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The work experiences of women of color are as diverse as the communities we come from. We share, however, our experience of workplace barriers stemming from racism and sexism—obstacles that lead to , fewer women of color in , and less access to .

But professional women of color have also proven our resiliency in preparing for and facing those challenges. Women of color lead the movements for systemic and institutional changes in diversity and inclusivity, all while navigating a work environment designed to exclude us.

In her new book, More Than Ready, Cecilia Muñoz—the first Latinx to serve as Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council (under the Obama administration), and current Vice President for Public Interest Technology and Local Initiatives at ������Ƶ— offers reflections on her own experiences, as well as stories from other professional women of color. I spoke with Muñoz about what inspired her book—and how women of color can conquer doubt and embrace the power of our unique backgrounds.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and context.

As a young professional and a woman of color, I found so many parallels between my own career experiences and those described in your book. Could you describe who More Than Ready is for and where the title comes from?

Our working title was actually You Are Enough, which was a little too negative, and might focus people on thinking they weren’t enough. The reason we landed on More Than Ready was because it has multiple meanings. The world is more than ready for the leadership women of color provide, and we are more than ready to bring it. But it also referred to the fact that when all the women I interviewed experienced doubts from others, the way we responded was by overpreparing.

I’m curious about the idea of overpreparing. Women of color are often inundated with professional advice—sometimes solicited, and sometimes unsolicited—about how they should act and behave in the workplace. You talk in your book about blending in with the masculine norms associated with authority, but also being yourself and being kind. What advice would you give about managing the balance between being yourself and working within an existing system in order to achieve respect in the workplace?

It’s a calibration you have to do every day. Early in my career, I literally taught myself to swear because I thought it would give me a certain toughness that my physical appearance did not convey. I thought a lot about what I wore to work, particularly because it was the 80s, I was at NCLR (National Council of La Raza, now Unidos US), and we were expected to look sharp in order to overcome the assumptions people had of us. I’ve been complimented on my English by a member of the Senate.

As I get older, I still feel like I’m calibrating all the time. But now it has to do with how forceful I decide to be, if my foot is on the gas or if I’m easing up and explaining things that others in the room may not know. My measurement for how to calibrate has to do with whether or not I am bringing people with me and being understood. If I’m trying to convince people that my particular formula for immigration reform is the right one, it’s not enough to be right—I have to be successful in having people support the policy I need them to support.

I’m in a pretty constant dialogue with my daughters, who see me as modulating myself too much; they’re less interested in being understood and more interested in bringing their truth. I think that’s a really interesting tension, and I really respect that they feel liberated to just be who they are—but for me, I feel like that’s not enough. I have to bring people with me, and in order to do that, I have to calibrate.

How did you determine which themes were most important to include, and what drew you to the stories you chose to highlight in the book?

My editor pushed me to interview other women to help identify the more universal themes. That turned out to be a great exercise. The women I interviewed had a vast variety of different experiences, and the ways in which they were different showed up. For example, Kathy Ko Chin told me that, as an Asian American woman, she’s expected to be demure—and she’s had to fight that her whole life. And the African American women I spoke with had a lot to say about people pushing back on them if they tried to be forceful. So it was important to respect that there are some very different things in our experiences—but I was also so struck by the response when I asked questions like, “Did you ever give thought to what you wore at work?” The answer was always an emphatic yes.

Pramila Jayapal, the first South Asian woman elected to Congress, said she didn’t feel like she could wear traditional dress, because her constituents might get criticized. There’s a lot packed into that. She wrestles a lot with how to be authentically herself while dressing the way a congresswoman is supposed to—and as a “first,” there’s a lot riding on that.

So there are things that are seemingly not so significant—like what to wear—and things that are deeply challenging, like when Tyra Mariani (President of ������Ƶ) and Deesha Dyer (who served as Social Secretary in the Obama administration) were both told early in their careers that their supervisors didn’t see them as management material. In both cases, that could have had tragic results, because they’re both solid leaders and managers.

What were people seeing in these 23-year-old women that led them to reach those conclusions? What could it be? Race was clearly a factor there. In Deesha’s case, managers were blocking her from taking management courses because they thought she was destined to remain support staff. We face a crosswind of people’s low expectations of us, and some of those things become internal struggles.

Tyra’s and Deesha’s stories really struck me. Women, particularly women of color, can lose years of their careers due to low expectations from people who are supposed to be mentors. How do you recover from that and learn from those experiences?

It’s so common—that’s why it’s so important to talk about it and recognize that it happens. Tyra said that if she’d had a cohort of people at 23 who she could talk to—who could tell her that it was ridiculous that they would make that judgement of her at that age—it would have helped her. She took a bullet to her confidence that took years to recover from, but she did. And Deesha said experiences like that were the catalyst to sending her to college.

But it means we alone have to come up with the wherewithal to overcome it. It’s unfair, and it's outrageous. So it’s important to build a circle of people who will encourage you, but who will also tell you the truth. I’ve done that everywhere I work. Find the people whose advice you trust, who will be cheerleaders and truth tellers.

The other strategy is to go back and do the work. It’s inherently unfair that you have to work harder to overcome other people’s doubts and your own, when other people can waltz in and say, “Sure I can do this thing I might not be qualified to do.” My daughter will sometimes say she doesn’t meet the qualifications for a job, and I’ll tell her that, somewhere, there's a white guy saying, “I don’t have the qualifications, but I can see myself in this job.” We have to develop different habits and stay grounded in knowing we can do the work.

Right now, in the face of a pandemic, people are being forced to manage so many stressors: working from home or losing their jobs, taking care of families or dealing with complete isolation—all while coping with a global catastrophe. How do you stay focused and motivated to continue working in public service—especially when the changes you’re seeking might not come in your lifetime?

It helps to play the long game and have the vantage point of understanding history. The early suffragists who fought for women’s suffrage a century before it happened—they didn’t live to see it, but they fought. Early abolitionists didn’t live to see the end of slavery, but they fought because it was right. Sometimes we see the change, and sometimes we won’t—but the fight is the right one. I do take consolation in that.

A bunch of my family members have lost their jobs, including my kids. They’re at the early stages of their careers, and they’ve gotten totally derailed. My younger daughter is a student of history. She said, “Think about your abuelita—she lived through the first World War, then a pandemic, then the Depression, then the second World War, and she lost her husband in her 30s. She figured it out, and we will too.” I found great comfort in that. It helped me let go of my short-term expectations of what would happen in my daughters’ lives.

I’ve had this conversation with so many of our colleagues. We are all people whose work seeks to make positive change in the world. A lot of us are overwhelmed with how much need there is. It’s so epically bad on so many fronts, and there are so many fights to fight right now and so much suffering to highlight and lift up. There’s literally death and hunger around us. And we don’t have the capacity to fix all of it.

But there are pieces that are ours to do. Our job is to figure out: “Where is my particular body of knowledge, passion, and capacity, and how do I get to a place where I understand what is my piece to do—while other people work on theirs?" And together, that’s how we make the change we need to see in the world. That’s our job right now, and it’s really hard. If you’re lucky enough to identify work that deals with something serious, but that also makes your heart sing—the “what’s making your heart sing” part is what makes it sustainable.