The People Who Believed in Me Before I Believed in Myself
How the people who believed in me shaped my journey from a small barrio in the Philippines to a global telecommunications leader.
The People Who Believed in Me Before I Believed in Myself
By Evelyn Talatala Clough
Success is often told as an individual story.
We talk about determination, hard work, resilience, and the courage to keep going. All of those things matter. I know because I have relied on every one of them throughout my life.
But as I recently began looking back at my journey in a much deeper way, I realized something:
My story was never mine alone.
Long before I had titles, accomplishments, or any real idea of where my life would take me, there were people who believed I was capable of more.
The first were my parents.
I grew up in a small barrio in the Philippines without electricity or running water. We did not have much, but my parents never allowed what we lacked to determine what we could become.
My father was a farmer. He saved every coin he could. My mother made enormous sacrifices for our family. Neither could hand us an easy path, so instead, they gave us something far more valuable: They taught us to believe in education, hard work, faith, and possibility.
One of the photographs I treasure most is of my father placing a medal around my neck when I was a little girl.
At the time, it was simply a proud moment between a father and his daughter.
Today, I see something more.
I see a man who believed in his daughter before she had any idea what she might become.
Sometimes Someone Else Sees It First
Years later, I arrived in America with one hundred dollars in my pocket.
I had an engineering degree, ambition, and plenty of determination. What I did not have was a roadmap.
I worked as a nanny. I worked in a jewelry store. I worked at a bank. I practiced my English and tried to understand a country and culture that were still new to me.
Eventually, someone passed along my résumé.
That simple act opened a door.
On January 15, 1995, I began working in Network Operations at Sprint. It became the beginning of a telecommunications career I could never have imagined when I first arrived in America.
Over the years, there would be other people who took chances on me, challenged me, gave me opportunities, and sometimes saw potential in me before I was completely certain I was ready.
I also encountered people who doubted me.
Those people taught me something too.
Their doubt made me work harder.
But the people who believed in me taught me something much more important:
What happens when someone is given the opportunity to prove what they can do.
Leadership Changed the Question
As my career grew, I eventually found myself on the other side of that equation.
I was no longer the person waiting for someone to open the door.
I was the leader who could open it.
That realization changed the way I thought about leadership.
Leadership isn't simply about delivering results, hitting targets, or building successful organizations. Those things are important. But some of the most meaningful results of leadership may not appear on a dashboard.
Sometimes leadership is noticing the quiet employee who has more potential than confidence.
Sometimes it is giving someone a stretch assignment before they think they are ready.
Sometimes it is saying, "I believe you can do this."
And sometimes it is allowing someone to fail, learn, get back up, and try again without deciding that one mistake defines their potential.
Throughout my career, I have led teams in the United States and internationally. The technology changed. The companies changed. The challenges changed.
But people remained people.
They wanted to know that their work mattered.
They wanted someone to see what they were capable of becoming.
Your Belief May Become Someone Else's Beginning
There is a responsibility that comes with reaching a position you once dreamed about.
At some point, success has to become about more than how far you can go.
It becomes about how many people you can help move forward with you.
I have watched employees grow into leaders. I have watched people become more confident because someone trusted them with something difficult. And I have seen what happens when people are given both high expectations and genuine belief.
That is one of the greatest privileges of leadership.
You may never know which conversation someone will remember twenty years later.
You may never know that the opportunity you considered small became a turning point in someone else's life.
My father probably never imagined that decades after placing that medal around the neck of his little girl in the Philippines, I would still carry that moment with me.
But I do.
A Story That Was Never Mine Alone
Recently, I finished writing my memoir, One Hundred Dollars: An Immigrant's Journey of Faith, Courage, and Purpose.
Writing it forced me to revisit parts of my life I had not thought about in years.
And somewhere between remembering the little girl studying by a kerosene lamp and the young woman arriving in America with one hundred dollars, I realized something that changed the way I saw my entire journey.
Yes, I worked hard.
Yes, I persevered.
Yes, there were moments when I had to believe in myself when very few people knew what I was capable of.
But there were also people along the way who opened doors, offered encouragement, challenged me, trusted me, and believed.
My name may be on the cover of the book.
But I did not get there alone.
Perhaps that is one of the most important lessons success has taught me.
We spend so much of our lives wondering whether someone will believe in us.
Eventually, if we are fortunate enough to succeed, the question changes.
Who will believe in themselves because we believed in them first?
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