#84. On Navigating Adversity, with Shereen Benzvy Miller, and Celebrating our Second Anniversary and IWD, 2023!

Now to this end, I interview incredible women for this podcast who share their stories of reinvention and who will give you their advice on how to overcome the obstacles in your way to reach your vision for yourself in your next stage of life. Today, I'm particularly honored to have on the show Shereen benzvy Miller.

Shereen has a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from McGill University, a Master's of Arts in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania and her Juris doctor from Osgood hall Law School. She's a mother of two incredible women, a longstanding advocate for human rights, diversity, and inclusion. And she's a really good baker.

A human rights lawyer by training, Shereen is a senior public servant with a strong record of leadership in delivering timely, innovative, and effective business and process transformation in the government of Canada over the past 20 years. She has expertise in shaping a strategic policy, conceptualizing, guiding, and directing key programs and overseeing operations in both service delivery and regulatory bodies.

She's highly experienced in process and organizational change, human-centered digital transformation, executive team management, and strategic partnership. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today, Shereen and just a pleasure to have you here. How are you doing?

So I'm always really, one of the reasons I started this podcast is I'm always really fascinated by women's stories and in particular, how you get from one where you are today. How did you get there? And here, and I understand that you had some setbacks and not only, well, not setbacks, but in your life you took perhaps a decade away from the workplace to raise your children and you were also let go unexpectedly from the previous role.

So if I, if you could just get a, share a little bit about your story and how these experiences kind of shaped who you are.

And I think, so reinvention is really about growing. It's really about taking paths that you didn't even know you could take. So one of the things about education is we're so focused on specialization that you, I mean, at six years old, I knew I was gonna be a criminal defense lawyer. In fact, when I watched Marie Hyman on, on, uh, on tv, on TV at one point, I thought, wow, that would've been me. Right? Like, that was where I was going because that was an attractive path to me.

But partly it's an attractive path because. , you don't know all the other possibilities, all the other things that your talent or your imagination can take you to. So we always operate with, with a deficit of information. We always have only a little slice of the full information that we need to make decisions. And so if I think about my life experiences, a lot of things that have happened to me, if you had asked me the year before or five years before they happened, would I ever do that?

I would've said absolutely not. Mm-hmm. so. My colleagues, when I was pregnant with my first child, with my daughter, Elise, my colleagues had a bedding pool that I wouldn't last the 17 weeks of paid maternity leave at home. Because I was such an energizer bunny and such a driven kind of person, and so enthusiastic and excited about my work that they figured I

couldn't sit still at home with a baby for 18 weeks or 17 weeks or whatever it was, . So they actually had a betting pool to their surprise. But really to my amazement, I stayed home for seven years because I had no idea even when I was pregnant, how interesting I would find my daughter and how much I would love that process of learning with her and, and being with her.

And then I had a second daughter two and a half years later, and just being at home with them was, Honestly, probably the hardest work you'll ever do, but the most fun you'll ever have. Right? I agree. I agree. , it was, it was, it was just the most fun I had ever had. So to my amazement, I was at home for seven years and one of the things I did when I was going back into the workplace was I took all the dates off of my cv. I just stripped out all the dates.

, and I did that for a number of reasons, but the main reason was gender bias. I just thought, if I hand my CV with a seven year gap to somebody, they will focus on the seven year gap. They will say, well, what did you do between 1990 and 1997? Like, what? What is that? Right? and I didn't want, first of all, I thought it's really nobody's business. If they wanna hire me, they should hire me for my talent, for my experience, for my knowledge.

And if I decided to take seven years to be a mom full-time, that's not really something I wanna discuss in the workplace. Beyond talking about how great it is, I certainly didn't want it to be something that disabled me or made me less of an attractive candidate. So I just literally stripped out. , which left me with a CV of accomplishments. Right. So then when you go back into the workplace, you're actually talking about what you've done and your experiences.

Cuz really when you did it or what year it was, doesn't really matter unless you were a Y2K engineer and you better not have been doing it in 2005. Right? That's the only time it really matters.

And I think people are doing that more and more now with the Me Too movement and the Black Lives Matter movement, and people starting to understand the impact of taking too much for granted. Hmm. And so one of the things that I say to my mentees, and when I'm talking about this area, I always say, make a list of the things that.

that you want changed and then divide that list into the things that you actually wanna fight to change and the ones that you are happy to leave to someone else to, to make the case for it. Mm-hmm. because, so for me, the fact of gender bias is real, and it's mainly women who take large gaps in their career. And if I had a dollar for every time somebody said to me, oh, you've been at home for seven years. Really, what's that gonna do to your career really?

