The weight of intersectional identities as a queer woman of color and CEO of a biotech company in Silicon Valley.
And how my perspective has changed from a year ago to today.
Hi! This is my first post and thank you so much for being here. My name is Hannah. I started this newsletter at the beginning of 2023 to document the ways I think about running a biotech startup, writing, building meaningful relationships, and everything in between. I aim to send out a newsletter every week about something I’ve been noodling about. If you want to know more, head over to my about page.
This post is broken up in to two sections. The first is a blog post I had written back in February of 2022 that I ended up not posting because I had deemed it too personal to share on the internet at the time. The second is my reaction to reading that blog post almost 1 year later in January of 2023.
The weight of intersectional identities as a queer woman of color and CEO of a biotech company in Silicon Valley.
As a Chinese adoptee growing up in a conservative small town in Central Pennsylvania, I have always craved a sense of belonging. My adolescence was spent constantly navigating the in-between of publicly fitting in for survival and privately struggling to define who I actually was for self-preservation. It wasn’t until moving to California for graduate school that I was able to exist as an Asian American woman without others adding an asterisk at the end to clarify that I was somehow less than because my parents are white. Shortly after resolving the tension of my racial identity, the rest of my mind was free to explore what else was harboring in the folds of my brain and I came out to myself as queer a few months later.
The beautiful and incredibly difficult thing about intersectional identities is that they spin a web around you. On one hand, the web is an intricately complex and layered fabric of experience that lends insight to navigating our world in a way that is truly unmatched. I am able to experience life, love others, and connect with communities in a much deeper and meaningful way after having engaged with my identities instead of running away from them or trying to assimilate into a place I don’t belong. On the other hand, pressure from society to uphold the status quo and fit into the constraints of what success means puts weight on this web and attempts to hold me down.
This weight was felt acutely in July of 2021, right after I graduated with my PhD and transitioned to full time CEO of the company I co-founded the year prior.
I thought my life would become easier when I finished grad school. Splitting my time between grad student and startup founder for an entire year made my brain feel like it was pulling apart at the seams. I could feel my fingers digging into the middle of my skull and breaking it apart until the glue clinging everything together felt like stringy bubblegum.
“Just hold on,” I told myself, entering the survival mode that I had practiced for far too long in high school and college. “You just have to finish your thesis and then you can focus on just one thing. Then everything will feel like a breeze.”
Life did not get easier after I graduated. Actually, it felt like it became at least 4x harder.
What the fuck? I asked myself.
Why does this feel so much harder?
The answer was around me. Diversity and inclusion in upper education has a long way to go, but being at Stanford, I did see myself. Much more than I ever had before. But now finding myself in the middle of the venture capital world and Silicon Valley, I was overwhelmingly surrounded by white men whose sole job was to judge me on the validity of my ideas and ability to make them money.
Every day I feel the weight of representing women and proving we have what it takes to be successful.
Every day I feel the weight of representing Asian Americans and proving we have what it takes to be successful.
Every day I feel the weight of representing queer folks and proving we have what it takes to be successful.
Every day I feel the weight of representing adoptees and proving we have what it takes to be successful.
I feel the weight of all of those things every single day. There is a deep and desperate compulsion to be excellent in everything I do because I don’t have the privilege of mediocrity. Mediocrity as a member of a marginalized community not only means your spot will be given to a member of the majority, but because you represent not only yourself but every other marginalized member of your community, they will also not be given the chance to prove themselves either.
Many haven’t been given the windows of opportunity I have been blessed with, so it feels like my responsibility to take them as far as I possibly can so more windows can be opened for other folks within my communities. I want to see more than 4% of VC-backed companies to be co-founded by women. I want to see more Asian Americans in positions of power instead of being crushed by the bamboo ceiling. I want to see rates of depression and suicide for queer folks and adoptees to be less than 2x and 4x the national average.
The best way I can think of to make a difference and convert those dreams into reality is through representation. I can be all of these beautiful and awfully difficult things at once and still be a CEO in Silicon Valley.
If this post resonated with you and the burdens you carry, know I am here too. You are not alone. I believe in you. I know you can do all of those things and so much more.
