My conversation with Seema Sheth, Senior Vice President & Regional Executive at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reminded me of a quote from Walt Whitman, “I contain multitudes.” Seema is multiracial, neurodivergent, queer, a wife and mother, witty, engaging, and endlessly curious with a love for finance and economics. We talked until we had to sprint out the door for our respective meetings and could have kept going.
Seema and I parsed through language used to describe a universal yet different experience based on who you are – covering: downplaying, hiding, filtering or masking parts of ourselves at work, with different social groups, at school and with family. We mined personal experiences and the impact of covering on us as individuals and on the places where we work, and even more broadly, the economy. Later on, we talked about the role of privilege and changing the places we step into as a demonstration of what’s possible. Through each example and question, demonstrating the role that vulnerability plays in expanding how we relate to each other, what we understand about people’s lived experience, and as a way to reflect on our own journey.
“Assimilation,” said Seema when I asked what word or language she used and how she felt about the term covering. She often heard code-switching, and “masking is one that I hear a lot,” she said, “especially for those of us that are neurodivergent.”
As someone who is multiracial – half African and half Indian – with parents from Sudan and India, she has never fit into one racial box, and assimilation is how she tried to fit into culture in Kentucky as a first generation American. “The way to navigate the world was just to fit in,” she shared. “Then, you find yourself in new realities…. And when you do that sometimes you lose the thread of what is real.” As she became an adult, she began a discovery process, asking, “Of all the things I can do, of all these environments that I can operate within, which one feels authentic to me? And, what am I going to choose moving forward?”
The covering, or assimilation as Seema described, also directly impacted her identity. “Growing up, [identity] felt like a luxury,” she said. Fitting in was “a privilege I didn’t have access to.” Through middle and high school, what she wore was one way of assimilating. This cascaded into the professional sphere as she got older. “I work in finance… and I wanted to express myself,” Seema recounted, sitting across from me in a bright yellow sleeveless vest and sleeveless white button up, gold calculator watch and bootcut jeans. Her blazer, draped across the arm of the couch. It was Seema’s version of corporate. Years ago, when she stepped into the corporate finance world, there were constraints. “One must wear a pinstripe suit that is blue,” and “your shirt must always be white in color,” she said of the norm deemed “professional.” As a theatre person and fashion love, Seema wanted to express herself through color and pieces that represented her.
As her positional power expanded, and she stepped into roles with more visibility and influence, she began carving out space for herself. “You try to find the kernels that are non-negotiable,” she said.
Both of us are millennials, and what she shared about evolving how she dressed and how she showed up over time really resonated with me, it’s been a big part of my uncovering journey the past 8 years as well. Because of our ages, we were steeped in productivity culture. “You want to be as productive as possible,” she said, when I asked about why she started uncovering as a professional. “I found that I couldn’t be as productive because I was spending so much damn time managing expectations of other people,” Seema shared. “Figuring out how to fit in. Every choice I made down to nail color… what is this going to say about me? How do I need to make sure that they’re comfortable with me so I can have the best outcome?”
All of this mental work - this cognitive strain - from trying to cover 24/7 in the workplace meant that Seema was “unable to produce in the way I wanted to produce.” She elaborated further, “If I’m spending so much time thinking about how other people are going to perceive me, I don’t have enough time to be creative in the work I’m doing. There was no space for any of that. So part of me was like, this is unsustainable.” This internal process, the reflection on what was being experienced and how much it directly impacted a realm like work, was something we both went through, and her journey resonated so much with my own, and that of leaders I have talked to and interviewed. And, as we both experienced, as you start to uncover and evolve as a person, some of the relationships around you fall away. “I had a lot of relationships that were not very real,” Seema said. Relationships that changed or ended because “the person that you were really close with, it wasn’t me.”
When you combine all of this inner work and sharing who you really are, from being on the edge of burnout to relationships changing as you allow yourself to step into the world differently, it can be bittersweet. “It was a little bit of heartbreak,” recounted Seema.
“Thank god for therapists, because my therapist was like, ‘Who are you back bending for? What do you think the end goal is, that you imposter so well that you can be successful?’” Doing this inner work allowed Seema to “navigate away from places where even little pieces of authenticity were going to make me unsuccessful, or make me feel badly about myself, or make me think that I’m the problem,” she shared. As we’d both experienced, the environment matters. It often won’t be perfect and can create additional work for those of us who move through spaces as outliers of the norm, but part of why we do it is “so the next person after you doesn’t have to do quite the same amount of gymnastics to what you’re trying to do,” Seema said.
One thing we both acknowledge is that privilege comes into play when you start to uncover, as you “evaluate the root cause of what’s making you feel this way” [hollow, unhappy, like it’s your fault]. “Authority breeds privilege,” Seema explained. “The more hierarchical stature you get, the more leeway you earn. I’ve sort of navigated becoming more authentic as a person, employee, and leader.” Having started her job at the St. Louis Fed in the past few years, I asked how she asses the culture and environment she’ll be stepping into. “The way I do it is I show up so authentically in the interview… to a freaky extent,” she said smiling. Rather than straightening her hair, “I’m gonna make my hair as big as possible. I’m going to wear the brightest. I’m just gonna do all the things that I felt for a long time invalidated my credentials and credibility. I am going to show you what you are getting. I’ve learned to ask a lot of questions upfront, and to be okay with the answer. Sometimes it’s yes, that is our culture, and I’ll know I’m not going to be able to be successful in that environment.”
As many of us have seen and experienced over the past few years, there is a push and pull happening when it comes to covering and how people present and act in the workplace. What parts of themselves and their identities they can bring and share. “There is a need for people to show up authentically so that they can feel comfortable, and there’s also so much polarization happening in our world that people’s authenticity is often triggering,” Seema explained.
