Professional Visibility with Daisy Onubogu
I'm excited to share this series on Professional Visibility with you. I want to help you overcome cultural, social and gender-related barriers to being visible. Talking about yourself and your work is a skill and I want to shine a light on the multitude of ways women do this. I hope I can provide you with role models you can mimic and learn from. Over time, I hope that you will find a way of being visible that feels true and powerful to you. This work is one way I'm learning how to do that for myself. First up, is the brilliant Daisy Onubogu who I met through the stellar network of deal and talent she is building at Backed VC.
Why are you intentional visible?
People will make decisions that affect your life in rooms you are not in. I'm visible because I know how important it is to have your brand speak for you where and when you cannot speak for yourself. . I've grown up being an outsider to most spaces I inhabit which meant I couldn't just expect the benefit of the doubt, or that people would just assume favourable or accurate things about me. So I've needed to amplify my voice and tell people who I am before they go overlooking me or worse misconceive me based on prejudice. . Decision making aside, I also believe your story is the only thing that is truly yours in this life - the sum total of who you are, how you are, what you believe, what you love, what you do and such. Yet for some of us, if we don't tell the story ourselves, others will craft their own narratives formed of prejudice, ignorance, assumptions, misconceptions etc. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I refuse to be robbed of my own story.
HOW are you visible?
Through a broad personal network, through social media, public speaking and to a lesser extent (though I'm hoping to change that) through content.
What is your one piece of advice to people reading this who want to be more visible?
Develop a strong habit of introspection, if you don't actually know who you are, then it'll be difficult to embark on a project of putting that story out there. At best, you get nowhere because people can't really get a sense of what you're about. At worst, you build a brand that you don't recognise yourself in.
Who is your visibility role model?
Hands down, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; a woman who uniquely understands the importance of putting forward a full mosaic of your identity lest people try to tell one single, reductive story about you.
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