I’m Leaving…Again

Let’s go back to the beginning.

I went to school at Chicago State University — yes, I know, Chicago is not a state. I didn’t name the school, ok? Kanye West did in fact attend CSU but only for like one semester. Campus is located on the most south side of Chicago, like last stop on the red line. IYKYK. One time I met this rich white guy that told me he went to U Chicago which is in Hyde Park which he considered to be the “south side” of Chicago. It’s not. Like, President Obama’s house is in Hyde Park. We had multiple shootings at our school — real south side.

Back to school. I went here because my tennis coach from Kentucky ended up being the head coach here and I really wanted to play tennis in college because first of all who wants all that fucking student debt? No thank you, I’d rather rack up that credit card debt buying things I don’t need. Just kidding…kind of. Second of all, my coach was like a father figure to me and I truly loved him. We had a special bond. If you know me, you know I’m not the most coachable or approachable, ha! But particularly back then, I was even more of a nightmare and this poor man took it upon himself to deal with my sassy ass. God bless him. Also, I felt so much pressure to go D1 because my grandma is fucking Mexican tennis royalty and my grandfather also played professionally and then my mom and uncle played D1 and my parents met playing tennis. Like tennis was the family legacy and I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with the sport but that’s a different story.

As shitty as I thought CSU was, it was D1, my favorite person ever was going to be my coach and I was going to get the heck out of Kentucky. Win-win-win! The reason I bring tennis up is because while it has afforded me my greatest opportunities in life, it was also the reason I could not get a job upon graduation. Every summer for as long as I can remember, I would go to Mexico to spend the summer training with my grandparents. And when I say training, I don’t just mean tennis. Ya girl was hitting the tequila hard at a very early age — If you’re my grandma and grandpa reading this just disregard this part. Anyway, the point being that I didn’t really spend a ton of time thinking about working or getting a job or summer internship. I had the best summers ever but of course that came with a price later on. When I graduated in August of 2016, I had applied to all kinds of jobs and I could not land one that would support my lifestyle in Chicago. Every freaking entry level job required experience? Like that’s not entry level. So I wouldn’t say I have any regrets, but I should have spent a little more time thinking about the future.

New York City, baby! That’s where I landed my first job and it was at a consulting company that had many big clients. Amongst those big clients, Bank of America. I was dying to get back to Chicago and BofA is HQ in Chicago. So I thought, let me go to this training for the consulting company in NYC and land a position at BofA in Chicago. Chicago is my obsession. It’s my favorite place in the world and it’s the place where I feel most at home and most myself. #ChicagoMarnie (IYKYK).

Of course, nothing goes according to plan. I ended up landing a job at Morgan Stanley and absolutely falling in love with this place. The people treated me like family and like an equal even though I was a complete stranger and consultant. It’s not a consultant like fucking BCG or McKinsey. It’s like idk how to explain it. But at MS employees are treated like royalty and that was always my dream — to become a full time employee at MS. That dream came true. I had an incredible manager that I ended up with by accident and she was everything I wanted to be and have. She had an Ivy League education, she had an office by the window facing the statue of liberty, she was a VP. She was a fucking bad ass. She wouldn’t let men walk all over her and I loved her. We became very close.

Side bar: this is one of my biggest weaknesses, that I get too close to my bosses.

She ended up leaving to pursue a big position at a start up and I ended up going with her after some time. This was shortly after I was converted to an employee. I felt guilty about this because I didn’t want the people at MS to think I didn’t value being an employee. I was so scared to leave and I didn’t know if it was the right decision. By now, most of you know that I ended up coming back to MS just 9 months after I left, but you probably assume that it was a mistake going. It was not.

While I didn’t end up staying at the start up, those 9 months taught me more than I have ever learned in my entire life. This is where I learned to ask questions about data and the business. This is where I first learned how to make decisions using data and where I first understood the power of a good visualization. Those 9 months were long and hard. I had pretty bad depression (pre-start up) and working start up hours were hard for me. I missed the structure and predictability of an organization like MS. With the skills I learned at this start up, I was able to come back to MS to a much better role than I had originally — in just 9 months. I re-joined MS as a data visualization analyst. I had a boss that I had worked with previously because I joined the same organization that I had been a part of, so I was very comfortable from day one and was able to hit the ground running.

I cannot even begin to put into words how fucking grateful I am for this team and the people involved in bringing me back. They helped me transform into the person and employee that I am today and it is because of them that I’m able to have the opportunities that I have today. I came back in November of 2018 and I worked my ass off. I felt like I had a lot to prove because I thought of myself as a failure. I took a leap of faith going to the start up and coming back meant that I had failed. It honestly took me years to come to terms with the fact that it was not a failure, but just another experience. I held such resentment towards some people at that company but I have since let that go because I truly learned so much there and they took a chance on me too when they hired me. We weren’t a good fit for each other and I think both sides realized it and I’m grateful that I even had the opportunity to even explore that. Even more grateful that my team at MS took me back and then took a chance on me to change the way we do reporting.

On this day…

I had not slept for over 20 hours and I had just found out I had a brain tumor. I still had a deliverable and ofc I felt like I had to get it done.

