Celebrating the Year of the Tiger
Estimated Read Time in Mins: 2 mins
As a second generation Chinese American, I grew up in the Chicago suburbs without many peers or friends who looked like me. As a kid and even a teenager, I just wanted to fit in and be accepted; I remember being self conscious about friends seeing the different foods my family ate (jook, pig’s feet, whole fish), what leftovers I might bring to school lunches, or hear the Chinese radio my grandparents always had on.
Looking back on my childhood self’s embarrassment, the opposite is true for me now as an adult. My culture has become part of what bonds me with the people I love most. As an adult, my cultural traditions are among my favorite experiences. I’ve embraced sharing these parts of my culture with not only my friends, but intentionally with colleagues too. I’ve regularly hosted dim sum feasts in Chinatown for account teams in my department and introduced new, soon-to-be-favorite foods like salted egg yolk custard buns with partners at 18 Coffees. When people refer to bringing your “whole self” to work, this is part of what that means to me.
The Lunar New Year — my favorite holiday of the year — is next week, on February 1. As part of my Chinese culture’s tradition, we all come together for a family reunion dinner on Lunar New Year’s Eve, which is considered the most important time to be together. Traditionally, that time is reserved for visiting with family and being with your community, away from work.
This year’s upcoming celebration hits different. It’s not just the past few years of the pandemic that has me especially appreciative of this year’s upcoming celebration with my family; it’s being able to celebrate and take some time away from work with zero guilt.
For a majority of my early career, I incorrectly associated being successful at work with putting in long hours, being constantly available, answering emails late at night, and that included feeling bad about taking PTO. As a Founding Partner of 18 Coffees, I’m in a role now where I’ve been able to more directly influence our company policy. I wanted to create a company that included policies that supported our company values — to build a firm that embodied inclusivity and creativity. In previous positions I’ve always had to dip into my precious PTO to take time off for my family’s Chinese New Year celebrations. Former colleagues celebrating Rosh Hashanah or Eid al-Fitr or Seollal had to do the same.
One of the most important things to me was to have the flexibility for me and any team member to take time off, without guilt, to celebrate their respective cultural and religious holidays without having less of an “allotment” for equally important vacations and time away. As a small firm, providing this benefit requires trust and open communication, but it allows us to be more inclusive. We want our staff to feel fully themselves when they’re a part of our team.
Success and happiness at work isn’t just about “work life balance”, it’s about embracing our whole selves and making work a part of our identities—not our entire identities. We want everyone to feel like they belong at 18 Coffees, no matter their backgrounds, because they work in an environment that doesn’t only make space for their traditions, it celebrates them.
Traditionally, the Lunar New Year’s start sets the tone for the rest of the year. There are superstitions like not washing your hair or sweeping on New Year’s Day, because it symbolizes washing away your wealth or sweeping your luck away for the year. With that in mind, I plan to spend the holiday the way I hope my year will go: treasuring time and experiences with loved ones and continuing to lean into the differences that helped shape me.
