Why High Achievers Still Feel Like Frauds (Anne-Marie Imafidon)

0:09Hello and welcome to Doing It Anyway, the show where we build up confidence, overcome challenges and learn how to do it anyway. Today I'm talking to Dr. Anne-Marie Imafidon. She's a world-renowned computer scientist. She's someone who, as she herself describes it, has always been the youngest, the womanist, the blackest person in the room. And I really wanted to talk to her about how she overcomes that feeling. I loved this conversation. I think you will too. I'm so excited to share it with you. We touched on her tactics for not feeling like a fraud. Honestly, it's advice that I wish I had had in my 20s.

0:49we talked about how important it is to build a sense of community and lean on other people's experiences. Remember that you are not alone in going through what you're going through. And we talked about using mistakes to help build up your own confidence and how you can actually do that. So if you've ever felt that you're in a room that you don't really belong in, this conversation is for you.

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2:04Dr. Amri Imafodon, welcome to Doing It Anyway. It's so great to have you on the program. Thanks for having me. Your story is so exceptional. You've really been this child prodigy. Academically in school, you were doing things in primary school, passing two GCSEs. At 11, you became the youngest girl ever to pass an A-level. You started a degree at Oxford University at the age of 17. You became one of the youngest recipients of an Oxford master's in mathematics and computer science. I could go on and on, Anne-Marie. And it made me think that you ought to be somebody who from a very young age, because you were such a super achiever, was supremely confident.

2:49And I was wondering if that was the case. Sorry to disappoint. No.

2:58I have esteem. I was saying this to someone the other day. I have esteem. You know, there's this notion of I have self-esteem. There's a notion of high self-esteem. There's low self-esteem. I have esteem. And what do you mean by that? What do you mean by esteem? I join it to the confidence. So I'm very, I have a very good sense of self. So I don't talk down to myself. I don't talk up to myself. I talk across to myself as it were. And so this notion of confidence, it was never, I definitely can do this and I will ace this. It was more, I could do that. I could, I could give it a go. It was, what's the worst that could happen?

3:33you know and it's not something that then it gets attached to me that if I fail my driving test the first time around or if I forget to brush my like all the other things that could go wrong that there's never things that I'd ever said okay cool now that's going to be a complete reflection on me it's more on that day that thing didn't work so passing the GCSEs I always end up telling the story of I didn't know like it wasn't a given for me that I was going to pass or get the grades that I did. I just was like, hey, I enjoy doing this. I'm going to give it a go. This is an exam setting. Okay, we'd have to do it quietly, where normally I'd probably talk my way through it.

4:11And I think I was as surprised as anybody else when the results then came back. And it's like, wow, okay. I think at one point, I definitely would have wondered, the person that read this, did they know it was obvious to them that a 10 year old had written these answers. But you know, it was great for me, not just because of the grades, but you know, as I, as I say, I got to go to McDonald's and I didn't have to wash the dishes for a week. Right. So I think there are other things that have come, but as I've got older, I think I've definitely been able to have a confidence from, I did that. I tried that and that went okay.

4:44And so this might be something that I probably can do and can give a go and can learn as I go. And so, and so I'm not, this is what I mean by kind of esteem I'm not a super high self-esteem as in I must I can do everything I can conquer everything and I know all the things nor am I oh gosh lowly me could never ever possibly look into trying to do that I kind of fall in the middle with it be feeling like esteem rather than feeling like confidence necessarily there's like a hundred things there I want to unpack um and I love geeking out on the difference between kind of self-esteem and confidence and all of that because I think you're right there is a difference between kind of self esteem, which is basically intrinsically thinking you're a good person.

5:23I'm kind of in the kind of universe of people. I'm a kind of good person. And if I have a knock and if I have a setback, and if I don't achieve things, I'm still a good person. And then there is what I love about your description there of when you tried something and you didn't know you were going to succeed. And all of the work I've done on confidence has shown this, that confidence is this weird kind of transferable quality. So it actually can transfer across disciplines. I mean, you have a success in learning to cook. It makes you think, actually, I could probably learn a language. But what you found was so concrete, right?

5:59You did something, you didn't know if you were going to succeed, you got the results. And then presumably that then gave you confidence to try something else because actually, look, I tried something and I took a risk and it worked out for you. Does that resonate with you? It definitely does. It definitely does. So yeah, so it meant that the base from which I knew I was jumping off from for the next thing definitely was heightened. And it's so interesting what you were saying just there about the transferability of that confidence across subjects. So the two subjects I did were maths and ICT in primary school.

