Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have HER Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. HER Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, handling hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career and life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside HER Collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone.

Erica: What is your biggest fear? Is it jumping out of a plane? Fear of regrets? Is it death?

Erica: Eugina Jordan's biggest fear was getting fired. And a little over a year ago, it happened to her, which is hard to believe because this woman is crazy successful. She's a chief marketing officer, a leader in DEIB, and has over 32,000 followers on LinkedIn. Today, she walks us through her recipe for resilience, her childhood in Russia, and climbing the corporate ladder from receptionist to C suite. Now my favorite thing about Eugina is she is a helper.

Erica: She is a doer, and she is someone that doesn't let herself stay stuck in sticky floors for long. And today, she's here to share her story. You are listening to the podcast that empowers women to get seen, get heard, and get promoted. I'm your host, Erica Rooney, and I've made it my mission to help you break free from the sticky floors, those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors, to bust through the glass ceiling. I'm obsessed with all things growth and abundance.

Erica: And I'm here to talk you through the tried and true secrets to get you to level up your career and your life. We talk about the hard stuff here. Imposter syndrome, perfectionism, fear, and burnout. So pull up a seat, pop in an earbud, and let's dive in. Eugina, I am so thrilled to have you here today.

Erica: I feel like this is honestly so long overdue. Did you know that we have over 1,300 mutual connections on LinkedIn?

Eugina: 1,300. That's crazy. It's probably all lovely chief ladies. Right?

Erica: Absolutely. It's a ton of them, but I love it because you are so open and honest on LinkedIn. And I feel like I know you already because you talk about women in tech, diversity, your experiences with layoffs and mental health. I feel like I already know you. So I wanna hear more, though. That's why you're here.

Erica: I'd love to hear your story, who you are now, and kind of how you got to be here.

Eugina: That is an emotional question because my life hasn't been easy. It started in communist Russia in 1970. And I was raised in a single mom's household, and what it meant sometimes, we didn't have enough money to even buy a bus ticket. And all those experiences, they made me very resilient. I learned how to cook when I was eight, how to clean the house when I was eight, how to get on a bus by myself when I was seven, when I was in elementary school.

Eugina: And my mom worked as a secretary. And the only thing she believed in, and god bless her wonderful soul, she believed in education. So she gave me and my sister the best education possible. And every time I talk about her, I cry. And so she scraped enough money together with my grandfather so they could send me and my sister to Canada at the age of 24.

Eugina: So we immigrated to Canada, and then I moved to the United States for love. Love didn't work out. And like many young, naive women, we hope for happily ever after, and I ended up in an abusive marriage. Became a single mom by choice, and at the same time, I built my career in telecom. I was telling a story to my son's date last night, and she's a young, black, talented woman.

Eugina: And when I told her I started as a receptionist in telecom, she said, wow. You really climbed the ladder. You, like, started on the bottomless bottom. And the reason I think I was able to do it is because of the resilience that my upbringing gave me, the hope that my mama gave me, and the desire to make her proud, and also the desire to build the best life I can for my son.

Eugina: The first night when we moved out, we slept on the floor. And I didn't want him to have that life. So I knew the only way I can build a better life for him is if I became successful in my career. I can give him the life that my little boy deserved. And now?

Eugina: And now, here I am, the chief marketing officer, and I'm also publishing a book. I'm so excited because I wanna give back to the community, to other underrepresented women, people of color, and I wanna give them my secret. And I wanna inspire them, and I want them to start with that question that I started with when I started climbing the ladder. Why not me? Why not you?

Eugina: You might not look like a person in the system. Why not you? So the book is coming out in a couple of weeks, paperback in June. So I'm, like, so, so excited because I wanna help so many. And if they know that I did it and other underrepresented individuals did it, I have so many great stories in my book.

Eugina: It will give them the wings to fly.

Erica: It does. And I believe there is so much power in sharing your stories, and it creates this community so that this why not me question becomes so much easier to answer, because we have role models to follow after. And we have examples to see, real life examples.

Eugina: Mhmm.

Erica: Amazing. So that's in June. I can't wait. So, Eugina, you talk about resilience. And you're a woman that, like you said, you came from a single mom household. You moved over to Canada at 24, which is a young age. Where did you find this resilience? How did you build it? How did you cultivate it?

Erica: Because I'm sure there were a lot of roadblocks and the times were not easy.

