EP 117: From Technical Expert to Strategic Leader with Limor Bergman Gross

What does it take to move from technical expert to strategic leader — especially in industries where leadership paths are not always clearly defined?

In this episode of Thriving in Intersectionality, Dr. Lola Adeyemo welcomes Limor Bergman Gross, a former Director of Engineering with over 20 years of experience in the tech industry and host of the podcast From a Woman to a Leader.

Limor shares her leadership journey across continents, reflecting on the transition from hands-on engineering work to managing teams and eventually stepping into strategic leadership roles. Along the way, she discusses how identity, culture, and life experiences shaped her decisions — including navigating her career as a woman in tech, relocating internationally, and balancing leadership growth with motherhood.

Together, Dr. Lola and Limor explore the identity shifts that often accompany career advancement, why many high performers struggle when transitioning into leadership roles, and how professionals can become more intentional about designing their careers.

This conversation offers practical insight for professionals navigating leadership growth while managing the complex intersections of identity, ambition, and workplace culture.

In This Episode

• The leadership transition from technical expert to people leader
• How intersectional identity shapes leadership experiences in tech
• Navigating career growth as a woman in a male-dominated industry
• The impact of motherhood and personal life on leadership decisions
• Why intentional career planning matters earlier than we think
• The difference between mentoring, coaching, and sponsorship
• Why asking questions and seeking feedback accelerates growth
• How managers can better support diverse career paths on their teams

About Our Guest

Limor Bergman Gross is a former Director of Engineering with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. She has led engineering organizations across continents, scaled global teams, and guided professionals through the shift from technical execution to strategic leadership.

She is also the host of the podcast From a Woman to a Leader, where she shares real leadership journeys and practical frameworks that help women in tech grow into executive impact.

Today, Limor coaches ambitious women in technology into leadership roles and speaks globally on leadership development, visibility, influence, and career growth.

Connect with Limor Bergman Gross

Podcast
From a Woman to a Leader
https://limorbergman.com/podcast 

Website
https://limorbergman.com 

LinkedIn
Limor Bergman Gross

About the Host

Dr. Lola Adeyemo is a workplace inclusion strategist, speaker, and founder of EQImindset and the nonprofit Immigrants in Corporate Inc.

Through her work, she partners with organizations to design inclusive workplace communities and leadership ecosystems that strengthen belonging, engagement, and organizational performance.

Her podcast Thriving in Intersectionality explores the real experiences of professionals navigating leadership through layered identities, including immigrants, women, first-generation professionals, and other underrepresented leaders.

Resources & Community

Immigrants in Corporate
https://www.immigrantsincorporate.org 

EQImindset /Employee Resource Groups (ERG) Resources
https://www.eqimindset.com 

Listen & Share

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast. Your support helps others discover these conversations and continue building workplaces where everyone can thrive.