6:33But it's so interesting how you're right, like, then it was almost like a, okay, cool, Like I've understood that. And so the level of language, perhaps in the GCSE ICT meant that something like English, I came at it with maybe a slight newfound confidence of, well, if I got that, then actually this is the same kind of language that was in those exam papers. and so maybe this English is something that I can then attack with that kind of view or there are there's learnings of things that I've done in maths that then apply in other subjects and so now something like physics is something I want to step into a little bit more and try the AS for example on that because I know that there's the maths mechanics that applies and shows up there and so I can jump off from that so definitely that's something that I do remember actually in primary school happening.

7:16Did it ever though feel I mean to flip this to think kind of people who are are thinking of taking big risks and who have big successes and then want to achieve more. Did it ever feel like you had this pressure on you to keep achieving? Did you feel as a child, well, I've done these extraordinary things that other people haven't done. So now, wow, I almost have to be kind of like a super achiever forever. Did you ever feel that? No. And I think this is why I come back to the esteem of in being as grounded and as sure of myself the achievements are things that I can kind of tap into but they haven't really been they still aren't such a big sense of you know like if I meet someone down the pub or on the tube I don't start with hey I'm Amory the child prodigy it's more like I'm Amory right and so and so I think you need somebody else to do that introduction for you I'm gonna go I'm gonna be your body man and come in ahead of you and say here's my child prodigy yeah I have those cheerleaders but I so for me it was less oh I did that so now I have to top it it was more yeah I did that so if there was something else I was going to try I could give that a go but actually I again I don't feel that pressure mostly because I think it's other people's expectations rather than my expectations of myself how do you do that how do you keep your I always think the definition of happiness is when your reality outweighs your expectations and the definition of unhappiness is when your expectations outweigh your reality.

8:47Oh, that's good. I know. Isn't that good? Isn't that good? I came to that unfortunately terribly late in life. I wish I'd learned it in my 20s. How do you keep your expectations for yourself in the bounds of what is possible? It's better to have no expectations. God, Katty, this is great. So another question that I get asked all the time is, what would you tell your 13-year-old self? and I always say there's an there's an Anne-Marie answer to that question and then there's a public facing answer to that question go on let's have the answer where it's like the Anne-Marie answer is only useful for people like Anne-Marie and the other answer is useful for normal people mine is always I should I could have taken myself more seriously interesting and so to answer your original question I actually don't have that many expectations for myself I'm really fortunate that Life is a series of journeys and paths and experiments and explorations.

9:44And so I see most things that I do as an experiment. And the beauty of that maybe is that, you know, if you set a hypothesis and it is a true experiment, you don't know what will happen next, right? It's the hypothesis that's being proven or disproven. Like if you already know what it is, then it's not really an experiment. You're just kind of running it again. and so for me there's no expectations because that I don't take myself as seriously maybe as I should um and so whatever happens then that set of expectations is so low that there's a great upside that here I am having a great conversation on a podcast that you know is is to be released without knowing what's going to come so I'm always I'm in it the kids call it now kind of doing it for the plot or I'm kind of following on for those side quests and then it's like oh and who'd have thought I'd have ended up on this side quest and Stanley Tucci is there sat across the table from me so for me I kind of I do I'm quite fortunate I kind of just take life as it comes without really having a master plan but knowing that I enjoy the process of experimentation the process of discovery the process of curiosity and I still manage to do the do and get bills paid I mean And there's this phrase that applies, I think, in some of the research that I've done to women, but also particularly to younger women and actually to teenage girls as well, is this kind of tyranny of low expectations.

11:08And to anyone who's actually in a minority, and you have been somebody who's always been in a minority, you have been young when older people succeeded. You are a woman of colour in a world that has found it much harder to reward and give power to women of color. You have been a woman in a field that is very male dominated. I mean, take off all of those incidences where you have been an outsider in historical and kind of numerical terms. And yet you don't seem to have let that make you feel isolated or hold you back. I mean, this, you know, the kind of the phrase imposter syndrome is used a lot.

