Leaning in to Learning: What the ProInspire Fellowship Taught Me About Myself
By Crystal Cheng, 2015 ProInspire Fellow at Opportunity Fund
When Gene Kunde, ProInspire’s Bay Area Executive Director at the time, sent me the Fellowship role description for the Business Process and Implementation Associate at Opportunity Fund, it felt serendipitous. In 2009, I was part of a small group of students who planned a microfinance panel; Eric Weaver, the CEO of Opportunity Fund, was one of the individuals we invited to be a panelist (though he declined). I even met my current manager at Opportunity Fund when he represented ACCION at the event’s involvement fair. Because of microfinance, I focused my consulting career on the financial services industry. With the Fellowship role description on my computer screen, I felt as if I had meandered away from my original destination and now I was seeing the opportunity to return. It just felt right, so I accepted the offer.
However, adjusting to moving back home and working in an unfamiliar industry was a lot harder than I anticipated. The grueling 90-minute commute by car, BART train, and foot cast a shadow over the experience of learning from new team members and gaining more clarity in my career. Fortunately, I turned my focus to my cohort and our monthly ProInspire training sessions. I extracted lessons from each session and immersed myself in that learning as if I was clawing for some concrete validation and guideposts that I had made the right decision to leave my friends in New York City, my tiny room with exposed brick in the East Village, and a career with clear and defined ladder rungs for me to climb. I wanted to know that I was on the right path, a process that played out over six months but along the way enabled me to clarify my intentions, focus my attention, and release the tension I felt over this major life transition.
When we did the StrengthsFinder exercise at our first ProInspire training, it was an emotional revelation for me. The test validated what I already suspected: I always find the flaws and weaknesses in processes, organizations, and people — especially in myself. Ironically, the aspect of my personality that consistently breaks me down is also my top strength (Restorative). Despite this affirmation, I really wanted to be Strategic; after all, whenever Fortune or Businessweek profiles a dynamic leader, that leader is always described as strategic and bold. In my mind, that’s who I needed to be in order to be a successful leader. Yet I struggled with what success meant for me — beyond other people’s definition of it.
I actively worked toward clarity throughout the yearlong ProInspire Fellowship, and every training session provided another puzzle piece to build my vision of success. During one of the sessions, we completed the “adjective exercise” where each Fellow wrote three adjectives that described another Fellow on poster paper. My cohort of peers described me as “diligent,” “having a plan,” and “hardworking.” To be honest, to me this sounded like a boring person — and not the person I wanted to be. Similar to the StrengthsFinder exercise, I yearned to be someone different. I decided to poll my close friends for additional adjectives; they described me as “compassionate,” “trustworthy,” “ambitious,” and “logical.” One of my friends even said that she would ask me for help if she needed a “…sounding board. [Crystal] asks thought-provoking questions, and she’s generous in sharing her experiences and lessons learned.” By reaching out for additional input, I began to see the pieces of myself coming together; my “flaw-finding” strength is what makes me an effective problem solver and a contributing partner as a “sounding board.”
Through the ProInspire Fellowship, I learned to lean into the discomfort, embrace a learning mindset, and actively engage with the materials and lessons. When a lesson or session invoked intense emotions, I dug deeper into the content and unpacked the reasons for my reactions. The Fellowship activated my inner student and focused my energy inwardly to help me put all the scattered pieces together. The process gave me a better sense of who I am, and who I want to become. During our last activity, we lined up in single file to do a slow, reflective walk while wearing earplugs. I quietly snickered, as it felt like preschool. But a more welcoming thought then floated by: what if I just gave it a chance? The slow-paced walk in a single file line still felt unnatural, but in that moment I embraced what I had learned through the ProInspire Fellowship — I grow the most when I am uncomfortable and challenged.
Crystal Cheng is a ProInspire Fellow with Opportunity Fund, California’s leading microfinance provider. In her role as a Business Process and Implementation Associate, Crystal is responsible for implementing business processes and technology solutions to support the expansion of the organization, development of new products, and establishment of partnerships. Prior to the Fellowship, Crystal spent approximately five years as a management consultant with experience ranging from supporting large system implementations and managing projects to support strategic initiatives. Crystal holds a degree in Business Administration from University of Southern California. In her free time, she likes to attend live performances including jazz music, musicals, and satirical dramas, explore the outdoors, and plan her traveling adventures.