Right. If I had a dollar for that, I would have had to go back to work ever. Right? Every time somebody said that, cuz people are like, oh honey, that's just right. Yeah. And I thought, that's not a conversation I'm prepared to have with people. I'm just not, I'm just not interested in it. It's not my battle. I'm not gonna fight that one. Right. I'm just gonna accept there's a bias here. What can I do to correct it? You'll find a lot of my answers. Are very focused on unpacking a problem.

Yeah. And focusing on the part that I can control, or the part that I can actually have an impact on. Mm-hmm. , that's kinda my MO it may be the answer to all of your questions, questions, but, uh, yeah. Okay.

, what's interesting though is, and I told you I like to unpack a problem and focus in on what I can control, even as it was happening, and I think this was amazing to the person who was letting me go, because they said, this wasn't the conversation I expected we would have. Even as they said that to me, I took a moment and I said, okay, alright. , let's talk about what has been delivered. Cuz my team had really delivered amazing results just that week before.

This was the end of a fiscal year, so the week before, we had just done really better results than had been achieved in 30 years for that organization by a long shot. and I said, okay, okay, I hear you. But let's take a pause for a moment and let's talk about my team and how you could keep the momentum going because I'd like the opportunity to weigh in to give you my advice. You can take it or leave it, obviously.

But I'd like to, I'd like us to take a pause and talk about the strengths of the team and what I've seen. Cuz really I was the one managing the team. And first of all, I think that that it was appreciated that I. Gave the advice. I see now in hindsight, cuz of course I'm still connected to, that's one of the other themes you'll probably see in my life is that I have, I put a lot of importance on, on my, on people. Mm-hmm. and my.

My friends and my networks and I mean, I'm still having lunch sort of the first Friday of every month at our favorite Asian restaurant with my management team from that worked together from 2008 to to 2013. We still, you know, so, so that's super important to me. So my people were really important and the momentum. that we had accomplished was really important to me. So I really focused my attention on that for an hour with this person. And then I said, thanks, I'll go now and left.

So that ability to immediately just parse out what matters and what doesn't, you know? Yes. My feelings were hurt. Yes. I was confused. Yes. I didn't understand really what had happened. Cause it didn't make sense to me. But that's one of the things you realize, the fact that it doesn't make sense to you doesn't really. Right. Right. Like I, I very quickly stopped trying to figure out what had happened. And went directly to, okay, what lessons can I learn from this?

And what do I need to do next? And what matters to me? Because one of the things that I realized, actually two things that I realized right away was, number one, I did not want that person to, in any way define the rest of my. . Mm-hmm. . I didn't want this to be, it might be a life defining moment, but I didn't want it to be the death nail of my career or mm-hmm. I didn't want that person to own my future. So that was something very clear to me and that person's opinion of me to own my future.

The second thing was that I was gonna have to navigate that sense of isolation that you have when you have failed at something or when you feel less than. Mm-hmm. . , it's never a comfortable feeling to feel less than mm-hmm. especially because reputation is built in steps and it just rides out on horseback. So you wanna be able to say, can I take out an ad in the front, on the front page of the newspaper saying I, I'm still a good person.

I have lots , I have lots more things on the ledger in my accomplishments column that I have in my failures column. Yes. Or you wanna say, Michael Jordan didn't sink every shot.

. Kavita Ahuja: Yeah, right. Thank you. Yeah, no, thank you for sharing that. The reason I, I really was interested in that because a lot of the women who are listening to this podcast, they may have gone through transition in their work or they've been let go, or they're thinking it, they're, they're not happy with their work anymore.

And I love what you said about that reinvention happens all the time and that your perspective on what's happened to me, but what lessons have I learned and what do I really want from that? So I think that's important to have that perspective instead just like, and then another thing is you don't want that person to define the rest of career and we, we need to define our own path moving forward. So thank you.

But you also have to realize, you also have to realize that you don't know what you want because you don't know what's out there, right? You, you don't know what's out there. You were focused on something and you thought that was your path. You thought, yeah, this is what I am doing. And we often define ourselves and our sense, have our sense of self-worth very tied to what we're delivering I think women do that a lot to what we're, what we've been made responsible for, even if it's kids, right?

I mean, it's funny, it always strikes me as odd when people, I'll talk about an accomplishment of one of my children and somebody will say, you must be very proud as if I did it. No, no, I couldn't even do that. I could not do that. I'm very odd. I'm very odd. I'm very amazed. Impressed, filled with love, filled with, with delight for them in their success. But I wouldn't really say that it's a sense of personal pride. It's not like I did it. Right. Yeah.