Eugina: We all have that resilience. We just need to know we have it. So my biggest fear was always being fired. I had never gotten fired in my life, and I didn't know how I was gonna handle it. And I thought it was gonna be the end of the world, and I was so scared.

Eugina: And then last year, I got laid off, and it was not as horrible as I was expecting. So resilience is taking a day at a time and just pushing through one day at a time. You're not gonna become courageous like a lion all of a sudden, but if you make tiny little steps towards being a little bit brave, and more brave with every step, then in a year, you made 365 steps towards resilience. All it takes is one step.

Erica: I wanna ask you a question about the fear of being fired because that is a very real fear. But was it a fear for you because you worried that you would no longer be able to provide, or was it a fear of how that would identify your worth, or both?

Eugina: You nailed it on the head, and only because you know my upbringing. So people like me that grew up very poor, to them, their job is associated with the ability to provide financial security for themselves and their families. And that's why people that came from underprivileged backgrounds, they're afraid of being fired because they're afraid of going back. Because they crawled out of that situation. They worked super hard. They made all kinds of sacrifices.

Eugina: And so you were absolutely right. That was my fear. But for many, they don't know how to separate their work personality from who they are. Their work identity from their identity as a human.

Eugina: So when they lose a job, they lose the biggest part of themselves. So for some, they're afraid to be fired because they're afraid, like you said, to lose part of their identity, a big part of their identity.

Erica: Yeah. I can imagine when you talked about that fear of losing your job, at this point I would be comfortable saying that would be me. The identity of I'm not good enough or I wasn't the right person for this job. But that's not necessarily a bad thing if you're not the right person for the job, but I would look at it as a bad thing.

Eugina: So the way I would say, and I talk about it in my book, we can always make it about us. Our mind plays funny tricks on us. We can always say, oh, we got fired or we got laid off because we were not good enough. And that is not a good way to treat oneself, because I believe you need to be your biggest cheerleader. There's so many people out there that wanna pull you down, that are gonna say you're not good enough.

Eugina: And if you're saying to yourself you're not good enough, then you're gonna believe in it. So with layoffs, when you go into that mindset, it's me, I'm not good enough, and it's affecting your self worth, I would suggest to readjust your thinking and look at the list of your accomplishments. Just write them down, what you've achieved in that last job. It doesn't matter if you've been there for nine years like I was with my previous company, or for six months or a year or three months. I bet there were so many accomplishments.

Eugina: When you start making that list, you're gonna run out of room. So write those accomplishments and say, yeah. I'm awesome. It's not about me. It's downsizing.

Eugina: It's a challenging economy. It's restructuring. It's organizational changes. I'm still amazing. I'm an awesome professional, and I'm just gonna go out there and find the company that will see how awesome I am.

Erica: I love that you say we have this gift to make everything about us, because that is so true. It's just that natural human instinct to immediately look in. And the one thing I always have to remind even myself is, like, not everybody is thinking about me as much as I'm thinking about me.

Eugina: True. True. True. Hashtag true.

Erica: I know. And it's so interesting because when I mess up or I do something that I don't think I did as well as I should have, I tend to ruminate on it. You know? And I think about all the things I woulda, coulda, shoulda done differently. And I'm like, oh, they're probably thinking I'm such a terrible chief people officer.

Erica: I shouldn't have done this. But no. They've already moved on. They're already on to some other problem, but yet here I am just stuck ruminating. So I love that you say, make that list of accomplishments of all the things you've done right.

Erica: Because, of course, we're gonna mess up, and, of course, we're gonna have these issues, but the lists are not gonna compare. Not at all. I gotta keep that in mind. I gotta remember that.

Erica: So, Eugina, when you were called in for this layoff and you lost your job, and here you have your real fear coming true. Walk me through, like, what were your emotions? How were you feeling? And then kinda what happened after?

Eugina: So losing a job, losing a person in your life, causes grief. And you go through all stages of grief with the job as well. For me, it was different because it was a mass layoff. And people that got laid off, hundreds of people, they were looking at me to help them. Because I had this LinkedIn platform, I had the brand, I had the brand recognition, I feel the culture. So I couldn't be sad because they were looking for me to step in and help them.

