The power of diversity within yourself Rebeca Hwang
We’re holding hands,
staring at the door.
My siblings and I were waiting
for my mother to come back
from the hospital.
She was there because my grandmother
had cancer surgery that day.
Finally, the doors opened,
and she said,
“She’s gone.
She’s gone.”
She started sobbing and immediately said,
“We must make arrangements.
Your grandmother’s dying wish
was to be buried back home in Korea.”
I was barely 12 years old,
and when the shock wore off,
my mother’s words were ringing in my ears.
My grandmother wanted
to be buried back home.
We had moved from Korea
to Argentina six years prior,
without knowing any Spanish,
or how we were going to make a living.
And upon arrival, we were immigrants
who had lost everything,
so we had to work really hard
to rebuild our lives.
So it hadn’t occurred to me
that after all these years,
back home was still in Korea.
It made me ponder where I would want
to be buried someday,
where home was for me,
and the answer was not obvious.
And this really bothered me.
So this episode launched
a lifelong quest for my identity.
I was born in Korea – the land of kimchi;
raised in Argentina,
where I ate so much steak
that I’m probably 80 percent cow by now;
and I was educated in the US,
where I became addicted to peanut butter.
(Laughter)
During my childhood,
I felt very much Argentinian,
but my looks betrayed me at times.
I remember on the first day
of middle school,
my Spanish literature teacher
came into the room.
She scanned all of my classmates,
and she said,
“You – you have to get a tutor,
otherwise, you won’t pass this class.”
But by then I was fluent
in Spanish already,
so it felt as though I could be
either Korean or Argentinian,
but not both.
It felt like a zero-sum game,
where I had to give up my old identity
to be able to gain or earn a new one.
So when I was 18,
I decided to go to Korea,
hoping that finally I could find
a place to call home.
But there people asked me,
“Why do you speak Korean
with a Spanish accent?”
(Laughter)
And, “You must be Japanese
because of your big eyes
and your foreign body language.”
And so it turns out that I was
too Korean to be Argentinian,
but too Argentinian to be Korean.
And this was a pivotal realization to me.
I had failed to find that place
in the world to call home.
But how many Japanese-looking Koreans
who speak with a Spanish accent –
or even more specific,
Argentinian accent –
do you think are out there?
Perhaps this could be an advantage.
It was easy for me to stand out,
which couldn’t hurt in a world
that was rapidly changing,
where skills could become
obsolete overnight.
So I stopped looking
for that 100 percent commonality
with the people that I met.
Instead, I realized that oftentimes,
I was the only overlap
between groups of people that were
usually in conflict with each other.
So with this realization in mind,
I decided to embrace all
of the different versions of myself –
even allow myself
to reinvent myself at times.
So for example, in high school,
I have to confess I was a mega-nerd.
I had no sense of fashion –
thick glasses, simple hairstyle –
you can get the idea.
I think, actually, I only had friends
because I shared my homework.
That’s the truth.
But once at university,
I was able to find
a new identity for myself,
and the nerd became a popular girl.
But it was MIT,
so I don’t know if I can take
too much credit for that.
As they say over there,
“The odds are good,
but the goods are odd.”
(Laughter)
I switched majors so many times
that my advisors joked
that I should get a degree
in “random studies.”
(Laughter)
I told this to my kids.
And then over the years, I have gained
a lot of different identities.
I started as an inventor,
entrepreneur, social innovator.
Then I became an investor,
a woman in tech,
a teacher.
And most recently, I became a mom,
or as my toddler says repeatedly,
“Mom!” day and night.
Even my accent was so confused –
its origin was so obscure,
that my friends called it, “Rebecanese.”
(Laughter)
But reinventing yourself can be very hard.
You can face a lot of resistance at times.
When I was nearly done with my PhD,
I got bitten by that entrepreneurial bug.
I was in Silicon Valley,
and so writing a thesis in the basement
didn’t seem as interesting
as starting my own company.
So I went to my very
traditional Korean parents,
who are here today,
with the task of letting them know
that I was going to drop out
from my PhD program.
You see, my siblings and I are the first
generation to go to university,
so for a family of immigrants,
this was kind of a big deal.
You can imagine how
this conversation was going to go.
But fortunately, I had
a secret weapon with me,
which was a chart that had
the average income of all of the graduates
from Stanford PhD programs,
and then the average income
of all the dropouts
from Stanford graduate programs.
(Laughter)
I must tell you – this chart
was definitely skewed
by the founders of Google.
(Laughter)
But my mom looked at the chart,
and she said,
“Oh, for you – follow your passion.”
(Laughter)
Hi, Mom.
Now, today my identity quest
is no longer to find my tribe.
It’s more about allowing myself
to embrace all of the possible
permutations of myself
and cultivating diversity within me
and not just around me.
My boys now are three years
and five months old today,
and they were already born
with three nationalities
and four languages.
I should mention now that my husband
is actually from Denmark –
just in case I don’t have enough
culture shocks in my life,
I decided to marry a Danish guy.
In fact, I think my kids
will be the first Vikings
who will have a hard time
growing a beard when they become older.
(Laughter)
Yeah, we’ll have to work on that.
But I really hope that they will find
that their multiplicity
is going to open and create a lot of doors
for them in their lives,
and that they can use this as a way
to find commonality
in a world that’s
increasingly global today.
I hope that instead of feeling
anxious and worried
that they don’t fit in that one box
or that their identity will become
irrelevant someday,
that they can feel free to experiment
and to take control of their personal
narrative and identity.
I also hope that they will use
their unique combination
of values and languages
and cultures and skills
to help create a world
where identities are no longer used
to alienate what looks different,
but rather, to bring together people.
And most importantly, I really hope
that they find tremendous joy
in going through these
uncharted territories,
because I know I have.
Now, as for my grandmother,
her last wish was also
her last lesson to me.
It turns out that it was never
about going back to Korea
and being buried there.
It was about resting next to her son,
who had died long before
she moved to Argentina.
What mattered to her was not the ocean
that divided her past and new world;
it was about finding common ground.
Thank you.
(Applause)