🎧 Listen and reflect:
What leadership shift might your career be asking you to make next?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Thriving in Intersectionality Podcast. A podcast that explores the real experiences of professionals navigating the workplace with layered, leathed identities. I'm your host, Dr. Lola Ateemo, the CEO of EQI Mindset and founder of the nonprofit Immigrants Incorporate, Inc. I'm also an author, speaker, and a workplace inclusion strategist. I work with organizations to build communities of belonging through strategy, storytelling, and systems change. This podcast amplifies the voices of professionals from intersectional backgrounds, immigrants, ethnic minorities, first-gen professionals, veterans, working parents, individuals with disabilities, and so many more. Through solo reflections and guest conversations, we'll uncover the eating challenges, celebrate the wins, and offer insights to help you thrive, not just survive in the corporate world. Because in today's global workforce, belonging isn't just a bonus, it's the catalyst for real growth and impact. Let's dive in. Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Thriving in Intersectionality podcast, and I am looking forward to my conversation today with Limour. Before we dive in, I like to set the stage with what that word intersectionality really means. Intersectionality is a framework that recognizes our multiple aspects of identity, such as gender, race, ethnicity, even immigration status, and class, among so many other categories. How all of these identity categories overlap and interact and create unique experiences of privilege or discrimination that cannot be understood by examining just one single factor. And that's really the basis of these conversations that I host with leaders across different demographics, sectors, experience levels to see how some of these identity categories that are very important to them have shaped their leadership path. And so I came into this workthrough, the work of Kimberly Crensher, who has explored the intersection of race and gender. But a lot of researchers have looked at multiple, have isolated and examined multiple intersections in their work. So if that word is new to you, I hope you look it up. I hope you learn more about it. And I hope that the conversations that I have with my guests would shed some more light for you as a leader and as a professional as well. So hi Limore, welcome. Thank you for joining me today. Hi, Lola. Pleasure to be here. Yes, I'm excited to dive right in a little bit about Limore. Limore is a former director of engineering with 20 plus years in tech, and she's the host of the podcast From a Woman to a Leader, where she spotlights real leadership journeys and the skills women need to grow into executive impact. She's led engineering organizations across continents. She scaled teams and navigated the shift from hands-on execution to strategic leadership that leaders face today. Today, she continues to coach ambitious women in tech into leadership roles and does a lot of speaking at global conferences around leadership growth, influence, and visibility. I'm looking forward to exploring how she got to where she is now. Thank you for joining me, Limo. Thank you so much for having me. All right, um, let's dive right in. I will say Limo is we have 110 episodes. Limo is the first guest that I've had twice. And I will tell you why, because when I launched Thriving in Intersectionality in 2022, the podcast started as Immigrants in Corporate. And that was a platform that I used to uh spotlight specifically immigrant uh immigrants who have a lot of uh corporate leadership experience. And so we focused on the different aspect of Limore's journey, and that episode is still up. If you want to check it out, it will be details will be in the show notes. But today I wanted to really walk through uh the leadership aspect of Limore's experience, and we will do a little bit of recap as well of your background. So uh my first question uh will be around intersectionality. When you hear that word uh intersectionality, what aspects of your identity have been most relevant in shaping your own personal leadership journey and that you want to spotlight for my guest?

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Yeah, I think the section that was most relevant for me were my gender. So obviously, I'm a woman and I worked mostly with men, right, in my career, so it was very prominent to me. Uh, the race, actually, I felt like it's a privilege. So, in a way, because I'm white, so I felt I'm actually privileged as a white woman. And there are times because I uh I'm I live in Israel now in my home country, but I used to live in the US and I work a lot with clients in the US, so in a way, I'm also a foreigner, an immigrant. So that was another part.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Yeah, I mean, those are huge categories that you just mentioned. Um, the gender, uh, the locations that also at the time we had our initial conversation, I think you were based in the US. So that that that um sector was also very prominent. So uh thank you for sharing that. Anything else you want to add around your identity categories?

SPEAKER_01 6:04

I think that that those are the things that come to my mind when I think about intersectionality.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Yeah, and and and those are heavy ones. We talk about more of your work around women and women in tech um in a little bit. But before we dive into that, can you walk us through some of your career journey uh personally, you know, some of the educational choices you make and and maybe any pivots and milestones um along the way?

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Yeah, so I uh studied computer science, uh actually computer science and accounting, although I knew I'm not gonna be an accountant, but for some reason I chose it until this day I don't know. And and you know, I would say one thing, and this is something actually I tell to my children today it's really difficult to choose when you are in your early 20s, uh or even less even teens, right? 18 what you're gonna do, what you're gonna focus on. And it's okay to make a choice and then move to something else. I started computer science because I was good at STEM fields in high school, and I felt like that's a good fit for me. And that's what I did. So I went to software development, I became a developer. Later on in my career, I realized I wanted to be a manager, so I became a manager, and then we moved to the US and I continued my leadership career, so I moved countries along the way, then I grew into a director level, then we decided to go back here to Israel, and I left corporate and I became a coach. So that I think were the main kind of pivots or changes.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yeah, and and some of the things you talked about briefly is not as brief as it is, right? That decision from um from a technical role to a managerial role. Uh, talk a little bit about that because I know sometimes you know people do that as sort of a growth path. But did you have sort of how did you make that decision? And then what would you say about the experience making that transition?