During this time, I truly became obsessed with succeeding. I didn’t really know what success looked like but I knew that I wanted to be the best. I was still such a newbie in data visualization and so I set my sights on learning more and getting certified. My boss and I went to a competition being held at MS for employees where they had to take a dummy data set and solve a real MS problem. The woman that won was a little older than the other two finalists and as soon as she presented, I fell in love with data visualization. The other two had more flashy dashboards but this woman understood the data, the business case and the visual aspect perfectly. I wanted to be just like her so I truly dedicated every moment of free time to learning and getting better. I became a certified Tableau Desktop Specialist in October of 2019. In June 2020, I entered the same competition that this woman had won and ended up being in the finals against her. I was certain I would lose to her so when they announced my name as the winner I was truly in shock. It was on this day that I realized that I had found my passion and that I was good at it.

In March of 2021, my boss retired and it broke my heart. Again, I had gotten too close to him but this time I managed to keep this relationship alive to this day. It was just his birthday yesterday actually and we speak constantly — he is one of my mentors and strongest advocates. He pushes me and challenges me in ways that I never thought possible. So he left and I was devastated. I was worried that I wouldn’t have a manager that I trusted or that knew me ( bc as mentioned before I can be a piece of work). Also, I forgot to mention that in the interim of my other boss going to the start up, I stayed at MS and I had a boss that was… interesting. He had great intentions but I never felt at ease in that spot so I was really worried that something like this would happen again. I also thought that people didn’t realize that data visualization was so critical. Much to my surprise, I got a new boss that was awesome and I got to lead the whole data visualization team. I was like you want me to do what?

Just three weeks before I was told this was going to happen, I had asked to have my other boss’ role but I was told I was not ready so I was shocked when this news of me running the team was communicated to me. It’s also worth noting that at this point I had massive struggles with imposter syndrome. This was a much more elevated role than I had ever done and it had VP written all over it. In January of 2022, I was promoted to VP and it was incredible. Truly an overwhelming feeling and experience.

In order to get promoted here, you have to be presented to a committee of VPs and they are the ones that recommend if you should or shouldn’t be promoted. I know MS has a ton of VPs but it was still a really big deal for me. I was only 27 and had so many insecurities. I knew I had worked my ass off but you don’t always get rewarded for working hard so it was incredible validation and sense of accomplishment. My boss even had my mom and best friend Steph join the call where they surprised me with the news. My mom then surprised everyone by giving the sweetest speech and making everyone cry. A day I will never forget.

Clearly, I get too close to people which is so funny because I’m always so closed off in my personal life at first. I always greet people with the infamous resting bitch face and I’m always looking for like what’s the catch if something sounds too good to be true. I love my team and my managers and their peers. This team knew me as a baby when I was first stepping foot into corporate America. They were with me through the ups and the downs, highs and the lows. I feel such fierce love and loyalty towards all of them, so the natural question is why am I leaving?

I’ll always be indebted to tennis

We joined the corporate league which I hated when I played for other teams and we somehow ended up winning our division and I got to meet so many people outside of tech in my firm.

I recently accepted a position internally with a group called Analytics and Data on the Wealth Management side. This group hosts the Tableau competition that I won a few years ago. This team is full of data analytics experts that can push me outside my comfort zone and teach me what they know. This organization is a data organization, whereas my group right now is a service organization. My role will be in the program management space which is not the development route that I was on in my current role and that is scary to me. While I have never formally been a program manager, I have the skills that are required to do this role from my experience. This role will allow me to learn about the business side of MS and will expose me to how we make money as an organization. Up until this point, I had really only seen the tech side of the firm, which is valuable but I felt my resume and experience was very skewed towards tech only. This new role is scary and challenging and most of all brings so much uncertainty, but I think that’s what excites me the most.

Maybe it’s not intuitive to think of me as being fiercely loyal because I’ve obviously left multiple times now. But if you could have seen me wrestling with this decision over the past several weeks you would see how hard it was for me. While I knew the new role was the right role to achieve my ultimate career goals faster, it was fucking hard. I love what I do currently and more than that, I didn’t want to leave my boss or my team hanging. I had spent over five years building relationships with the people in this group and I felt like I was maybe throwing them away by leaving. When I started to tell people that I was going to leave, my heart shattered into a million pieces. People had such nice things to say about me and about working with me that I will carry with me forever. I know that not everyone had this same reaction or experience with me but it was still just an incredible feeling and sense of accomplishment that I felt. It made me feel like when you’re in high school signing yearbooks, writing nice things to your friends that you normally don’t say in day-to-day conversations. It’s the end of an era, and I’m truly very sad about it.

Despite that sadness, I’m equally excited and motivated for this next new challenge in my life. Because I’ve played tennis my entire life, I’ve always been super driven. I hate losing and every time there is an obstacle, I do my absolute best to overcome it. I hate failing or losing and I carry that same mentality into the workplace. Sure, it has its pros and cons but I think that I will forever be indebted to this sport because it has afforded me the best opportunities in my life.

I was recently told that I was never satisfied with what I had and that was meant as an insult. Meaning that I was always looking for another opportunity (in and out of the workplace) and never happy with what I had in my hands. It hurt me, deeply. A few days later, after crying and eating more Oreos that what I thought humanly possible, I realized that this person was right. I was never satisfied, but that is my favorite quality about myself. Good is never good enough and that’s how you get from good to great and extraordinary. You’re never going to get to the next level by being satisfied with where you are. I wasn’t going to let this person make me feel shame for wanting more and wanting to keep learning and growing. One thing I’ve learned through this whole process is that you have to be looking out for you because no one else is responsible for you and your career other than yourself. Change is scary but staying stagnant is even scarier. Be bold, be strong and have courage to chase the things that you want and deserve.

xx marn