11:47And I don't know what you understand by that phrase, having been in a way an outsider in a kind of insider's world for so many, much of your career. Did you ever feel that imposter syndrome held you back or being an outsider held you back? Because it doesn't seem to have done. No. And again, maybe I use humour a lot on this, but I joke about this quite a lot. Often, many times, there have been many times in my life that I don't realise I'm the outsider or I don't realise I'm the odd one out. Can I just tell you, you are the odd one out. in so many of the positions you've been in. And I mean that in the best possible way.

12:22Well, thank you. But I don't see, because I'm, when I talk about founding Stomets, it's one of those things. I was working, as you say, in this male-dominated space, right? And so I'm in a meeting. And as you've said, I'm the youngest, I'm the blackest, I'm the womanist in the room. You're talking through these things. And in one of the companies I worked in, you know, it was typical kind of corporate boardroom would be that you've got kind of glass, it's like a glass pane right and always say this that I'm looking out across the room I'm not the person walking past the room thinking there's one there in the middle and I also say that it's almost it's ended up in some ways being a bad thing that kind of lack of perception or kind of awareness of my surroundings that I'm so deep into this database or so deep into this coding thing that I'm trying to sort out that I've never I've not looked up and thought oh wow here's you know the light is now off because I started this before it got dark and I'm still working through and it'd be the same thing if I'm looking around and nobody here is like me the one time I felt the most like an outsider was as you said in the intro I did I went I studied at Oxford I was at Keeble I did maths and computer science and at one point our senior tutor for our subject was the university, like you have to have a senior fellow be the sponsor for your society.

13:42So he was the sponsor for the OU Bell Ringing Society. And there was a guy in the year above me who was a member of the OU Bell Ringing Society and someone in my year who was a member of the OU Bell Ringing Society. And I didn't know before stepping into that space, the bell ringing was a thing. I'm an East Londoner. I know what bow bells are. I'd never really thought that there were people that ring the bells. I don't know what I, it just wasn't anything that ever come into my head. I was incredibly curious, but not about bells. And so it was really funny being in rooms where the bell arrangement or, I still don't even know what the terminology is, was what folks were using as their references to talk through groups or whatever it was that we were kind of covering in that class.

14:26And at times like that, I'd be like, geez, I have literally no idea what's being said and what's going on here this sounds insane right you're talking another language of course i'm the other in this room because i don't ring bells right and so i think i'm quite um fortunate or unfortunate or it's a good thing it's a bad thing that i end up not being that perceptive of the of the environment around me um but i take it back to it shouldn't be that you have to be like me to be able to thrive, step into, exist in a space where you are the other. And so for something like tech, which is the space that I'm in, it's incredibly important, actually, that it's not just women like me who have never noticed that they're the only woman in the room who are able to thrive and contribute to those spaces.

15:11Because as much as I know the database is really well, as much as I know a lot of things very well, there'll be other things that I'm clearly missing in the room that might also impact the quality of what my contribution to that innovation is going to be. Yeah, being the odd one out is not something that I end up perceiving often. I mean, I wish I could bottle what you have and give it to every young woman who walks into a meeting or older woman who walks into a more senior meeting and could use that because it happens often. I mean, I had an incident not long ago. I was invited to, at the risk of name dropping, I was invited to the White House for this briefing on Middle East affairs and I walk into this room.

15:51And it's two women and 12 men. We've all been there. And I look around the room and I realize, oh my God, all of these people speak Arabic, speak Farsi. They actually know the leaders of these countries. They're experts. I'm just a kind of generalist. What am I doing here? And I had that kind of, you know, the F word, the fraud word. And I thought, if I say anything, they're all going to realize that I'm not as smart as they are. So the national security staff give their presentation, it gets time for questions and answers. And the men start asking questions. Actually, they don't even put their hands up.

16:22They just jump in with questions. And I'm sitting there and I'm looking at this other woman who is an expert and thinking, are you going to ask a question? And in my head, I'm thinking, I can't have it that it's only 12 men who ask questions. Somehow a woman has to get into this conversation. But if I ask a question, they're going to realize I don't know as much as they are. And then I'll probably sweat. And then I'll probably blush. And then they'll all look at me and then I'll stutter. And then they'll realize that, you know, I shouldn't really be there. And all of this is going through my head.

16:49It would have been a lot more useful for me to be listening to conversation. But I have this alternative meeting that's going on inside my brain of ruminating about what it is. And in the end, I do put my hand up. I'm a kind of good girl. And I asked the question. And it wasn't the most intelligent question in the history of questions about the Middle East, but it wasn't the most stupid either. And the amazing thing was that the sky did not fall on my head and the earth did not actually open up and swallow me whole. Look at that. Look at that. I was still standing. And then the next time I was in a meeting, it was easier.