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Yeah, this is actually a big one, right? I mean, we can talk only about that for hours, and I know a lot of people struggle with that, and also I have clients that struggle with it. Should I become a manager? Is management for me? Should I stay a technical person, like an individual contributor? And I also wrote about it last week on my Substack publication. So definitely a very, very relevant question. I didn't really know I wanted to become a manager. So I just was an engineer, grew in, you know, as an engineer, and I remember a certain point in time that I was promoted to a staff engineer. And at a company that I worked at, staff was the level that was equivalent to an engineering manager. So there was a split. At that level, there was a split between two career paths: a technical path as a you know, an engineer, as a subject matter expert, versus leadership path versus like managing. And no one asked me, and I didn't tell anyone. I didn't even, I wasn't even intentional about it. So I was just promoted to a staff engineer. But that moment led me to ask myself a lot of questions whether is this what I actually want to do? Yeah. And when I started asking myself those questions, I realized that actually I want to become a manager, I want to help other people, to lead people. But it took me several years after that point of time until actually I became a manager. And I'm actually what I'm doing, the work I'm doing with a lot of women is to shortcut that to help them realize what they want sooner and navigate themselves there sooner.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah. And and you're right, you know, in in corporate America, in the corporate workplace in any country, right, is almost like it gets presented just as the next option, right? If you want to grow, you grow this way, and that's the only way. And and so sometimes that that decision is sort of made for us without any guidance on navigating and and choosing. Um, and that's where the struggle becomes even real, right? Is how do you prepare to make that transition? Um, how do you, even when you get kind of set into the role and you were not ready for it, how do you develop yourself after you get the position? Um, if you have the power to make the decision, how do you choose what path to take? And I know that's a whole lot of the work that you do with with uh professionals these days. Um but but before that, let's let's talk about your own journey first because I would like to still walk through that. Did you um when you think about intersectionality and some of the decisions that you had to make in being in a tech field, being in a male-dominated field, talking about your intersectionality that you shared? Um, how did you see some of those background perspectives shape your decisions and your career path?

SPEAKER_01 11:38

One major challenge that I had that I haven't mentioned yet is motherhood. And that's another aspect. Um so when I became a mom, I uh really tried to be like the other men, to come to the office at the same time, to stay late, to do like as if I wasn't a mom. Because I didn't want it to limit me. And in Hazard, you know, when I look back, I'm not sure that was necessarily what I would choose today. Um, because I was putting a lot of stress on myself to try to behave as if like I'm I'm not a mom, like uh and still do the same job. Yeah, so that caused a lot of kind of frustration, a lot of guilt. Felt a lot of guilt that maybe I'm not a good mom, right? Because I come home very late, and a lot of stress, right?

SPEAKER_00 12:48

On both sides, right? At the home front and then at work. So I and I think that's a huge intersection, actually, the mother with peace, especially as a woman in tech, as a woman leader in tech, um, and sort of the systems that we have built uh in the workplace to support the work that we do, right? Uh so yeah, I would definitely add that to one of the major intersections because you did it and you did it successfully, and here you are today. So maybe that's where the advice kind of comes in. Um, if I think of the third aspect of these, drawing from your experience and your own journey, navigating um, you know, a fast-paced industry as a leader, um, as a mom, as a woman, um, as an immigrant at some point. What are some of the advice you would have for uh people that identify with any of those categories today? And I and I'll ask for the advice in two aspects from your own journey. What are some of the things that you would advise them on your own journey first? And then the second part will be we would explore some of these from your work, what you're seeing now, because we know that what worked 10 years ago is not necessarily working in the next 10 years, right? Or maybe it is, maybe some of the things are still the same. So let's look backward first. When you think about your journey and your career a little more, um, for anyone that is listening now that resonates with those those identities, what are some advice that you would give them that um helped you successfully navigate your your leadership and career journey?

