The moment I decided to apply for the VP role didn’t happen in a conference room.
It happened quietly.
At home.
At my desk.
Sitting alone.
I remember staring at the screen and saying a prayer to myself.
Not the polished kind people say in public. The honest kind.
“God, why would you want me to apply for a role that we both know I’m not going to get?”
It felt irrational.
Applying meant visibility.
Visibility meant judgment.
Judgment meant stepping out from behind the place I had always felt most comfortable — the background.
I’ve never been the person chasing attention.
I like building things quietly.
Helping people quietly.
Making things better without needing my name attached to it.
And if I’m honest, stepping forward felt unnecessary. I already knew what the likely outcome would be.
Rejection.
I’ve experienced rejection before. I’m not new to it.
So the question wasn’t whether I could survive rejection.
The question was: Why walk toward it?
The Real Fear
As I sat there praying, I realized something.
My hesitation wasn’t about the job.
It was about exposure.
I kept thinking:
What if people think I’m too much?
What if people wonder who I think I am?
What if stepping forward changes how people see me?
Because when you step into visibility, people start forming opinions.
And opinions can feel dangerous when you’ve spent your life proving you belong.
There’s a strange tension that comes with ambition when your intentions are misunderstood.
For me, the goal has never been titles or recognition.
My goals have always been bigger than that.
Corporate leadership, for me, is not the destination.
It’s preparation.
Preparation to build something that will outlive me.
Preparation to build WE.
A place where families, children, and parents have access to opportunities that many people simply never knew existed.
A community center.
Career coaching.
STEM programs.
Robotics.
Sports.
Education for parents.
Access for children.
Not just help.
Access.
Because growing up, I didn’t lack intelligence.
I lacked information.
I lacked guidance.
I lacked the invisible roadmaps that other people seemed to have.
And when you grow up without access, you spend much of your life figuring things out through trial and error.
Sometimes painful error.
So when I think about leadership, I don’t think about power.
I think about scale.
How do you help more people?
How do you change outcomes for families?
How do you build something that sustains impact long after you’re gone?
Those are the questions that drive me.
And the uncomfortable truth is that learning to answer those questions sometimes requires stepping into rooms you don’t feel ready for.
The Voice That Wouldn’t Leave Me Alone
Even as I prayed, another voice kept rising inside of me.
A quieter one.
It said:
“You have to do this.”
Not because you’ll get the job.
But because you need to grow.
Because growth doesn’t happen in the shadows forever.
For most of my life, I’ve been comfortable working behind the curtain.
Helping others succeed.
Building systems.
Supporting people.
But something about that moment felt different.
It felt like a small doorway into a bigger version of myself.
And I didn’t feel ready.
But readiness has never been the requirement for growth.
Courage is.
So I applied.
Even though every part of me believed the outcome would likely be rejection.
What I Didn’t Expect
What happened next surprised me.
Because the fear I carried into that process was that people would resent me.
That they would think I was overstepping.
That they would quietly question my ambition.
Instead, something unexpected happened.
People showed up.
Leaders invested time in me.
Mentors offered guidance.
Colleagues shared insights about how the system actually worked.
Some people even held my hand through parts of the process.
And I remember thinking to myself:
Maybe I was never as alone as I thought.
Sometimes we assume people are waiting to tear us down when in reality many of them are waiting for us to finally step forward.
Not everyone will support you.
But more people might than you think.
What That Moment Taught Me
Applying for that role didn’t change my title.
But it changed me.
It exposed something that had been quietly living inside me for years.
Imposter syndrome.
The quiet belief that maybe you’re not quite enough.
Not polished enough.
Not perfect enough.
Not qualified enough.
But perfection was never the assignment.
Growth was.
And growth requires moments that stretch your identity.
Moments where you choose courage even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed.
The Truth I’m Learning
For most of my life, I’ve been comfortable helping people from the background.
Quietly building.
Quietly supporting.
Quietly giving access to others.
But the uncomfortable truth I’m beginning to understand is this:
Impact sometimes requires visibility.
Not for recognition.
But for reach.
Because if the mission is bigger than you, hiding behind the curtain eventually limits how many people you can help.
And helping people has always been the point.
Why I’m Writing This
This space — Herformation — is where I’ll document the process of becoming.
Not after everything is figured out.
But while it’s happening.
Because becoming doesn’t happen all at once.
It happens in moments like this.
Moments where you feel the fear.
And step forward anyway.
Closing Thought
Sometimes the door that scares you the most is not the one that leads to rejection.
It’s the one that leads to the next version of you.
And becoming her requires courage long before it requires success.