And I just wanted to, you had mentioned, uh, in, in one of your pieces, you wrote a really great piece, uh, talking about navigating adversity. And then you say in this piece that adversity is relative and it happens to us all and reeks havoc with each of our. In that piece, you also talk about lived experiences and how they can be a great teacher. And I wonder if you could share with our listeners your lived experiences with diversity, especially in your personal life.

And I know that you have a story about how that relates to your eldest daughter as well.

I come from a position of I'm a third generation Canadian. So well established family, well-established roots, a sense of place in the world. The privilege of having gone, as you mentioned, to really elite universities and I have higher education and really had no limit on the amount of higher education I could have gotten. I could have decided after doing my law degree that I wanna do a PhD and that was open to me. And not only was it open to me, but the universities offered to pay me to do it.

So I come from a position of adversity is. of the level or type that other people might experience, and I recognize that and I am grateful for that, be that as it may when you have a child who is diagnosed with a chronic, lifelong severe illness, again, not life-threatening illness, except in the sense that mental health I illnesses can often disproportionately result in suicide and other life ending. Mm-hmm. consequences. Mm-hmm. . . The point is when that happens, it wrenches your life apart.

You just feel like you have. Hit by a large object and it really throws your, throws you off balance. So that's what I mean by it happens to all of us. Things happen, bad things happen, you know, diagnoses, accidents, things happen, uh, firings. And it really is wrenching in our own lives and in our personal world and, and for our families, you know, the people who love you. Mm-hmm. . So, so I, I really do think that it's a common human condition. Mm-hmm. , regardless of the. lived experience.

However, knowing that other people have been through it, seeing how people have come out on the other side or what they did to come out on the other side, or how they didn't come out on the other side. Mm-hmm. and, and exploring their journey will help you find common. ideas and, and hope, really? Mm-hmm. as you go through this.

In fact, after being let go from my job, I decided that because I didn't want this person to define my future, that I would in no way allow the sense of, I guess the best word is humiliation. The sense of humiliation interfere with my ability to talk about this happening. Mm-hmm. and, and asking for other people for advice.

So I immediately became very active in pursuing that and saying, you know, I'm really interested if you know anybody who this has happened to, how they, how they navigated it. The result of that was I was put in touch with, you know, through, I told two friends. They told two friends. They told two friends. I was put in touch with a network of people to whom this had happened. I brought them all. We are now a formal peer support group for elite executives in the federal public service.

When, when your career gets, you know, sort of pin balled, as I say, like the pinball hits the bumper and goes the wrong way. Mm-hmm. , you can talk to other people about their journeys and what happened to them and how they dealt with it and what they did, what choices they made, and what choices might be open to you.

So that's one thing. When adversity hits, you have to understand it's disruptive, it's very disorienting. It throws you off balance. But chances are somebody has been through something like this, and if you listen to them, they're ahead of you in the race. Mm-hmm. , if you listen to where they've gone, or you can decide, oh, I don't wanna go there. No, no, no, I'm not doing that. Or you can decide like I met with somebody.

Who said, well, I decided to leave the public service, take interchange and do teaching full-time at the university, which was an option. I, I mean, I met with the deans of the law school and the deans of the School of Law at, uh, Carlton I met with them that that could have been an option for me.

But you know, I explored it with somebody who chose that and thought, I'm not ready for that lifestyle change right now, I'm still interested in leading teams, but it allowed me to see a possibility that I hadn't necessarily thought of. And talk to somebody about what, what does that look like? You know, how does it feel? In French, we say you know, like, like what is, what are the details of it? So that you can ask yourself, is that something that I find appealing?

Is that something I'd like to pursue? Mm-hmm. and even, even being able to rule things out as is a positive thing. One of the biggest causes of anxiety at any turning point in life and in any transition. As I said, change management and transitions are things that I really explore a lot cuz I'm super interested in it. But the single most important feature that you have to recognize is the concept of uncertainty. Mm-hmm. uncertainty by definition, creates anxiety.

It is an engine for, it is a prime engine of anxiety. So the uncertain outcome, will I be able to find another job? I don't know, maybe my reputation's really gone right? Maybe I'll never be able to work in the public sector again. Mm-hmm. . Or maybe I can't even work in the private sector. Maybe this is, maybe this is the end of my career as, you know it maybe I'm looking at the not-for-profit sector, or maybe I'm looking volunteer work, like I don't even know, right? Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.