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Definitely. So I would start with being intentional, spending some time to think about your career. Because I didn't do that, as I mentioned, right, Dorola. I mentioned like I didn't know if I want a manager, not a manager. If I spent more time about it, maybe I would have been a manager much sooner. So spending the time to think about those things, being intentional about what you even want, right? And if you don't know, ask for help. The help can come from your manager, from colleagues, from friends, or from a coach, from a mentor, whoever. Just get some support so you can try to figure out what you want or what are maybe the options. By the way, there could be more than one option and you can explore it.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

It's not like set in stone. Like if you try to be a manager and then you feel like, okay, that's not for me, you can you can regret, you can go back. I've seen that actually in my career with people that I led and with colleagues. So being intentional. The once you're intentional, the world needs to know about it. It's not enough to be intentional and keep everything to myself. And this is another mistake I did. Once I realized what I wanted, I never told anyone. I felt embarrassed to talk about it because I thought, oh, maybe I'm pushing too hard. I felt uncomfortable to share it, you know. Oh, I don't see any position, so I'm gonna make my manager uncomfortable because he doesn't have an opportunity to offer me what I want. So that's another shift that I would advise our listeners to not worry so much about how your manager is gonna think, but you have to really share your aspirations. Even if it will not happen tomorrow, everyone has to know about it. Once they know about it, you already planted the seed. So you can start talking about the skills that you need to develop. And then, if opportunities come, then they will consider you because they know that that's what you want.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Exactly. Exactly. No, that's a that's a big one. I I think of some of the best opportunities I had in my career too that came to me. There's no way I would have applied for those positions if I had seen it. But because I had told these mentors within the company what I was thinking about doing, when they saw the opportunities, they reached out to me. Exactly. Hey Lola, I think this opportunity will be great for you. And because they knew me, uh how were they supposed to know that if I didn't share?

SPEAKER_01 17:09

Right, yeah, definitely. Um, the other thing I would say that um you don't need to be 100% ready to move to a new role, whether it's like progression like upward, like becoming a manager, a senior manager, or sideways. Like, let's say you're an engineer and you want to become product manager. You don't need to know everything. And this is another kind of you know mistake that I did, and a lot of women I coach to. We wait to be ready, we wait to know everything. No, that's not how it works. Yes, you we grow all the time, we learn all the time. There are some experiences we can have that will make us better suited for the next role, but we cannot know absolutely everything. Right. So you step into a new role where you are already stretched yourself a little bit, right? You stretch your comfort zone, but still there are a lot of things you need to learn, and that's okay, that's how we grow.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Yeah, uh, you've heard the statistics around women, uh, especially applying for rules, wait waiting to be 150% ready before they even apply for a position, right? It's we look at all the must-haves, and we think we have to have every single thing on that list before we even put our applications in.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Yeah, exactly. And don't be afraid. Actually, that's an episode I released today on my podcast about curiosity and asking questions. Don't be afraid to ask questions. You know, there are so many situations where I remember that I was shying away from asking questions because I was afraid to be seen as stupid or maybe incapable, or how come she asked this? And you know, I I won't say it was all my fault. There were occasions that the environment was maybe not psychological safe, right? To ask questions. Maybe I would be judged if I'm asking, like people who was asking questions were maybe sometimes looked at at in a condescending way. Oh, you should know that, and that creates a lot of the fear, right? But the thing is that asking questions doesn't make you stupid, it does just make you curious and uh eager to learn. And obviously, as I said, right, you cannot know everything. So, how would you know if you won't ask? Yeah, if you're in an environment that is really not like I said, like maybe judging you for asking questions, then you can ask yourself, how can I change that? And if I cannot change it, maybe maybe that's not the best environment for me.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

