Success is Never Final
Do you know those conversations you have where you come away feeling super energized?
That's how I felt after talking with Christina Van Houten, co-founder and CEO of Equity Quotient. It turns out we both went to Georgetown University, but the real reason I reached out was to find out more about a platform helping women that she started years ago. And as conversations go, it went in unexpected directions and I came away with so many gems.
You can have a meandering journey.
Christina shared that her career didn't pick up until she was in her 30s, and all of her seemingly insignificant experiences enabled her career to evolve.
When Christina graduated, she wanted to play a role in opening the economy. She worked in city government, went to business school, and worked for the MacArthur Foundation. From there, she fell into tech - something she thought she wouldn't like.
During the time her company was acquired by Oracle, she had had two children. Then her role changed due to the acquisition and it wasn't the right fit. She decided to force them to make her leave. How did she do it? She put together a report on the state of the business for the head of a business unit who didn’t know her. He asked her to come to his office and it changed everything. "When you see something other people don’t or are willing to do the gritty work to get to somewhere of value, it can pay off," says Christina.
From there, she was recruited to a big tech company that got bought by IBM, where she served as the COO for the R&D organization. Ultimately, they were bought and she was recruited to a UK security company.
Around this time, one of her mentors convinced her to write a book. He encouraged her to write about how she's forged connections with men in her industry. At the time, she was apprehensive about traveling for work because her friends were stay-at-home parents, and she found writing the book to be a great distraction and creative outlet. Suddenly, people began asking her to give keynotes and speak to women's groups.
When she turned 55, she was hearing about AI gone awry, particularly related to racial and gender bias. Christina thought: could I build a tech platform that could mitigate the risk on patient care, credit lending, HR, and other applications? She met her co-founder and they decided to focus on health equity to change outcomes for disadvantaged groups.
Christina shared: "I’ve taken my passion coming out of college and knowledge for how to build large enterprise projects to come up with something that will help the private sector, but have this effect of mitigating this widening socio-economic divide that has destabilized our country." It's clear that her winding path led her to this point.
Stuck or frustrated with a boss and can't advance? Christina suggests taking a lateral move. Deliver and focus on what you can control, show up and build trust, stay out of office politics, and don’t lose your head. There’s always going to be drama, but when you lose your temper, you give away power. Train yourself to maintain control.
You can carve your own path. Try different jobs and figure out what you don’t want to do. As Christina so aptly says, "Failure is never fatal, success is never final."
Photo credit: Guille Álvarez