Eugina: So I created a LinkedIn group, and I posted on LinkedIn, and people started sending jobs. So my fear was substituted with the sense of urgency to help others and help the community. And then when I started seeing the jobs being sent to me and other people on LinkedIn, I knew that it was only a short period of time for me or those people to land. And we all landed within a few months.

Erica: I love it. And I see you've often posted on LinkedIn about creating these authentic relationships and building the networking and the trust so that you can then go out and ask your community for help when you need it. But you just created that community.

Eugina: Yeah. So I'm an introvert. I'm a social introvert. So when I help others, I'm a giver by nature. If we use give and take, Adam Grant.

Eugina: So networking cannot be just take, take, take. You give first. And when you give, you give expecting nothing in return. I was so surprised when I posted on LinkedIn about the mass layoff and it went viral, and there were, like, 300 jobs sent to us in the first three days.

Erica: Wow.

Eugina: I wasn't even sleeping. I kept reposting them. And that's when I realized the power of the community and what I've done before. I just gave because that's my nature. And when I needed it, people reached out.

Eugina: It was absolutely amazing.

Erica: Wow. That's wonderful. You really just took this bad situation, your biggest fear, and you turned it into a beautiful community that is just focused on giving back. So now that you've been through this fear, you've lived through it, where do you find yourself now getting stuck? Because you're amazing, you're successful, you're doing all of these things in diversity, inclusion, and women in tech. Where do you find yourself getting stuck?

Eugina: So before we started recording this podcast, I said that I remind myself that I'm no longer a girl from Russia. Because the way I was raised and the way I grew up, it's don't speak up. Don't cause any issues. You're not good enough. So just working through those triggers, I'm launching a book in three weeks, and it's a super scary moment for me.

Eugina: I had about 50 people read the book, my beta readers. And they're telling me it's a good book. And I am still scared for when it goes out. Are people gonna like it?

Eugina: What are they gonna say? So where I'm getting stuck sometimes is in my own triggers. I'm stuck in being vulnerable and sharing intimate parts of my life with the much bigger world. And I'm taking that leap of faith. I'm being vulnerable, and I'm sharing my most vulnerable stories in this book.

Eugina: And I'm hoping that it will help others. I just wanna make sure that it reaches people that it needs to reach and will help them.

Erica: I can understand that. When you're writing and you're putting all of that out there, you're just pulling back the curtain, and you're saying this is me. This is the girl from Russia.

Eugina: Mhmm.

Erica: So I think that's amazing. So tell me a little bit about all the stuff that you were doing around diversity, equity, and inclusion. That is such a huge platform that you just bolster up. I would love to hear what work you're doing around that.

Erica: Hey there, listeners. If you have ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But guess what? It's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities. My book, Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential.

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Eugina: So in my industry, it all started with me noticing that in the telecom industry, the panels at conferences, they had mostly men. And then I started researching, and I researched to a point where I found statistics that in telecom in the C suite, there's only 12% of women. Let me just explain, because 12%, people don't understand. But if we look at 100 executives in telecom, only 12% are women. Data for people like me, or women like me, immigrants, or women of color doesn't exist in telecom.

Eugina: There's very few representatives on panels or who write articles that are female. So I thought, why not? Like Malala says, one person can change the world. It takes one step at a time. So what I did, I created an Excel, and I reached out to women in my industry.

Eugina: And I said, help me build an Excel for telecom speakers, and let's flip it. Let's make sure that event organizers would put women on stages. They know it's a problem. Let's find a solution for them. And I'm happy to report that in many telecom industry events, as of this year, there is at least one woman.

Eugina: And it's not a token woman. It's a woman that is an expert in her industry on a subject who happens to be a woman.

Erica: You know what I've noticed throughout our conversation, Eugina, is that you are a helper, a doer, a fixer. Right? You went through this layoff. You said, no. We're not gonna sit here and wallow in it.

Erica: We're gonna create a community. We're gonna find jobs for everybody. You're in tech and you're like, there's not enough women here. This is ridiculous. I'm creating an Excel spreadsheet.

Erica: So you do not let yourself stay in these bad places for long, where oftentimes we can really get stuck and just struggle to get out of them. Is this just part of your DNA, of this resilience that you talk about from growing up, that you just go and tackle these problems head on?

Eugina: Maybe. And obviously, for someone from the outside, it's easy to see. I just do it because it feels natural to me. It feels authentic to me. And also, I don't wanna be a victim, because there's a lot of us, women or immigrants or people of color, and don't get me wrong.