17:22And you live to tell the tale, right? And I live to tell the tale. And more importantly, I had kind of banked a little bit of confidence. That was my, you know, brick in my wall of confidence and I had banked it and no one could take it away. And the next time I was in a similar situation, it was the same. But what I'm hearing from you is a slightly different strategy for dealing with something that women always face, women of colour face even more so, and young women face all the time. But your strategy is so much more effective. I want your strategy, which is not to really notice and not to give a damn.

17:56The not giving a damn part might be intentional, but the not noticing is not intentional. something that folks could do intentionally that I've ended up working through with other people is when we talk about imposter syndrome there's a sense of privilege you might have maybe in order to do this but if you're in those rooms in those spaces then you're privileged to be welcomed to be invited to be you know allowed in those spaces the other side of it that I end up seeing is let's say that scenario that you just spoke about you I might be wrong you didn't place yourself in that room. You might have applied, but you didn't run the invite list for that room.

18:29Or did you? No. God, no. Somebody far more senior than me in the White House did. Well, this is it. So someone else who is not you, who wasn't and isn't a fraud because that invite was real and you really were in that room and you really were able to ask that question when the time came for you, someone else has co-signed, has invited, has welcomed, has wanted, has desired you in that room and in that space. That's genius. And so as much as you might think you're a fraud, if you really want to in the extreme, they also cannot be a fraud to that extreme that you then didn't have that invite and you weren't in that room.

19:09And so I always end up saying, okay, let's reflect on it for real now whether it's a school you know class whether it's a meeting whether it's a team whether it's a job you didn't give yourself the job someone else used their agency and had their own decision making process to bring you into that room and so fine like maybe let's cut the imposter syndrome in half because if you really are there as a fraud then it's also on them for inviting someone that shouldn't have been in that room into that room in some ways that lightens the load maybe a little bit for folks are fine if I'm the fraud they're not the fraud and they thought there was something for me to contribute here I think the other thing the other side of that in in those spaces and I find this maybe easier to say for technology versus some of the other domains that listeners might find themselves in there's a lot of innovation there's a lot of technology there's a lot of things that we are hearing about in the press that we are getting excited about that we're getting to see at work that we're seeing deployed in our normal lives.

20:06And for most of that technology, when you sit down and when you use it or when you engage with it, especially if you are different, right, numerically, historically, whatever, there will be times, plural, that you're engaging with the technology and you're thinking, huh, something's not right, something's missing here. One of the examples I love to give, I don't know if I've done it to death, but here we go, is that of every couple of years the health tech industry discovers the period for the very first time genuinely they're like hey folks we discovered this thing apparently it happens to people some people and some people that are parts of our users and we should do something and this is cyclical so every four to five years it happens a new company discovers the period for the very first time and i wrote about this in my book one company a couple of years ago discovered the period for the first time and release this feature to everyone that had this kind of fitness tracker and allowed them to track 10 days of their period and i love talking about this because it's so great to get on a really serious stage at a very big tech conference with really hard and make all the men feel super uncomfortable i just say period and i did for effect like a period period period pregnancy menopause periods right and i and i almost spit it at them right and then and folks are then sat there and some are squirming because they think oh gosh this is why we don't let women into this space of course she's come with the microphone she's talking about periods and others others are thinking 10 days in a period 10 days did i hear and i'm like yeah no you heard me right 10 days they allow people to track 10 days of their period and so you have to ask yourself the question in a health tech company right every couple of years is it that there's not a single person that has ever met anyone that has ever had a period or is it that they had a couple of them because I feel like people and human beings are here because of something to do with periods, maybe, right?

21:58But that process where they went from the research, they did the development, they implemented it, they tested it, they released it out to all of their millions of users, that in that entire process, there was not a single person who knew anything about a period that could be heard, could be listened to, that could ask what would have been a silly question. It would have been a silly question. 10 days on the period, what does that what does that actually mean would have felt like a silly question to say out loud but would have saved so much effort and wasted time egg on the face of the company just by asking what you'd feel was a silly question but that actually ends up not being that silly because not everybody in the room knows what you know has the experience that you have and i've got to add on top of that that if someone in that room would have known about periods there's also other things they might have known about that aren't even related to periods by virtue of being in that room being invited being applied in that company and so we have to bear that in mind as you're going through if you're thinking it's a silly question you're thinking you're not supposed to be there if you are not supposed to be there that means that there will definitely be questions and perspectives that you can bring into that room that wouldn't have been there if only the people that were supposed to be there that said all the things that were already being said by those that were already running those spaces were going to say and so you have to bring your difference if you do notice because you're either being like me you don't notice or you do notice your difference you then play on the difference and say, okay, cool.