You need a new environment, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because sometimes that's where the challenge we get stuck trying to fit into a space that is just not working, and we limit ourselves instead of realizing I probably need to relocate myself. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

And I think I would say you're perfect the way you are. Don't try to change yourself, and don't compare yourself, and don't try to be someone else. Like, this is another trap that a lot of women fall, and I fell into that trap myself. So when I became a manager, that was this obviously, most of the managers, or if not all of them, were men. So I thought of a manager as someone who is like a man manager who is like assertive, sometimes maybe a little bit even kind of direct, loud, very different than me and my style. And I try to mimic those behaviors. So, okay, I need to step up, I need to become like this man, like this manager. And that's completely the wrong way to do it. Because I'm perfect the way I am. I bring other qualities and I need to stay true to my own personality and my values and beliefs. Doesn't mean that I cannot grow, but and I have, you know, I need to challenge myself on certain things, but I am as I am, and I need to lead as Limo and not as someone else. So comparison is very dangerous, and looking at like how other people do it and say, oh, I need to be like that person is also very dangerous. I'm not saying you cannot learn from other people, but eventually, even if you see someone doing something very well, you need to ask yourself, what are they doing so well and how can I adapt that to my own style? So it's not like how I copy that behavior completely, but what can I learn? Like, for example, if I see a man that is very kind of direct and challenging people, I'll say, okay, I need to learn how to challenge people, but I don't want to do it in a very, very Maybe a way that he does that is very direct, sometimes can be even look like threatening. I want to do it in my own way that is more empathetic, more curious, but I still need to challenge myself. I need to see what I mean. You have to be true to yourself.

SPEAKER_00 22:17

And I and I like that. I like what you said because I think sometimes it's isolating what it is I admire about this action that this person is taking. You know, because you know, just just because somebody's doing something you don't like doesn't mean there are there's um there's it's very important to be able to speak up in conversations within the company to share. So being able to isolate what you admire about somebody is a good thing, right? I'm not copying you, but I'm I'm recognizing that this is what I struggle with, that I see you doing very well. How can I do it well in my own personality? So I like I like that. Um okay, so I I think thank you. That was a lot, a lot of good stuff. My pleasure. Yeah. Uh so one one thing I did want to ask also, talking about your career first, is there something what is one thing I I kind of feel like you you touched on it. Um maybe we could just like clearly articulate it. What is one thing you wish you'd known earlier in your career?

SPEAKER_01 23:31

I think the the one thing I would say is that I had to be proactive. I I I I waited. I waited for someone to give me a promotion, I waited for someone to tell me, oh, you're ready. And I should you shouldn't wait. You should be proactive, knowing what you want, and start acting towards it with your manager, with support system. Grow grow yourself into where you want to go. Don't wait for anyone, and and don't be afraid to stretch beyond like the official roles and responsibilities, doing other things, getting more experiences and exposure.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's not even it's not for entry level alone, it's also for mead managers, yeah. For everyone, yeah, yeah, because we can all grow and we all have those aspirations that come up as we get to different parts of our career. So thank you for that. So let's let's speak to leaders a little bit. So if you are a manager um working in an organization, if you are um uh an organizational leader, right, responsible for strategic decisions, um, how can how can leaders better support employees who are maybe on a different stage of their journey with with professional development and growth? What are some of the things that leaders should be thinking about to support their teams?

