Isabella Guadamuz

I attribute my success to all of the people that have formed a community around me that have been around me during my lowest points and during my highest points. I think having a community is the way that a lot of people can be successful, and I wouldn't be half of who I am without my community, so my family, my friends from university, and then also the community in which I've built here in San Francisco. These people have supported me through everything and have been instrumental in helping me become who I am today.

The best career advice I've ever received was from a mentor who told me that being honest was crucial in any pursuit of happiness, just in general. I thought this was really applicable to the job search as well. Being honest with oneself is crucial to true happiness and true gratification in the job that you're seeking, or the relationships that you're seeking out. It's also important to be completely, fully open to different opportunities. While they might not at first seem all that much appealing, it's important to entertain all ideas and to really go for it, even if it doesn't seem like it might be for you.

My advice, easier said than done of course, is to continue to be authentic to yourself, even if you don't feel that you fit the mold of what other people are saying. So, if you're a naturally soft-spoken person, be that way, while not letting anyone tell you that you need to be different. If it's working for you, then it is working for you, and you absolutely do not need to conform to other people's standards and ways of doing things. If you can get the work done efficiently and correctly, then there's no need to have the same type of person everywhere, right? There can be a lot of room for diversity, personality-wise as well.

I think the biggest challenge has to be being a woman in my field in particular. I think where a lot of men dominate the criminal justice field, I find that I've had to really prove myself to a lot of people who might have looked at me and thought I seemed too soft or seemed too soft-spoken. So definitely being a woman and navigating that. Another challenge I've faced as well is not taking home the work with me. There's a lot of people who, when I was in university, would often say, oh, you shouldn't take your work home with you, but I think that's a lot easier said than done. I think there's something to be said about just being the type of person who thinks really hard and deeply about my day, and debriefing with myself. It's often very difficult for me to leave behind or forget the things that I've seen, the people that I've met, and the interactions that I've had, so for me, leaving it all at work and not taking it all home with me has got to be one of the more difficult challenges I've faced.

I think honesty, integrity, being honest with oneself, and doing things for the right reason rather than the wrong reason are important in both my work and my personal life. In fact, the value that I hold probably the highest is honesty. Just being honest about if you're doing things for the right reason, and if not, is there somewhere else that you should be, and thinking very honestly about that, and not trying to be someone you're not, or do something that you are not capable of and cannot handle. So, definitely those values, for sure.