stakeholders act, not just smile and then do absolutely nothing with ...