Serena Prince

I think definitely, I would say community has been number one for me. I'm from New York. I grew up in the Bronx specifically. New York has always been fertile ground for community. You live in such tight-knit neighborhoods where you're constantly around people who are different than you, who may think differently, whose parents or families come from different backgrounds. Being able to have had roots in such fertile soil really helped me to pull a lot of diverse experiences from different areas of my life to be able to kind of form the person that I am now, and the person that I'm still growing to be. I've learned so much from being in community with other people. I think that that experience is something that continues to fertilize what I'm trying to grow now as a professional. Creating a professional community and network, not just people that are passersby, but I am dedicating time to this, to cultivating these relationships. Even in my work, helping and assisting with strategic partnerships, a lot of that is building community that feels genuine. So it's kind of followed me, both personally and professionally, I would say, and something I want to carry on to the future.

I would say having audacity. I'm someone who has, especially as a younger professional, dealt with a lot of imposter syndrome. You achieve all these things, but sometimes, I know for people who are like me and do have imposter syndrome, you kind of cut yourself off from certain opportunities because you're not sure how you'll be received in those spaces. But having audacity, a mentor told me that, and I really, really still hold true to that, where it's like, you know what? I'm just gonna throw myself into this opportunity. I don't know what this will bring. The worst that could happen is I fail. But I still gain so much from messing up and not being good at something immediately. And so that, having that in the back of my mind really helps me to enter spaces where I'm not always the expert. It helps me to really shed that shame of not knowing, and flip the perspective of being like, you know what? I can take up this space, and there's something I'm gonna gain from this, and something I'm gonna learn from this. That's been really helpful.

My field can be fairly male-dominated, depending on which side you're appealing to. Especially when working with landlords, that tends to be very male-dominated. I think having confidence, or some people would say in my generation, being able to stand ten toes down on something. I think there's a lot of things that women face in terms of confidence in professional spaces, especially ones that are male-dominated, where people are always trying to test your knowledge. I think being confident in what you don't know, and being confident in what you do know, and being very in tune with that helps you to navigate certain spaces with authority. Being able to say, hey, there's some things that I don't know, and if I don't know them, I'm gonna be transparent about that. If there are things that I do know, I know exactly what this is. And kind of navigating between being open to feedback, but also being confident in what you already know. Being intimate and aware and in tune with yourself to know the difference, so that when you're interacting in spaces with other people, you can be confident without being arrogant. You can be humble without belittling yourself.

I think one of the bigger challenges, especially as someone who is younger and earlier in their career, is that there's not a lot of younger voices in these spaces. Like, I'm in a lot of spaces with people who have been in this industry for 10, 20, 30 years, and I think that is very valuable because there's a lot of wisdom, but I also think that there are so many opportunities to have younger, or more youthful professionals in these spaces, too, because they do have a lot to bring to the table. A lot of creativity or energy, whatever it is, and I feel that that's missing. There's like a lack of diversity in age and experience. And I think that that makes it a challenge, even for how I maneuver certain spaces, especially in the beginning. And a lot of the root of where my imposter syndrome was coming from was just kind of like, well, I'm not as experienced as all these other people. What could I possibly have to offer? And, you know, being able to be in this space for some time, you learn that you definitely really bring something to the table. You all, it doesn't matter how much experience you've had, you bring something. And so that's also an opportunity, right? Being the youngest person in the room, or the youngest professional in the room, there's a lot of experience I can learn from being around people who have been in this industry, and use that to inform the strategies that I create, new strategies based on old ones.

I would say being authentic. I think as humans, as people, as professionals, you're never solidified as a person. You're always growing, you're always changing, and I feel like being authentic and being real about that is like, I'm going to evolve over time, and I never, ever will stop. And so, that allows me to have a lot of flexibility in the way that I look at things, the way I approach the work that I do, the way that I approach my personal relationships, not only creating that space for myself, but also creating that space for others as well. You grow with people, you grow with your peers, you grow with their colleagues, you grow with your friends. And so, I think that's something that's really valuable to me. And I try to use that as kind of a beacon or a barometer for how I navigate change.