Eugina: There are microaggressions. Right? Don't get me wrong. But addressing those microaggressions and just saying, I'm not gonna be a victim. I'm gonna take it head on.

Eugina: If someone steals my work, I'm gonna ask them. If someone makes a Russian joke, I'm gonna ask them, did they mean to say it? Or if someone calls me a Russian mail order bride, I'm gonna ask if they meant that, because sometimes people don't know. But I don't wanna be victimized. I don't wanna victimize myself.

Eugina: So in not acting as a victim, that's the first step to become resilient. So there's a quote I use. It's an Emmy award winner, Alex, I forgot her last name. She told a story about her grandmother when she was in a concentration camp. She was standing at the pit.

Eugina: She was a little girl, and she asked the soldier, if I step out of line, what's gonna happen? Because they were shooting people. And the soldier said, I probably won't have enough strength to shoot you because you're a little girl, but someone else might. So you take your chances. So she stepped out of line.

Eugina: He didn't shoot her, and another soldier didn't shoot her. And for that reason, this woman is alive. Her children are alive. Grandchildren are alive.

Eugina: So the advice she gave, ladies, step out of line.

Erica: Wow. Yeah. That's powerful. I love it. I'm taking a breath here.

Eugina: It's heavy because, being raised in Russia and seeing what was, you know, the Holocaust, it's hard, the pain, the suffering that's going on, and it's very hard. That's why, step out of line, ladies. Step out of line.

Erica: And now you have a son. How do you impart on him the lessons of resilience that you have learned over the years?

Eugina: So he is American, so he was born here, but he was raised by a European. So there is this Hofstede framework for cultural differences. And though he might fall under American, when people look at him, he needs to be looked at as a blend of American and Russian and also Puerto Rican, because his stepdad who just adopted him is Puerto Rican. So he's a blend. For the first six years of his life, he saw me as a single mom.

Eugina: So he slept on the floor with me. He came to work with me. He slept under my desk. So he saw with his own eyes how hard I work to build a life for him. And he also saw the communities I've built, either online or with friends and families.

Eugina: So that little boy, he did two amazing things. The first one is he's built the community of his friends, and he hosts them at our house once a month. Even during COVID, he did it virtually. And his community is super inclusive. There are transgender people.

Eugina: There is a Vietnamese boy, who is now valedictorian. There's Hispanic kids, African American kids, all kinds of blue collar and executive families. Because to him, just like me, he doesn't see status. He doesn't see background. All he sees is human.

Erica: Wonderful. Eugina, one of the questions that I love to close with that I ask of all my guests is, if you could go back to the 24 year old Eugina or even the eight year old Eugina who is having to clean and cook and catch the bus, what piece of advice would you give her?

Eugina: You wanna make me cry again, Erica. Because all I wanna do for my younger selves is to give them a big hug and tell them it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. Be kind to yourself. Don't be hard on yourself.

Eugina: You're gonna be okay. And just a big hug and a kiss. And especially my six year old or 24 year old when I moved to Canada. Just keep going, honey. Keep going, sweetie.

Eugina: You're gonna be okay. And now I have to redo my makeup.

Erica: That's so beautiful, though, and so true. And I think we can all be a little more kind to ourselves. I love it. Well, Eugina, thank you so much. Where can people find you?

Erica: We've already said we can get your book on Amazon and on your website. I'll link both of those in the show notes. But how can people get in touch with you?

Eugina: Through my website, euginajordan.com, and also on LinkedIn. I try to reply to every single DM. And I might be sometimes slow. I might miss a DM, so just send me another DM. My passion since my layoff is to help other people land, so I believe in a five minute favor. I look at people's resumes and LinkedIn profiles, and I have networking calls with them.

Eugina: So if you need that, reach out. Reach out anyways. If you see my post and it resonates, just reach out, because I post for that one person that it might resonate with. So just reach out.

Erica: And you've got such good content. I mean, you talk about resume tips, interview tips. You are just giving it all away, which is amazing. So, Eugina, thank you so much for being here today. I absolutely enjoyed talking with you and learning more about you.

Eugina: Thank you for having me.

Erica: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you enjoyed this episode and you want more content just like this, please make sure to connect with me on LinkedIn and Instagram. Send me a message, and let's chat.