“Do you want people to show up as their full authentic selves without the tools to manage that internally? Or do you want to shut people down so that you don’t have to deal with the conflict that arises?”
From employers to employees, this becomes the challenge, with economic implications for all parties involved including places like downtown business districts. “We talk a lot about trying to get people back into the office and the prevalence of remote work,” she said. “I think a lot of that is because people like that they can be themselves at home. They don’t have to go to work and put on a show for people. But, I also think there is a huge relational loss for people that are just working at home all the time. It can make your work lifeless, horrible, tedious, and boring.”
Seema and I sit at the cusp from a generational perspective, in between the older generations who have been in the workforce for longer than us, and Gen Z, whose continues each year to shift what the workforce looks like. “They’re [Gen Z] walking into places where they don’t feel comfortable, it’s a weird, alien and unnecessarily structured environment a lot of the time. So it’s not that they don’t have soft skills to do well in the workplace, it’s that the workplace they are trying to do well in was made for someone fifty years their senior.”
This brings forward the larger question, how do we coexist and be respectful of difference, seeing “how that difference is robust and makes us all better?” Seema asked.
These various facets of our personal and professional experience, whether it’s how we show up in the workplace or how we think and talk about money are ones that Seema often creates videos about on TikTok (@bobeema). One such video, which led to our conversation taking place, was about people with positional power showing up authentically in the workplace, for the reasons we’ve explored already. TikTok in particular, has provided a lens through which to understand a variety of lived experiences and things that happen for people internally, that we may not have been exposed too. “It’s a validation of your experience all the time,” Seema said. “I’m also a person with ADHD that didn’t know it, right? Because obviously, I’m female. So we get under diagnosed, and, I’m highly productive. I make all my deadlines, I don’t miss anything. But, the amount of work it is for that to be my reality – the amount of systems I’ve had to set up, the false trigger points, the fake deadlines, and the amount of anxiety I had to like whip up in myself to get myself to do things, I didn’t know that was what was happening for me until I was given a peak into somebody else’s life on TikTok.”
Seeing those videos made Seema think, “Wait, excuse me, not everyone has to do this?” After seeing the videos that described so accurately how her mind worked, she showed her husband, asking, “Do you do this in your brain?” He asked, “What is that?” For twenty years they had functioned so differently, not understanding the internal process of the other. Similarly, TikTok has helped me understand my husband, who is also neurodivergent. It’s made me think, “Oh, now I understand.” It’s given me some tools and language to inquire and also talk about things differently. In the video that Seema shared that sparked our discussion, she is calling on people who have earned trust and respect and have positional power to “show up in these spaces differently.” She outlined why. “The reason why things are so importance is cognitive bias… it is informed by what you’ve seen. If you see it, you can be it right? So if we can show up in these spaces differently then what people have seen will change. So the idea of a president can change, the idea of a leader can change. So if you’ve earned it, use it. Show up to the board meeting where everybody else is dressed differently than you and be a little bit unconformable, but do it anyway, because that’s how we can create some more space.”
TikTok demonstrated a way to learn about and gain understanding of other people’s experiences. And, as our conversation moved forward, we talked about how “professionalism” and norms in the workplace can rob us of connection because people feel forced to conform. Whether it’s the formal language of emails (or the issue of using AI to generate messages that can mean losing the personal touch and humanity we often infuse between the lines), or the way many diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs have been implemented, we create more separation than connection. As Seema explained, she had a DEI workshop experience for a Board where she was the collateral damage of them trying to be “inclusive.” She reiterated that she is a person that “lives in intersectionality.” The two-day training culminated in five breakout groups, delineated by race. She asked the facilitator, “I’m not one race, but two, what should I do?” They said, “Well, pick the one that you identify with the most.” Being 50/50, Seema didn’t identify with one more than the other. “I was like, ‘That’s messed up. I don’t identify with one the most, where would you like me to do?’
Their response made her the problem, “You’re just making this difficult, pick one.” Rather than participating, she abstained. Later, the moderator said it was a learning moment, in their effort to celebrate attendee’s identities, they excluded someone. Seema said, “Yes, but also recognize that there’s a person that is your fallout.”
Like the discussion with her husband about having ADHD, stepping into rooms with people who look or identify different than us, and working to understand their experience can shed a lot of light on how people feel in different spaces, from board rooms to parties. For many people, Black women, queer folks, and others, there is a scan that takes place. But, sometimes, we avoid doing the scan because stepping into that room already took courage. For me, I don’t step into rooms as an androgynous queer person not recognizing how confusing many people find me or that there may be issues with safety at times. But I would rather risk a little bit to feel more whole.
Whether it’s your spouse, like how Seema and her husband – a white man - talk about what they observe and experience moving through life together, or with friends and colleagues, like the conversations Hannah Drake and I have about our experiences with work and life outside of it, being able to share those moments allows us to move beyond just existing, to being co-conspirators with each other. For many of us, we also develop internal “hacks” to make it through the uncomfortable times. “You describe the things you don’t pay attention to because you wouldn’t be able to navigate,” Seema said, reflecting on our conversation. “I resonate with that. Growing up here, going to the State Fair, everybody was staring at us. I felt so unsafe.
My mom would be like, ‘Here’s what you do when this happens, because it’s gonna happen your whole life. Just think, They’re staring at me because I’m beautiful. Not because they want to kill me.’ And I’m like, trying to get gas in Kentucky, and I’m thinking, they’re all staring at me, it’s because I’m beautiful.”