. So uncertainty can really occupy a lot of your mindset. I like to talk about my lived experience because I'm hoping to get people out of that endless loop, that sort of, I call it the blue circle of death, like from the screen, you know, it just keeps going and going and going. uncertainty, and you're just talking to yourself with no new input of information is just literally like the blue circle of death. It just goes on, right?

So, but if you start hearing other people's stories and other people's experiences, you can at least say, well, that's not my experience, but funny that they did that. Why did they do that? Or you can say, wow. . That sounds interesting. Mm-hmm. , maybe I could do that too.

Right. And, uh, this was really brought home to me because Elise, my older daughter, who has a number of TED talks online and stuff, she, at the age of 12, developed very high fever.

She ultimately suffered from something called Pediatric Autoimmune Neurological Disorder as a result of strep, probably the def in those days, the testing wasn't great and, and we never really got a firm diagnosis, but all the indicators are that it was, that it left her with severe treatment resistant, obsessive compulsive disorder. But it took a long time to get that diagnosis. So we didn't know what was happening. We just knew she became overnight really completely dysfunctional. Oh boy.

And I mean, dysfunctional, like couldn't brush her teeth, like just literally dysfunctional. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So she was a perfectly healthy 12 year old one day.

And then she was an anxiety kid who couldn't really, couldn't get from point A to point B. I sort of figured it, figured out she was having a problem when one day we got back from the cottage and I went into automatic unpacking mode, unpacking the food, unpacking the, the, I'm running up and down the stairs and, and about an hour in, I realize Elise's still standing at the bottom of the stairs. And I said, Elise, why are you standing at the bottom of the stairs? And she said, I'm stuck.

Oh my goodness. And And so we started to realize that there was something very serious happening. Yes. Eventually she got diagnosed with severe treatment resistant obsessive compulsive disorder. and we started to unpack what that meant and what that meant for her. And she was in grade seven at the time, but even before she got the diagnosis, it's really interesting what happens when you talk about your lived experience.

So this happened in December at Christmas, and she went back into grade seven. And grade seven is the year in Ottawa where the school board changes life for kids. They go from, instead of being in one homeroom in a classroom and all the teachers come to you. That's the year where the kids have a locker and they're expected to go to the classrooms of the various subject teachers, right?

Yes. But Elise couldn't make it to class, and I was getting notes, missed class absentee, getting calls from the school. Finally, I said to Elise, what's going on? And she said, well, you know, mom, I start at my locker and I start walking to class. And then if my foot touches one of the lines on the little squares of linoleum, I have to go back to my locker. And that's what's happening. And I'm doing it like all day, every day. Like that's all I can do is just keep going back to my locker.

So six weeks of this, it was heartbreaking. After six weeks of this, . She said, maybe you could go and talk to my classmates, because they're getting very fed up with me and they're getting angry with me now, and it's not going well. So I, I don't know what possessed me to say. Okay. Mark and I, my husband and I went into the classroom and I thought, Hmm, this is not an ideal scenario.

You're going into talk to 12 and 13 year olds about the fact that your kid might be having some sort of mental breakdown. Cause I didn't know what it was and it was just these weird symptoms and we didn't know anyway. But we started to tell them what her challenges were, what some of the symptoms were. They asked some questions and we left.

The next day goes by, Elise goes to school, comes back two days, go by on the third day, like I'm dying to know what, what happened, you know, how did they respond to this? And I said, you know, Elise, how's it going? And she said, oh mom, it's going much, much better. I said, really? What's going better? She said, oh, I'm getting to class now. I said, that's great. How are you getting to class?

She said, oh, my classmates got organized and they carry me between classes so my feet don't have to touch the. Oh my God. So one of the things she learned, one of the things she learned through that experience is if you share your lived experience Yeah. People, people will step up. And also your vulnerability. Right? Exactly. Right. Well, that's the risk, right? That's why people don't share their lived experience because it makes 'em vulnerable. Right.

But if you, if you don't share it, then nobody can help. Mm-hmm. , no one even knows what's going on. All they can do is get angry cuz they see all this weird behavior and and they can't, they can't respond. But if you're prepared to own it and, and talk about it, yeah. Then you'd be amazed who comes to who comes to, to relate.

Mm-hmm. is a risk. Right? Yeah. I mean, there is bullying. There is. What's interesting with respect to bullying, cuz middle school is a prime ripe ground for bullying and she was a definitely easy vulnerable target was she also describes an experience where a young woman in her class, we can call her, we can call her Meg, was not somebody who was particularly close to Elise and. She wasn't really in, in, in Elise's close circle. Mm-hmm.

