The adage is true: Walk a mile in my shoes - or drive a mile in my car. There is nothing quite like sitting in the seat yourself.
I was born in Middletown, Connecticut, while my dad was getting his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology and anthropology at Wesleyan University.
It's very personal to me and doesn't work for everybody, but what I have found in my experience is that when I make pro and con lists, it's usually because I am trying to talk myself out of a good idea or talk myself into a really bad one.
Human curation allows you to have the emotion and feel music, because it is a very emotional thing. It makes you feel happy; it helps you when you are feeling sad, gets you pumped up, calms you down.
I can't be in an environment that is not conducive to me as a black woman.
I've always been a black woman in corporate America. I've faced my share of issues.
Even though society has come a long way in correcting the inequalities between men and women in the workplace, it still has to be said that women are oftentimes subconsciously playing to the gender roles which we are taught from birth.
Six months after I was born, we moved to Ghana. The first five years of my life were there. In 1982, when there was a coup d'etat, my family left because the government was overthrown, and my dad was involved in politics.
I don't even know how to behave without my sleep. I would be a horrible person to be around - cranky.
The number of African Americans in Silicon Valley is dismal. It's not up to one company - it's up to the entire industry to make sure that we are moving the conversation forward. Sometimes those walls of competition need to come down so we can move the entire industry forward.
Pop culture and entertainment can be dismissed as surface, but it's not. It's the language we all speak, and it's the connection point between people all over the world.
Even now, when people ask me, 'Why did you take the job at Uber?' I say because my gut told me to.
For me, pop culture is very fluid: it's music, it's movies, it's books, it's art, it's tech, it's so many things - and as marketing and brand advocates, we should be able to to take products and services and match them to what's happening in pop culture.
I think it's interesting how you can associate a creative brand with a human being and use some of the good qualities of the human being and make it like a really tangible product that a lot of people can love.
There is something to be said about taking the risk. We all know that is where the greatest reward is.
As a first-generation American, my parents expected that I would go on to have pretty tactical higher-education-type jobs - doctor, lawyer, engineer. Those were the three options. My dad was not at all open to the idea that there would not be a higher education in my future.
We should all be allies to ideas or people or initiatives that we don't necessarily have a real knowledge in.
I think that people are innately good.
I believe in manifesting the words that are coming out of my mouth. I'm very careful with what I say because the intention is then out in the universe.
Bringing your whole self to work is the mantra for me as I sit in my office and do the work, and it's also the mantra as I look out at the community that I'm trying to brand for Uber.
