Her Story
About Alison
I have two careers that I've been building for over a decade. I've been in finance for about 13 years and currently work at Fidelity Investments as a Senior Executive Administrator, where I support, manage, influence, train, and mentor executives in crypto and digital assets. I've been leading teams for many years now. In my parallel career as an actress since 2010, I was nominated as Best Supporting Actress at the Canadian Screen Awards in 2020 and was mentioned in the New York Times in 2020 as the foreground actor. I was also in The Different Man, which was nominated at the Golden Globes. As a woman born with a facial difference, I underwent numerous surgeries throughout my childhood and adulthood. I had to overcome many obstacles, including a speech impediment, and English is not my first language. I grew up in a small town, was raised by a family that was not privileged, we were poor, and I was adopted at 6 weeks. I wouldn't say I had privilege. I had a lot of setbacks and obstacles that I had to maneuver and overcome that I'm still dealing with today. As a mentor and leader, I like to provide strategic, innovative ideas to help solve problems and move the team forward. I always think outside of the box when someone is struggling. That's where I gained my project management and critical thinking skills at the Art Institute of California in San Francisco, and I provide those skills to my current role and also in my acting field.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Alison
01What do you attribute your success to?
I want to bring hope to humanity in the future. I believe that AI is coming in and will take away human independence and may cause lack of compassion and empathy towards one another and to ourselves. It's interesting how God put me in this position in this time to help raise consciousness for humans in the future. It's just an imprint, a statement that I can bring to this world, where people, let's say, 100 years from now, can look back and say, okay, there was compassion, there was realism. Because I was born with a facial difference, we are all imperfect, we are meant to be imperfect. But in 100 years, 200 years from now, if we have AI, we are going to have more pressure on ourselves to be perfect, not imperfect, and that's what creates art, is from imperfection. A lot of the things that humans create is from mistakes. Even though I'm flawed on a physical level, I have some seasonings to offer. Even though I want to give up every day and I deal with depression, and I think a lot of us have been affected by depression since COVID, that's an ongoing battle for me. That's what keeps me moving forward, is what I just shared.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
You would have to take jobs that you don't like just to build skills and experience to get to the next level. Take on volunteer opportunities and projects that you don't necessarily want to help build the skills that you need to get to the next level. Hard work does pay off, but I think there will be times where you may feel like hard work is not paying off, you're not moving forward. You may see other people getting all these opportunities when they haven't had much training or experience. You just have to keep moving forward and focus on yourself and be the best person you can be, because it will pay off.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Right now, the biggest challenge that really bothers me is that I'm seeing an uprising with entertainment, TikTok, and social media entertainers getting more opportunities than real, raw talent. Nowadays, it's so easy for anyone to submit virtual self-tapes for auditions, but then you see these TikTokers who have 2 million followers and they get more recognition and opportunities when they lack the training or talent. I like to stay off of social media for many different reasons. My safety is important. I think people don't realize the danger of putting yourself out there in social media, and you don't know where your information, or your images, or your voice goes. I've always been a very relatively private person. So that's what bothers me, is that the rise of social media, I wouldn't call it talents, the fame is getting more attention than real talent. On the opportunity side, I would say this is an opportunity to set a good example of what good leadership is, what a woman with a facial difference can do. I've dealt with so much discrimination, it's insane. But someone who's able to put their best foot forward and show strong leadership with integrity, that is an opportunity.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I would say integrity. It's hard to find integrity these days, and I think a lot of people don't realize that they lack integrity. Integrity can mean, can be connected to many different things. It's someone that, if you walk in and you say good morning, you know, being considerate. Integrity can be connected to many different things. Someone who's considerate, someone who has empathy, sympathy of others, and it's always been about being the bigger person, even if that person has not been kind to you or has not been considerate to you. It's been about being a bigger person, even if you don't want to. There's days where I'm just like, you know, I'm tired of being the bigger person all the time, I'm just gonna be selfish and take time to myself right now, and I guess that's okay. I had to learn to be selfish in a way. But I think all of us humans, especially after the pandemic, we need to deliver, we need to set integrity on a daily basis, even if it's professional or personal.
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