. But one day Elise was doing something very weird in the hallway about the tiles and the whatever, and was very focused on her rituals and might have been mumbling or whatever she was doing. And through the corner of her eyes, she saw some grade eight boys. Remember she's in grade seven and she was a small, yes. She was a small grade seven, born in October. So youngest in the class, she saw some grade eight boys coming down the hall and she could hear them sort of talking about her.

And so she was bracing herself for some nastiness and suddenly this young woman steps in front of her between her and these boys and says, you got a problem with her. You're gonna be having a problem with me. The boys parted like the Red Sea around her, and that was the end of that. Wow. So people step up in unusual ways.

And the other thing is that in, in the same piece you had said that being open about your journey will allow the right people to appear in your life at the right time. Just like this girl in the hallway, right?

I'm just wondering, could they call you like. Three levels removed from my circle. Mm-hmm. , somebody will call me. Right. Or connect with me and I might have resources that they might need, or just my story might help them. Mm-hmm. , or I might be able to give them ideas. I'm not giving them any psychiatric advice or like, I'm not overstepping anything. I'm just saying, here's what I did. Mm-hmm. , here's what Elise did, here's how it happened. And it might give you ideas.

Right. Or I might know a doctor that we used that was particularly good, or a resource or an 800. Right, right. That you didn't know about.

. So we thought it was three days and it ended up being close to four months. That was in grade seven. But she had other hospitalizations and actually never finished high school. . One of the hospitals that she went to was in Boston and it's part of the Harvard Teaching Hospital. So Elise always likes to say that she may not have finished high school, but she went to Harvard. But yeah, so she didn't finish high school.

And her journey, like I told you when I was six, I wanted to be a a criminal defense lawyer when she was younger than that. She always. actually even at three. At three, I asked her if she wanted to pick a Barbie. We're standing in toys R us, she walks down the aisle cuz there's a huge number of Barbies to choose from. She walks down the aisle, she walks back, she says, I want that one. And at that moment I was so amazed by my daughter.

She's three years old, she's seen a thousand Barbies on the thing. She looks at them very carefully and the one she picks is the African American doctor Barbie. She knew she wanted to be a pediatrician when she was. Just barely able to, to articulate what a future looked like. So, so Elise is actually now a senior resident in pediatrics now as we speak. Wow. That's chills honestly. That's amazing. It's a, it's a, it's a long journey.

It's a long journey from being in a children's hospital to being a physician in a children's hospital. Congratulations. That's amazing. But thanks. But there's a lot of people who gave her support through this and because partly, . She, she's somebody who has spoken to thousands of people.

She did a, a lot, a lot of public speaking in high school, sort of 500 kids at a time in an auditorium through the Canadian Mental Health Association and other networks in Canada and in the US She's done trainings for peace officers and even healthcare, uh, healthcare workers and teachers and, and educators. She's done a lot, a lot of, of advocacy, and so what we realized was the piece that I could do.

through advocacy was I'm the founder of, of something known as the Canadian Innovation Center for Mental Health in the Workplace. Mm-hmm. as part of the federal government. The part that I filled in was, okay, so this happens very frequently in families, that there's somebody with either an addiction or a mental health issue, whether it's your children, your parents, your, your siblings, your uncle and aunt, whatever, close circle.

In fact, when I speak to an audience and I say, could everybody put up their hand please? Who does not? Somebody with an anxiety disorder and addiction, a mental health problems, one of something in this family of problems in their immediate circle of friends and family. Please put up your hands. If I have an audience of 600 people in front of me, if two people put up their hands, that's the most I've ever seen ever. Really? Wow. Ever. Because it is so, so pervasive, so pervasive.

So once, once I sort of realized that, I realized there, there is a need for somebody like me who's a leader in, I mean the, the federal public service is the largest employer in Canada, and I'm. among one of the most senior. Mm-hmm. , sort of the rank of vice president, assistant deputy minister, or senior assistant deputy minister. If I can talk about it. Then it gives people license to also talk about it, to actually get, get help to maybe create spaces for this conversation in the workplace.

Sure. , but also to realize that it may not be you who has the actual illness, but you are as impacted by it. Mm-hmm. , like the fact that Elise was the one with the illness is a tremendous barrier in her life. Mm-hmm. , but the disruption in her sister's life, in my life, in my husband's life, like in, in our lives as a family mm-hmm. was enormous. Mm-hmm. enormous. So that, that also requires a conversation. Right. Right.