//
A year isn’t that long, so my first reaction to reading this piece after finding it hidden away in my computer was surprise. Surprise that so much could change in just 11 months. In all important aspects, I agree with everything I wrote last February. The weight of intersectional identities in a pressure cooker like Silicon Valley is real and valid. And while the message still rings true, the weight I described carrying in early 2022 is all but gone now.
Shit, I thought to myself. Does the burden feel lighter because I’ve grown accustomed to the weight or because I’ve dropped it all together?
The true answer is a secret third thing: the burden feels lighter because I changed the example I want to set for what “success” looks like in the startup world.
Success to me is building an environment where people are able to reach their highest potential because they feel valued and important. It is creating an ecosystem of innovation greater than any one person could imagine because it is only possible through collective creativity.
This isn’t to say that I don’t feel the very real pressure to raise money, reach milestones, or continue to build. Of course I do. Every day. But the weight of representing my intersectional identities to achieve value defined by a world that does not want to value us is gone. I am incredibly proud of the small company my co-founder and I have already created. Within the entire startup journey, the people and company culture we have built are my greatest point of pride and happiness.
I have already done enough. I am already enough.
I am all those beautiful and awfully difficult things I described before. I am also a successful CEO in Silicon Valley.
Feel free to leave a comment or hit the like if any of this resonated with you. And be sure to subscribe to get every new post straight to your inbox - you don’t have to have a substack account subscribe.
Hello Constance,
(I hope you don't mind me calling you by your other name - I think it sounds refreshing lol)
Hmm. Where do I begin...?
Yes! A basic search on fermentation & gut health took me down the 'internet rabbit-hole': fermentation recipes -> Harvard Reviews -> what Stanford U had to say on it -> Lisa Kim's interview with a Hannah C. Wastyk -> who is Hannah C. Wastyk -> curiosity about Ms. Wastyk's findings -> Oh, my! She has a blog -> Even better, she can amuse herself (and others too); and, last but not least, she manages a start-up.
Oh. Did I mention her last blog-post was in Feb 2023? [Attending a gathering of Gut Superheroes’', I presume] :)
Constance, I have a list of questions after reading your blog but I will ask a few in this first message.
Get ready.... they are coming at you faster than a wishing star...
--- In your blog [title: Longevity and the Possible Utopic and Dystopic Futures of a World Without Old Age], you write "understanding who and what is most important is always going to require intentionality, no matter how long we engineer our future health-span to be".
Question: What is most important to you with your research (the fundamental goal)?
--- I read somewhere about blood samples from lab participants during the weeks long research on fermentation & gut health. The participants, they said, continued living normal lives (unrestricted choice in dietary choices) during the course of this data sampling.
Question: What were the conclusions from the blood samples: Were they better? If yes, how? If not, please explain. :)
--- In your blog post [title: The Weight of Intersectional Identities as a Queer Woman of Color and CEO of a Biotech Company in Silicon Valley], you write "but now finding myself in the middle of the venture capital world and Silicon Valley, I was overwhelmingly surrounded by white men whose sole job was to judge me on the validity of my ideas and ability to make them money."
Correct me if I am wrong; but, perhaps, I would be right to assume the challenges for validity in your ideas go as far back as your childhood in Pennsylvania. I refer to the possibility of one developing an identity confusion that follows when others fail to acknowledge you have independent thoughts, even as a child. Later, growing up and to feel that you have not had the opportunity to explore and solidify your identity. A feeling (unconscious, perhaps) that you had to constantly hide aspects of your personality to fit in/gain acceptability. Even now, you may find that you are having difficulty deciding the direction of careers: the next inventor of a dietary medium that intersects lifespan & health-span; a voice for adoptees, or simply an example for young girls who may be in the same position you found yourself 20 years ago.
Question: Judging from the above statement, would you say that your "ideas" have finally gained recognition now that you are a Co-founder in Silicon Valley - and you no longer struggle to "make them money"?
It was a pleasure writing this and I am eagerly anticipating your response.
Cheers!
Franklin (in Toronto, Canada)
P.S. I am starting to feel like a journalist lol. [Hey! I did not forget Fermentation & Gut health... I am making my way there... slowly, perhaps. lol]