Tagline
How to harness your inner strength and achieve anything you want.
Bio for Wema Hoover
Wema Hoover is an internationally acclaimed speaker and the CEO of Wema Hoover Advisors. She has dedicated her career to being a culture change agent advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion across global markets through a system thinking approach, driving organizational change and development in people, processes, and products. Wema has experience working with multinational enterprises such as Google, Pfizer, Sanofi Bristol Myers, Squibb and PwC. She possesses a high degree of cultural awareness after living in Europe and working across the US, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Episode highlight
Our childhood experiences prepare us for our adult life. For Wema Hoover, her exposure to different cultures opened her up to working with multicultural spaces across the globe. Wema was born in New Jersey and has lived in different places worldwide.
Growing up, Wema’s parents challenged her to focus on education, be the best version of herself, and fulfil her potential. Wema did what her parents expected of her, and looking back, she can comfortably say she made them proud.
Today, Wema shares her journey to embracing limitlessness and harnessing her inner strength.
Links
- Website: https://www.wemahoover.com/
Quotes
- “When you’re given the platform or influence to perform, you’ve got to see it as a time to deliver.”
- “Seize the moment, fulfil your potential whatever it may be, take action, and don’t leave anything to chance if you’re given the opportunity.”
- “When you don’t believe in yourself, but others do – how much win that gives you!”
- “We’re all on a learning journey every day of our life.”
Takeaways
Childhood Incidents
Wema grew up in a society that had a rich plethora of traditions. They celebrated traditions like Chinese New Year, Yom Kippur and other celebrations. There was a lot of experience of different, traditions, ideas, and philosophies. Not all turned out as she would have expected. Wema recalls a time when the parents of one of her Jewish friends wouldn’t allow Wema to attend a bat mitzvah because they didn’t want a black person at their event. This incident never affected the relationship between the two girls however, and they remained close.
Influential groups
Wema was raised in an African American community where everything revolved around hard work and living your potential. In their household, excellence was the bar, and seizing opportunities were the order of the day. At a young age, they were taught to understand some opportunities only come once.
Temperament and Personality Influences
Wema believes she was born with a love for people. Her energy comes from connecting with people and having meaningful connections.
Cultural Epiphanies
Getting along with colleagues is one of the things people strive to do in their workplaces. Some people do coffee dates; others go out for drinks while others visit each other in their homes. When Wema got a job in France, she had the shock of her life. She tried to show kindness to her colleagues, taking dessert to their doorsteps. It landed her in trouble with the HR department. She couldn’t understand why her colleagues were uncomfortable with her visiting them in their homes. Later, she realized that, unlike the Americans and Indians, the French are sceptical about hosting their colleagues. They view it as an invasion of privacy.
Thriving Moments
According to Wema, high collaboration, openness, and exchange are key for a working environment where she can thrive. It allows her to deliver and bring the best in her work and services.
Soap Box Moment
Wema Hoover invites us to check out Be Limitless Consulting to see the amazing things she is doing to make an impact in the world.
Extro
Learning openness to culture as a child prepared Wema Hoover for life in multicultural spaces around the world. As an adult, she nonetheless had to go through the cultural school of hard knocks, when she enthusiastically assumed hospitality would be the same across countries and had to make an about-face to ensure her colleagues were not offended when she showed up at their doors with desserts.
Strong influences growing up were her parents, who were honed in the civil rights era, and a black grandfather fluent in German from being stationed in Germany as an adult. A family culture of excellence helped her to be disciplined. She later softened that by developing her collaborative powers and expanding her natural personal warmth and self-awareness.