But, so, because remember, we're very quick to refer to people by short forms. Mm-hmm. , that's the person who did X or that's the person this happened to, or so I was actually asked and, and I really appreciated the question cuz I. Really think about it. Did I think that allowing Elise, okay, so allowing Elise as a parent to, to do this public speaking about her journey, did I think that it was going to prejudice her future? Right? Would she be known as mm-hmm. , the person with OCD like that?

Yeah. Labeled. Which gets back to one of the first questions you asked me, which is, which battles do you fight? Right? Like, like taking my, the dates off my CV was a way of not having to fight the gender bias battle about my career and my seven years off. It was just a way of avoiding it completely, right? Yeah. So that was my solution to that. So this one's an interesting one you can't avoid, particularly when everything's out on the internet.

I mean, Elise's speaking engagements are literally viewed by millions. . Yeah. So it's out there. It's all out there. So there's no, there's no just taking the label off. So we had to talk about with her, how do you feel about this being the way you get defined in the future? And it does require a personal choice. You have to think about whether you're okay with your journey. being part of how you're defined?

The way that I look at it, and I think the way that she has navigated it is that she's a person who is very authentic. Mm-hmm. all the time. She's never, she never has any pretense of being something she's not. Mm-hmm. and I, I really admire that because, We're very complex beings. Humans have lots of experiences, good ones, bad ones, and, and we can't be just pigeonholed into one. Yeah. Defining characteristic.

And that gets back to the same thing that I didn't want someone who didn't like me to define my future choices. And so, So I made a conscious decision just not to talk about anything, but the things that I took away from being, from being let go. Which was I need to communicate better, I need to listen more. I have a very strong personality and I need to be aware of that and how it impacts others. Right. Right. Because Cause you can say, well, this person's just an outlier. They didn't like you.

Okay. But I own part of being liked. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Now I don't wanna become something I'm not, but I want to make sure that what I'm projecting is what I intended to project. Yeah. And I intend to project respectful, collaborative, innovative, fun. That's what I think I'm projecting.

A lot of these things, when adversity happens in your lived experience with adversity, a lot of people would feel like I'm gonna give up now, and I just , they just, they don't rise to the challenge like, I guess you, you and both your, your daughter, and I'm sure your, How do you advise people, women listening to this podcast or just in general, like, if you have a challenge in front of you, such, such big challenges or adversity that you're facing, how do you even begin?

So, so what does this actually mean to, to give up and then how do you not give up? Well, the way you not give up is you take small steps like. like Elise. Okay. It's funny cuz one of the child and youth workers in one of the hospital states was asking the youth in the unit when Elise was hospitalized, what do you wanna do when you get outta here? When you grow up? And Elise said, oh, I really wanna be a pediatrician.

And this person looked at her and said, honey, you should come up with something more realistic as an answer. Right? Because cuz she was sitting in a hospital psychiatric lock, psychiatric ward at the time, right? Dealing with anxiety that was so bad. that she literally couldn't get herself up the stairs, right? Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So this person looked at her and said, in my eyes, you're defined by this, right?

So you do have to ask yourself, if where I wanna get to is here, and I'm right here, what are the things that I could do to start inching towards it, right? Mm-hmm. , when Elise unpacked it and she said, well, I haven't finished high school and I wanna be a physician. She realized, so the gap will be, I'm going to need the science credits in order to be admitted to a university program. Mm-hmm.

. So she went to the adult high school and enrolled herself and took the grade 12 science credits that she needed to get into university. And I said to her, well, why don't you also do the last remaining credits just to get the high school diploma right? And she said, I can get into university as a mature student cuz I've been out of school, the requisite amount of time now and I don't really have to have that in order to take this next step.

So she had calculated what are the steps that she needed to take to get where she wanted to go. So once again, I'd say unpack the problem. Mm-hmm. , right? Don't let the label of it high school dropout. Be your defining characteristic, right? Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . There are many ways to get to Rome. There are many roads, right? Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So you're not going the direct road. You're not going on the road that you thought you were gonna take, right?

Yeah. Figure out what the other roads are. Figure out how you get there, how you, how you do incremental things. Small things doesn't have to be huge things. Once you make them huge, they become overwhelming. Yes. Once you make them huge, they swallow you whole.

And that's what I say to my clients as well is like, you don't need to know the mountaintop. Like, you just take the first, the first step up the ladder or, so Yeah, that's, that's really great.

