We recognize and celebrate brave female leaders. The women featured in our Brave Women Leaders blog demonstrate resiliency, bravery, and the ability to radiate their light brightly. They have gifts, experience, and strengths to share with the world and they do so bravely.
I was introduced by a mutual friend to Yvette and was instantly taken with her boldness, bravery and beautiful heart. Yvette Wu is an entrepreneurial and strategic business leader with diverse leadership experience in start-ups, corporate and educational institutions and currently the Director of Corporate Services at Capilano University.
What does bravery mean to you?
Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another. – Toni Morrison
Bravery to me shows up in the form of living a life that actively rebels against the urge and pressure of fitting a certain mold. And through this active rebellion, you start to figure out who your truest self is and is becoming, which is seriously really f*ckn hard.
Why is this brave? Well, for starters it takes a lot of courage to dig deep and do the necessary self-reflection to figure out who you truly are and are becoming. Also, this work often requires facing your unsurfaced and deep deep pain head-on – healing your inner child or adolescent self.
Especially, especially (!) for folks who hold marginalized identities, claiming ownership of your freed self, as Toni Morrison so eloquently puts it, is WAY harder and requires an entirely different level of bravery because there are big, big systems working against your liberation.
What is one of the bravest things you have ever done?
It’s been a gradual and incremental process of accepting the shame I have held for my racialized identity – being Chinese. Little by little, I’ve made small acts of rebellion that have turned my past shame into a deeper understanding of and compassion for myself.
What benefits have come from leaning into bravery?
Since I started with a quote, why not end on one too!
I pray you go from test to testimony, triggered to transformed, wounds to wisdom, and pain to power – Nakeia Homer
I recognize there has been intergenerational trauma passed down in my family and the incremental acts of bravery I’ve committed to having proven, I may just…end it with me.
