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Award-winning actress, producer, and advocate America Ferrera spent the early part of her career being told that her Hispanic identity would always be a barrier to her success. This discouragement lived in her mind even as she became a household name in Hollywood, ironically for starring roles as Latina protagonists. This criticism, coupled with the lingering lack of Hispanic representation in media, is what motived her to find purpose in her work.
Today, Ferrera uses her platform to amplify marginalized voices, tell stories that promote social change, and fight for causes like immigration reform and gender equality.
Here are four leadership lessons on the power of identity that Ferrera has shared in her 2019 TED Talk, “My identity is a superpower—not an obstacle” and an episode of Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead podcast, “America Ferrera on Identity and Integrated Leadership.”
Lesson 1: You are part of a longer story that came before you.
“Being raised by a single mother, immigrant, doing everything and anything to survive, to provide and to thrive,” Ferrera described on Dare to Lead. “She came to this country so that we could have every opportunity, and I think any child of immigrants understands the vital piece of their story that that sacrifice plays. You carry that with you into everything, it’s never just you, it’s never just your dreams and hopes in the classroom or on the field or whatever you’re doing. You know that you’re really playing your part in the longer story of legacy and sacrifice that came before you, so that I could have the opportunities that I’ve had, and so that’s a really big part of it for me.”
Lesson 2: People do want to hear your story.
“In spite of what I had been told my whole life, I saw firsthand that people actually did want to see stories about people like me. And that my unrealistic expectations to see myself authentically represented in the culture were other people’s expectations, too,” Ferrera said in her TED Talk.
She noted her frustration that being the first Latina to win an Emmy in a lead category also indicates a lack of Hispanic representation. “Not because awards prove our worth, but because who we see thriving in the world teaches us how to see ourselves, how to think about our own value, how to dream about our futures.”
Lesson 3: Your presence creates possibility.
“For seventeen years of my career, I have witnessed the power our voices have when they can access presence in the culture. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it, we’ve all seen it. In entertainment, in politics, in business, in social change,” Ferrera said in her TED Talk. “We cannot deny it: presence creates possibility.”
Lesson 4: Lead with all the parts of who you are.
“I can’t be the leader I’m meant to be without all of the parts of who I am. That my, the unique intersection of who I am the actor, the performer, the storyteller, the person with twenty years’ experience in media in front of and behind the camera, mixed with the passion and the education I have sought out around the issues I care about is what gives me my power, is what gives me my leadership,” Ferrera told Brown on Dare to Lead. “It tells me where I belong, it tells me what I have to offer. And if I’m not occupying the space of all of the things I am, I’m not being the unique leader that I can be.”
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This article was written with the assistance of AI.