So when you look at a problem like that, you think, okay, so the first problem. , does she meet the criteria for acceptance to, how do I get her there? What kinds of referrals do you need from what kinds of doctors? Whatever. Do they have a program that actually will meet her needs? All those things you have to calculate, you have to look at. I knew that it was 90, that, that it would, it's a 90 day program and I knew also that it would be a thousand dollars a day us for her to be there, right?

So I could have. Oh my goodness. We can't afford a hundred thousand dollars US, or 150,000 Canadian. Forget it. Right. I could have just said, that's a mountain I can't get past. Right. But instead, I did what I do all the time, which is I unpacked the problem and I thought, let me put the money problem aside. , let's just take that one away. Let's just pretend for a moment that I have the money, right?

Because frankly, if she doesn't get admitted or they don't have a bed, or I can't get the, the medical referrals for her to get there, then this, the money won't matter, right? Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So I just did it one step at a time. I got in touch with the hospital, what do you need from me? I then started to get each of those things. Also, I had. , I had to be clear on whether or not Elise wanted to do it, cuz it's a very difficult, rigorous treatment. Mm-hmm. modality. Mm-hmm.

. So did she wanna do it? Like we had a lot of things to get to before we got to that, to that one, right? That one could have been and might've been the one that stopped us in the end. In the end, I, mark and I actually figured out how we could fund it. Okay. So, you know, with mortgages and whatever, how we could fund it if we needed to. And while we did that, I went to OHIP and said, I, we have exhausted everything. Is this something that you could cover. Right.

And so in the end she went, yeah, okay. And in the end it was paid for and in the end we made it. But, but that was a mountain. Yeah. Like getting to that point. Yeah. There were so many elements. The only way I could attack it was incrementally, step by step, each piece. But I had to unpack it cuz honestly just deciding that that would be a good program for her cuz they have a hundred percent success rate. . Yeah. Just like a, a huge mountain to climb.

And immediate, I think you asked that your question of yourself. And so why is that so important

And so I, when I, once I got to a certain point, other doors started opening and I had different choices to make. Mm-hmm. So the point is, you don't know the final outcome, even when you're asked that question, what do you, what do you wanna do? Like with Elise, she knew she wanted to be a physician. So she knew she wanted to be in a caring profession. She knew she wanted to be a physician.

Over time, she realized she really wanted to be a pediatrician, but it was really only in med school that she realized that what she liked best in that field is intensive care. Mm-hmm. . So she'll be an intensivist. Right. But maybe she could have been an emerg doc. Maybe she could have been a, yeah. Specialized in something else. In pediatrics, pediatric cardiology, pediatric, other things.

She couldn't have told you at the front end that she liked intensive being in an intensive care unit, the best she had to actually get there to actually make those next choices. So you have to be agile in the way you think of your goals. Mm-hmm. , understanding that there's a lot of uncertainty and a lot of unknowns. So all you can do is really. , express that desire, manifest it to the world. Allow your network and people who are around you to connect you to things, possibilities and options.

Mm-hmm. and then, and then new things will open up and you'll have other decisions to make. Mm-hmm. . And they may be different. You may not end up where you thought, where you thought you would. I, I was sure I was gonna be a criminal defense lawyer. I am not a criminal defense lawyer. I am leading one of the riskiest digital transformations the government of Canada has ever done. Wow. But I'm not a criminal defense lawyer. Yeah.

Yes. When you get to see that close up, . Kavita Ahuja: Yes. Yes. Wonderful, wonderful.

So Shereen you had, uh, written 10 lessons and how to Navigate Adversity in life. I'm not gonna ask you go all through the 10, but I think we've covered many of them in our, we've covered, we've covered probably a lot of them. Yeah. Is there any that maybe we haven't covered that you wanna stress or anything that's important to you to share around that? So there is one, uh, I mean, I could probably name three, but there that I really would like people to keep in mind.

But let's start with one that I think is really the most important. When you ask yourself, what do I really need? We often go to the easiest answer. I need to make sure I have money. Because you go to your first fear. Mm-hmm. . Okay. If you go beneath that one. Yes. That may be true. Just say yes and park it when I did this exercise. Okay. So, so I, I, I get asked to leave. I'm then at. and I'm thinking, what do I really need? And I thought the answer is I need to keep working at things.

I need to keep working at things I need to keep working because I had a lot of uncertainty about whether or not I was gonna be able to land a next gig. A few things happened. First of all, I had to unpack all the emotions, right? Because mm-hmm. , because, because some of this, you'll go through all the stages of grieving and one of them will be anger. But you'll realize if you sit with it long enough that your anger is really greif.

