There is a moment many high-performing Latina professionals know too well. You’re at the top of your game. You’ve got wins racking up awards, recognition and respect. It is the moment when something shifts. You are still doing the work, delivering results, helping people and showing up with integrity.
But suddenly, you can feel it. The sad part is sometimes you know it’s coming – not because you earned it but because of who is sitting across from you. The energy changes. The tone changes. The access changes. The assumptions change. And what hurts the most is that nothing about your excellence changed. What changed is how people (sometimes it only takes one) started seeing you.
That is exactly what this episode of Latina Mic Drop names so clearly. Miriam shares the painful realization of what it feels like to go from being respected to being treated like someone others need to “protect themselves from.” She connects that lived experience to the reality that many Latinas face microaggressions, bias, fewer stretch opportunities, less sponsorship, and distorted perceptions of their leadership style.
When bias stops being theoretical
Sometimes we talk about workplace bias like it is abstract. Like it is a trend, a statistic, or a training topic – f! I know I used to. But bias becomes real when you are the one sitting in the meeting. When your communication style is suddenly a problem. When your directness is read as aggression. When your cultural expression is treated like a liability. When people create stories about your intent instead of speaking to your actual performance.
That is what makes workplace bias so exhausting. It is not just about one hard conversation. It is slow and calculated. It is about the emotional labor of trying to understand why you are being treated differently when your work speaks for itself and I am not afraid to show it. Ask around.
For many women of color, especially Latinas, this is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition.
The promotion gap is not always loud
One of the most important truths in this conversation is that discrimination does not always show up as a dramatic event. Sometimes it looks like:
- being passed over for growth
- being left out of key conversations
- having your professionalism questioned
- being told your communication needs work when what they really mean is your style makes them uncomfortable
- having your leadership filtered through stereotypes instead of facts
That is why so many brilliant professionals stay confused for too long. Because the issue is rarely named directly. Instead, you are left trying to decode mixed messages while still carrying your workload, your ambition, and your dignity.
What this experience can cost you
When this kind of workplace treatment goes unchecked, it can cost more than a promotion. It can cost your confidence, your energy, your sense of safety, your willingness to speak up. It can make you question your instincts when your instincts are actually the thing keeping you alert. And yet, one of the most powerful points from this episode is this: do not let other people’s distorted perception become your self-definition. You do not have to internalize what was projected onto you.
What you can do instead
This is not about pretending everything is fine. And it is not about blaming yourself for how others choose to interpret you. It is about staying grounded enough to respond with clarity.
Here are a few of the reminders embedded throughout this episode:
1. Know your rights
You need to know what channels are available to you, who you can speak to, and what protections exist. Not because you want conflict, but because you deserve options. Trust me I don’t like to fight but that doesn’t mean I won’t. Knowing your rights helps you move from panic to strategy. This is not the moment to give into fear or silence.
2. Ask for real feedback
If there is truly a skill gap, address it. If there is a blind spot, work on it. But vague criticism, coded language, and personality policing are not the same as developmental feedback. Ask for specifics, examples and ask for what success looks like. Most times – in these types of situations – they don’t even know, they just know they don’t want success to look like you.
3. Keep your receipts on performance
When people want to make it personal, return to the work. Keep a data tracker of the answer to these questions and share them on center stage. Ask for awards for the work you do. Ask for recognition. Sometimes you need to find the people they will listen to you so they can speak on your behalf because if it comes from you, it’ll be dismissed. What did you deliver? Who did you help? What outcomes did you create? What have you built, improved, led, or saved? Your receipts give you leverage that is undeniable.
4. Do not abandon your work ethic
One of the strongest messages in this episode is this: do not give them a reason to rewrite your story. Keep doing the work. Keep serving well. Keep leading well. Not to prove your worth, especially not to prove your work but because your integrity is yours.
5. Stop assuming the problem is always you
Yes, reflection, accountability, and growth matters, but not every hard workplace dynamic is the result of your failure. Sometimes people are uncomfortable with difference. Sometimes they are biased. Sometimes they are threatened by confidence that does not come packaged in the form they prefer. That does not mean you are wrong. It means you are seeing the workplace more clearly.
The benefits of naming what is happening
There is real power in naming these experiences. When you can identify what is happening, you can:
- stop gaslighting yourself
- protect your confidence
- separate feedback from bias
- make smarter career decisions
- advocate for yourself more clearly
- choose support instead of isolation
- lead with more strategy, not just more endurance
Naming it does not make you weak. It makes you wise because once you understand the dynamic, you stop wasting energy trying to earn comfort from people committed to misunderstanding you.
You ARE TOO much – F’n Own IT!
You may be passionate, direct, culturally rooted and refuse to shrink yourself into a version that makes others feel superior. That does not make you unprofessional; it means you are leading as a whole person. For many women, especially the ones who were never meant to be centered in these systems, that is the beginning of a different kind of power – a more honest, integrated and liberating one.
Your story belongs in The Chingona Playbook
If this blog hit a nerve, there is a reason. Too many powerful women have stories like this sitting in their chest, unnamed, unclaimed, and waiting to be written. That is why I am inviting bold, real, cycle-breaking voices to be part of The Chingona Playbook: Secrets to Dance to Your Own Beat
This is not for performance, polished perfection, for truth and for the women who have lived through adversity, challenged the rules, gone against the grain, and learned how to dance to their own rhythm anyway.
If you have a story about what it took to hold your dignity, trust your voice, or lead without permission, I want you to consider writing it, sin miedo.
Because your story is not just personal, it is legacy, medicine, proof. and is the kind of truth someone else may need in order to stop shrinking.
The Chingona Playbook is for the women who know what it means to be overlooked, underestimated, or othered and still choose to rise. If that is you, this is your invitation. Come write with us. Come tell the truth. Come leave something on the page your ancestors would recognize as courage.
Email “I’m In” to info@miriamsimon.online or text 862-686-4422 to get the application.
Miriam Simon is obsessed with amplyfing devalued voices by helping them stop proving and replacing them with the power to lead sin miedo. https://www.MiriamSimon.online
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