SPEAKER_01 25:04

So, first of all, being curious about each person and understanding what they want. Management is not like cookie-cutter, everyone is the same. So think about yourself. Let's say I was an engineering leader, right? If you manage a group of engineers, not all the engineers are the same, and not all of them have the same aspirations. And a lot of times we don't know. Like, right, my manager didn't know what I wanted. So you really have to be curious about them and try to get to know them a little bit better and have conversations about what do they want? What is important to them, how would they want to grow? Right. So that's one aspect. The second aspect is giving them feedback, timely feedback that is specific. One of the things that managers don't do enough is giving good feedback. How can you grow if you don't get feedback? I I just had a client today, coaching, you know, a client in my coaching practice, and her manager is really not giving her good feedback. And this is a big problem. And she's asking all the time, and it's not happening. So if it doesn't happen, find maybe other people in the organization that can give you good feedback. Right. Yeah. Because this is how you grow, this is how you identify your blind spots. It's okay to do self-kind of self-introspection and try to kind of assess what are the things that they need to do, but a lot of times we don't know. We don't know, and we need someone to help us. And how can we do it without getting feedback? So, as a leader, you have to know how to give people feedback.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Yeah, and and we are in a world where there are different tools now that we can put in place, there are different check marks that we can do, um, but we can also build it into the performance review um check-in uh process. I I did want to something that you had mentioned, like, for example, managing a team of engineers. If you're a leader that is managing a team of engineers, I I like that piece. Like, just because we're all engineers doesn't mean we want the same thing. Exactly. And and losing the fact that these are unique individuals, right? Uh, because what each person needs will be very different, and everybody will have something they are very good at, right? Definitely. And so you need to kind of um, you know, the best leaders I see they take the time to get to know their teams so that uh they can support them in the way that they need to be.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Exactly. The best leaders support each individual in a unique personal way that is suitable for them.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, so let's talk about your as we look forward. So we are recording this in 2026. The the world of work is changing, the world of tech world is changing, there's a lot more tools and resources, there's AI, there's a lot of agency. Um, there's podcasts, there's um resources that are readily available uh for people to develop themselves, for people to learn, to reach out to people. And so I think one thing, coaching, when I was in corporate America, I felt like coaching was this very it wasn't accessible to everybody, or people didn't necessarily take advantage of it. Now, a lot of people knew about the word mentors. People talked a lot about mentors, but people didn't talk enough about sponsors and coaches, and I think those are different skill sets that uh provide different and unique values for employees uh for teams. So, as you think about the people that are listening now who are maybe mid-career thinking of what they want to do next, um, let's talk about coaching for a minute because I know that's what you do. I know you've done that for a while. And because you also have a very niche space that I think um I was in biotech um as a scientist myself. So I know that the space is really very technical a lot. And I know you coach women in tech. So as you think about the world of work and what people should be doing, can you talk a little bit more about coaching, the value, and and maybe some of the opportunities that people have to lean into this for their development?

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Yeah. So coaching is not about telling you what to do or teaching you, right? Because you you mentioned mentoring. So a mentor would be someone like, okay, if you're a manager, it'll be someone, your maybe your manager and someone else in the company who will share their experiences, will tell you maybe what to do, will teach you something, right? Mentors, a lot of times they're technical, like in the technical field, maybe they are more technical than you and they can help you and uh learn from their experience. A coach is not some, like as a coach, I don't come as like, okay, I've been a manager, I know what you need to do, I'm gonna tell you exactly what to do. That's not my role. Although I do bring an advantage, right? I mean, this is an advantage that I bring because I coach leaders in tech. So obviously, I know what they're going through. And you've been there, you've been a leader for years. I think it helps me understand their situations and ask them much more tailored questions. But as a coach, my my job is not to tell them what to do, but to help them get the right, you know, decisions for them. Like, for example, I mentioned like I had a client that is debating whether she should become a manager or she should, you know, stay in an IC route. I cannot tell her what to do. It's not my uh place, but I can help her just brainstorm with her what are the options and where she thinks she wants to grow.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

Right.

