Meet Carissa Begonia, an AAPI coach, entrepreneur, and activist who can’t be boxed in.

Pose! | Photo by Carissa Begonia

Carissa is a 2nd generation Filipina American who helps BIPOC professionals & entrepreneurs liberate themselves from societal definitions of success and design lives they are proud of. Entrepreneurship is her liberation, and empowering others to reimagine success on their own terms is her activism.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity

What does being nomadic mean to you?

Carissa Begonia (CB): So personally, I didn’t have this deep desire to be a digital nomad. Like, I wanted the freedom to travel all over the world, but travel for the sake of travel wasn’t necessarily the goal. What I value more is not having to make choices between seeing my family and having to go to work, especially if, God forbid, someone got sick. I also kept thinking how can I take my job on the road? How can I travel and still get paid?

So, before I left my corporate job at Zappos, I kept thinking about digital nomads as something that was much more grounded, and an opportunity that allows autonomy, freedom and choice in regard to my time.

How did being nomadic, or your desire to work remotely affect how or why you started your business?

CB: I think being a nomad definitely affected my choice to want to start a business that was fully remote–I didn't want to be in an office anymore. I actually found my sense of adventure at my last corporate job Zappos, when I relocated to the West Coast.

I realized there’s a huge difference in culture between the East and West Coast, where the East Coast is very heads down, work hard, very ambitious. But the West Coast is all about the outdoors, right? So here, I think I got a taste of what my life could be and the freedom and autonomy I could have, especially since Zappos was pretty cool with flexible work hours. So, it ended up setting the foundations and a vision of what I wanted to build.

You’ve also founded several businesses/organizations. How is it like managing so many organizations all at once?

CB: It’s really hard. As a business coach today, I actually advise people to niche down and focus on one product and one platform, which allows them to run things with more ease and efficiency. However, I’m not one to say no, so I’ll tell them to put their ideas on a list so they don’t forget it, and to come back to it later. This is to ensure the first business is running and sustaining. Ironically, it’s difficult for me to follow my own advice as I'm a “manifesting generator,” and I tend to be multi-passionate and act on any ideas I have.

Is acting on your ideas beneficial?

CB: I think it’s great because I am always very busy, but that means I can also get really exhausted and burnt out. Interestingly, I'm not always sure I'm fully conscious that I'm starting multiple businesses at once. As in, I just get too wrapped up in the spur of the moment! It happens when other people tell me about an idea, they just get really excited, and I get really excited and say “We should do this!” So, I unknowingly ended up doing a lot of projects which tend to have ideas takeoff.

Speaking! | Photo by Carissa Begonia

Do you have any examples?

CB: I’ve constantly been working on new projects, and they just end up piling without me knowing it! For example, I launched my nonprofit Green Mango International in 2016, and that was meant to be a baby thing to support and give back to the school my father attended as a child. In 2018, I left my job and started my business. Fast-forward to 2020, I started doing a lot more diversity and inclusion consulting after the Atlanta spa shooting. I also decided to use LinkedIn as a social media to talk about my diversity, equity and inclusion background, as well as my Asian roots in regard to Asian hate. This evolved into a program called AARISE (Asian American Racialized Identity and Social Empowerment) to help support Asian American-identifying folk, to help other Asians heal. One of the amazing things coming from that was we got featured in Time Magazine!

Is there any reason why your website is super brightly colored? Is it personal preference, or are there any underlying reasons?

CB: My branding has gone through many iterations over the years. It started with earthy tones, as my original brand designer was a friend of mine, and she frankly did it for free, which I was so grateful for. Also, at that time, I was in this very kind of Zen, contemplative time in my life, and that's the color palette that really spoke to me.

Then, I had some opportunity to do a photo shoot and I realized, “I don't actually own clothing of any of these colors.” I'm not a muted person—I'm very bold, loud, outgoing, and bright! I come from the fashion industry, and I was always known to like to wear bright high heels and my signature bright-colored lipstick! So I realized that this doesn't embody me and I ended up rebranding to make it actually more representative of who I am.

In addition, it’s a little bit of a pushback on corporate America and the coaching industry. I don’t want to be very girly and soft like most coaches I see out there. I want a balance of masculine and feminine, and for it to be exciting and very “in your face.”

Bright and Bold | Photo by Carissa Begonia

Has everybody reacted positively to your colorful rebranding?

