Seema Kumar, Chief Marketing Officer @ New Relic

Seema Kumar is the CMO of New Relic, the leading observability platform that helps engineering teams improve the usability of their software. Prior to New Relic, Seema spent 18+ years leading product marketing, brand, events, and demand generation at companies like ServiceChannel and Salesforce.  

In this episode we spoke with Seema about:

• Why she tried to fit into the model minority stereotype while growing up

• How she learned to embrace vulnerability as a leadership superpower by letting go of the focus on external perception she was raised with

• How she shifted from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset

You can listen to her below or wherever else you get to your podcasts.

Bringing awareness to selective ignorance 

I love the term selective ignorance. In my mind, it perfectly captures some of what’s wrong with the model minority myth. I certainly had selective ignorance about the fact that I was “different”. When you think of yourself as the model minority you think that you just fit in with everyone else. For most of my life, I actually viewed myself as being the same as everyone else. It’s sort of a survival skill right? You go along to get along. So I believed I was white, if I did that, there wouldn’t be any discrimination against me right? We all want to be treated like everyone else, so I think I had a level of selective ignorance in this area that I’ve worked on overtime.

The importance of Asian American identity in her upbringing 

Yes, Asian American identity was a big part of my life growing up. I grew up in an Indian household, we spoke Hindi at home, most of our community around us who were our support system were virtually all Indian. My mother was somewhat westernized because she had a career. There were parts of our culture that were incredibly important at home. We were told at times “you’re Indian and Indians don’t do that”. So because of this, there was definitely this sense of having a different identity. 

You might wonder how I can reconcile being Indian, but also viewing myself as white. Therein lies the reason many of us have confused identities. There’s this acronym, the ABCD, which means the American Born Confused Desi, which is what society would refer to us. We’re confused that we’re not white, and Indian at the same time. 

Like reading about Seema? Want to get notified of any new episodes of the podcast? Subscribe to our newsletter here.

Until next time,

Jay and Angie