unknown 31:19

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

So as a coach, I help you maybe uncover things you haven't thought about. I nudge you with some questions that yeah, sometimes can be a little bit, you know, uh uncomfortable, but that helps you kind of, you know, by just answering questions that can help you realize a lot of things that you haven't thought about.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think it's a very important and missing piece from a lot of people's career journey, honestly, because we follow mentors, mentors in an expert in this space, right? I want to learn how to speak, I want to go to somebody that has been speaking so that they can help me speak better. That's great. But the role of a coach um also is is is sort of like um the what will bridge the gap in in these conversations because it's more accessible, you know. You have access to the right coaches based on what you want, and it's different from mentors where you're taken from their experience. Now you're learning to look inward and reflect on where you um um want to go. So um anyway, I I I just uh I think coaching is a missed opportunity for a lot of people, and I think it's not um we don't talk enough about it, especially for corporate employees. Uh, it's something that sometimes we position it as executive coaching that leaders do, and uh people don't realize anyone can take advantage of coaching as they navigate their career.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

Um yeah, unfortunately, coaching is uh not accessible to all just because it's expensive. Right, right. And companies eventually have to make a choice. How do they invest and who do they invest in? So not everyone can get a coach. Right. I I mean, unless they decide to to invest from their own money, professional. And that happens, right? I mean, sometimes women who come to me just invest out of pocket, and that can happen as well.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

Yeah, yeah, and and and I think that's that's also why I wanted to bring it up because even if your company is not investing in you, I mean, most people have personal budgets where you think, or you should have a personal development plan for yourself that includes attending conferences and and doing a lot of things, right? Exploring coaching is also something that I think people should have uh in their toolbox to leverage as needed. It saves time, um, definitely allows faster movement through through the career path. So thank you for sharing that. I will um definitely be sharing more information about Limore and her pages and how to follow up with her. If you are a woman in tech, uh in a leadership role, aspiring to be a leader, um, some of the great uh conversations and insights that she shares um in our platforms will be really helpful. So um stay connected. Is there anything else you want to add before I go to my final question? My final phone question, Limore.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

No, go for it.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

All right. Um this is about food, but it's also not about okay. Oh, I love food. I love food. All right, if you um if you could share a meal with your co-workers or people that you work with, um either a meal or a snack or a fruit, what would you pick? And why did you pick what you picked?

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Hi, paya. Yeah, I'll I'll give you an example, okay? Okay. When I started working at Digital Ocean, it was my first remote job, my first and last actually, remote job. I took the team that they managed there to a restaurant, to a Spanish restaurant, and we shared a paella. Oh, so it was fun, you know, because it's a shareable dish. It was a huge one, right? Could barely like I don't even know if we finished it, but it was a fun experience because it was fun, like sharing it together as a team.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Yeah, love paella. I had paella for the first time in uh Valencia, so I felt like I had the original one, yeah. Um, but I I I also love to tie back what I'm hearing from my audience, um, from my guest about the food because you're talking about the team, the work you do, and the first food that comes to mind for you is something shareable, yeah. Something that can have something in it for everyone. And I think that speaks also to your leadership style. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah, my pleasure. It was nice having you. Uh, for those that are listening, check the show notes, stay subscribed, uh, depending on the platform you are on. And um, I'd love to hear from you. So connect with Limo, connect with myself, and let us hear your feedback about this episode. Thank you so much for being here today, Limo. It was nice catching up with you. Thank you so much. Thank you for being part of today's conversation on thriving in intersectionality. If you're an HR or DEI leader and you need employer resource group or business resource group resources, let's connect and LinkedIn and help organizations build inclusive cultures through inclusive workplace communities, strategy, and storytelling. Immigrants and first-gen professionals, join our free community at www.immigrantsincorporate.org for career support, networking, and resources in community with peers who understand your journey. Tag our podcast page on LinkedIn or connect with me directly to continue the conversation. Please don't forget to rate and review to help others discover these discussions. Keep thriving in your intersections. Your story matters. I'm Dr. Lola Adeyemo, and this has been Thriving in Intersectionality Podcast.