Yeah. And when you go into that grief and ask yourself, why am I grieving? You realize, cuz I, I'm kind of invested in my own reputation, right? And, and this is humiliating and I'm not used to as an adult that humiliation. So once you go through this whole process, and like I said, I am not a psychologist. I am literally just talking to you about me. Okay? So let's not be confused here.

When I started unpacking that, I realized I really only need two things to be happy in my work. And the first is I need to do work of value. So things that I think are important, contributing. Mm-hmm. . And two, I need to be personally valued. Okay. That's all I need to be happy. Gimme those two things. I can move mountains.

Nice. So, so when I was going for my next job and I went to see a deputy minister to tell him that I wanted actually the job that I have now, and he says, oh my God, why do you want this project? Because this project is a very risky project and a very visible project. It's the project looking at how we might find a new pay system and new HR systems for the government of Canada. And, and it's in the, it's basically in the shadow of a a large debacle that was very public.

So why would, why would anybody want that job? Why do you want that job? And I said, because I think it's one of the most important transformations we'll ever do. So it meets my criteria for work of value. Mm-hmm. , I said, but the second thing is I don't actually want you to hire me until you've done your due diligence to know what you're getting when you hire me, because I'm not everybody's cup of tea. I'm very, very vocal. I'm very determined. I'm not stubborn, but I am an advocate.

So, so I will make my argument and, and I'll listen to the arguments, but, but they have to be made to me. So before you hire me, you need to make sure that you really want me because I will insist on being valued. Like I will insist that mm-hmm you not treat me like a generic VP kind of person. Right? But, That the assets that I bring be the assets that you want. Like, we have to have alignment on that.

And he looked at me remembering this like the first time I've met this person and he said, wow. I, I've never, no one's ever answered me like that. Like no one. I said, please call everybody, including the person that didn't like me. Right. Call everybody who I've worked with and that you know, and who knows me and just call them all okay. And get a clear picture on what I bring. Mm-hmm. that includes the things I'm not good at. Yeah. But I just want you to know who I am. Mm-hmm.

, because I want you to see me. Yeah. I need that. Nice. So the first thing is, I'd say figure out what you really need and do the unpacking all the way down to that level of granularity. What do you need to succeed? Mm-hmm. . Okay. So that would be like one.

The second is, who do you know? Yeah. Who do you know? Who can you reach out to? Who do you not know but would like to know and can reach out to? Right. And just go do. Just start, start somewhere. Start with someone.

Well, thank you for sharing that. And so is your focus now, what is your main focus now and where can we find you and you know, all the great things that you're doing and ? Shereen Benzvy Miller: So now I am back at, at a, uh, vice president, senior vice president job in the government of Canada. or senior assistant deputy minister, I'm heading up something called the Next Generation HR and Pay, which is a digital transformation, really testbed. It's like a research lab.

We're researching the possible options for replacing a big digital enterprise system with a SAS cloud option. So it's a super interesting job. I built a whole team during the pandemic. So I started Wow. Nice. I started in March, 2020 and hired basically 250 people without ever meeting them. Wow. . And, and that includes real subject matter experts in compensation and HR and area that I'm not expert in. So, I'm really, really enjoying it. I have the most awesome team.

I would just say one of the things that's really interesting that I'm exploring now in leadership, and I do a lot of women in leadership training for people, and I think about it a lot, and then I think about leadership more generally and how we make it inclusive without that, by definition, becoming an exclusion. And so one of the things I've done with this team is I've really hired for attitude.

So aptitude gets you in the door, so your CV will get you an interview with one of us, but it's really only your enthusiasm and desire to contribute to a big transformation and your excitement about being in this risky space that will actually get you on the roster. Right, right, right. So hiring for, for attitude or character based hiring, as they call it, more formally. Mm-hmm. Is really my latest joy.

So I've put together this awesome team, which has just awesome levels of diversity, neurodiversity, uh, disability, diversity, race and gender, and, and sexual preference like d diversity, like everything, just everybody is, is part of this team, and the richness of that team is just awe-inspiring. So, I'm. Excited every day and Sounds like you are, I can see it . Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's true. It sort of bubbles up. Yeah. Yes. That's wonderful.

I, I really, really appreciate your sharing with us, your lived experience, especially around, around, especially around this topic of adversity and whether it's in our personal lives or careers and so many great lessons. And just to unpack it, it's, it's, it's, it's been wonderful and I think that our listeners are really gonna, Gain a lot forever, and that's why I do this is, yeah, like you said, lived experience. Why do we share our stories?

We share our stories, so in case anybody else has similar experiences that they can learn from.