CB: There are a lot of people that actually chose to work with me because of my bold branding. On the flip side, someone has previously reached out and kindly said, “Your colors are great, but a little bit hard to read for someone with a sight disability or vision impairment.” As an equity person, this signaled to me that I needed to correct that! I went back to the brand designer and asked them to balance the contrast to make it easy for everyone to read. So I actually went through another rebranding to stay in integrity with what I'm preaching about equity. It took some time, but it was an important change to make.

You seem to be super involved in your community. Why did you start?

CB: I mean, Green Mango International started as a thank you letter to my father for all the sacrifices that he made to come over here as an immigrant in his 20s as he had to build a new life while leaving his family behind.

It started when I went back to the Philippines with my dad for my Lola’s (grandmother) funeral. She really impacted me, as she helped raise me and lived in New York up until I graduated from college. I decided to see the elementary school that my father had attended as a kid, and with every little boy that I saw there, I just saw my dad and thought, “What if they too could have an opportunity like my dad to pursue their dreams!” I went back again in 2016 with my brother and cousins, and they also felt compelled to give back to our community. That’s when we decided to launch our non-profit.

Green Mango International was inspired by my family’s immigration story, and was kind of this pay it forward situation, where one family member–in this case, my uncle–would go to the United States, then petition the next family member to join them, so it was like the next person would come and then pay for the next kid’s college. So I think this idea of paying it forward has been something that just was part of my family values. Also, since I don't have my own children to give back to yet, this was my way of giving back and remembering where my roots are.

Carissa and Her Dad - Green Mango | Photo by Carissa Begonia

Has the unearthing of this history of giving given you more insight into your family?

CB: I've definitely gotten to know a little bit more of my own family and my heritage! Not only that, but how social political involvement and the work of supporting the community was something that both my maternal and paternal ancestors did, which passed down to me.

While my non-profit was influenced largely by my dad, my mom is also quite generous, always sending money back to all of her sisters in the US. So, it’s just part of my nature and what I’ve realized is part of what you do for family and community.

What is your experience of being an AAPI, especially as Asian hate skyrocketed during the pandemic?

CB: I’ve definitely experienced overt and microaggressions in the workplace. Not only that, but there have been many times when I was walking down the street minding my own business in LA or Brooklyn, when I experienced some kind of racialized incident.

This isn’t new. One of my earliest memories of racialized incidents was when I was nine at Disney World, and a little white boy pointed at me and said “I don’t want to swim in a swimming pool with Chinese people.” I remember seething in anger, and ended up bottling these feelings which could have informed my bolder, assertive and louder personality today.

How has this affected your growth?

CB: The Disney World incident was extremely formative for me. I realized that I couldn't change the shape of my eyes or the color of my skin so I overcompensated with a strong and (at times) aggressive personality. Most of this was subconscious, but I think I ended up rejecting my Filipino identity for years as a kid, just so I could seem more white. I also quickly realized that I needed to adapt and assimilate and align myself to whiteness to be successful in corporate America, and that I needed to be loud and prove to people that I'm leadership material and not to be messed with.

My equity work has helped me to learn to reclaim my racialized and ethnic identity and heal from years of internalized racism I wasn’t even aware of. Much of my mission today is to help other Asian Americans also reclaim their identity and their voices to do the same, ensuring they can speak up and stand up for themselves when they need to.

Today, as a business owner and coach, I do think my more outgoing and bold personality has helped me become a voice for BIPOC folx as well as a micro-influencer on LinkedIn. I started hosting a weekly LinkedIn live show called BUILT BY BIPOC, where I interview and highlight stories of BIPOC leaders and entrepreneurs who are advancing DEI through their work. I also host a weekly LinkedIn Audio, SIDE GIG SIDEKICK, as well as many other workshops and programs to teach BIPOC entrepreneurs to launch, grow, and scale their own coaching, consulting, or contracting services business.

How has the rise in AAPI visibility and your own discoveries affected your work?

CB: During the pandemic, there was so much anti-Asian hate and it only further activated my cause. My time at Zappos, doing diversity and inclusion work, as well as training as an emotional intelligence coach helped me build up a skill set of greater self-awareness and emotional regulation by opening me up to dig into my past and understand what had happened to me.

Now, equity is a topic I often share about in speaking engagements, and the question of “what happened to you” is a question I pose to a lot of my clients. My advice to folx as they are discerning their next steps in their lives, their businesses, or their careers, is to pause an take a moment look back and take notice of the feelings and patterns from past experiences as your past informs the way you act and view the world in the present and may have the answers to what path to pursue in the future.

Want to learn more about Carissa and her projects?

Connect with her on LinkedIn. You can also check out her company’s Instagram (@consciousxchange_) and website (https://www.consciousxchange.com/)