23:17Have we thought about this? Have we considered this? What are the implications for this type of group? How have we thought about this for the future? Like all of those kinds of things. So stand on it, own it. And you're making the case which academics have studied. I mean, there's a great guy at the University of Michigan who's done algorithms I don't understand, but that have made the case, Professor Page has made the case for diversity of opinion around a table. And I think that is something that we can all lean into if those women hadn't been in the room or if they had been in the room, they would have saved the company money and trusting that you are there for a reason.

23:51I mean, I always say to younger women, if you are having a moment of self-doubt or if you're not speaking up with something that you have to offer or you're not speaking up in client meetings or you're not speaking up in managerial meetings, your company's not a charity. They're not putting money in your bank account out of a grace and favor program. I mean, they're hiring you and paying you because you're valuable and therefore your opinions and your voice is valuable. Let's talk a little bit more about STEM. You founded STEMETS, which is an organization to encourage more young women to get into STEM, something that you've obviously done throughout your career.

24:30It's similar. My daughter, who's at the risk of bragging about my daughter, who's a PhD astrophysicist, has worked in Girls who code. And I think it's similar from my reading on STEM-ETS. It's a similar girls who code is perhaps more American based and what you've been doing with STEM-ETS is similar. In my research, when we were looking at confidence in girls, we saw data that showed that the drop off in girls in school in STEM subjects happens around kind of 11 to 13 in the States. It's kind of what we, in the states we call middle school. Do you see that? Do you see a drop off around that age?

25:08And if so, what do you think is going on? So there's a number of places that the drop offs happen. And I should say as well that we, so girls who code, sorry, is tech and is more about that teen age range. With STEMETs, we go slightly broader in terms of STEM and STEAM. So STEM being science, technology, engineering and maths and STEAM being that we add the arts and design in there because that's where we believe is the true heart of innovation uh but also you know to your question the the drop-off begins fairly early actually so we see kind of gender stereotyping how that impacts what the girls see that they are able to do so a sense of identity as well as sense of confidence in the in technical and logical things uh we see that kind of from right when they start primary school so kind of five so we we as stemets start from five five yeah yeah you've got to get in there early because it's about the sense of self it's about those formative years of them having those confidence you know having those bricks those confidence bricks right to add to their wall of life of I built an app about a talking unicorn on a weekend and it was fun and people clapped when I presented it and I won a prize like those kinds of things we start from as young as five and we go all the way up to 25 so we we do a kind of a cradle to cradle to start of career almost life cycle because those drop-offs happen kind of throughout those so when I started estimates we did our initial literature review and it was around primary it was around those teen years and then it was again when they're making decisions around university which again will be different for the states because you you don't choose your major you choose your university whereas in this in UK you you choose your major basically at 16 if not 17 years old and you're fixed into that for the duration of your first degree if you choose to follow a degree or you've also got the apprenticeship route and there's lots of different ways to get into industry.

26:55We see the drop-off happening kind of across. They call it, they tend to call it a leaky pipeline here in the UK that as soon as all the different junctures where those decisions can be made, the girls drop off due to confidence, due to lack of belonging and due to not feeling this sense of identity that overlaps with them doing something technical or leaning into a technical pathway, whether that's going into career, going to further study, or even, you know, starting a business based on the tech. I'm so glad you're doing it because having kind of talked to my daughter a lot, and I only understand a small fraction of what she does.

27:30But I do understand that if we don't have women in STEM, we're basically screwed because all of the companies that are working in this field are shaping our world and shaping the products that will impact us and impact our futures now, perhaps more than ever. If we don't have women at the table, or if we aren't represented at the table, then we're going to be excluded from how all of these programs look and sound and feel in the future. Okay, we're going to take a break here. And then I want to come back and ask you what you'd say, Anne-Marie, to a 15-year-old girl today who wants to get into the sciences.

28:12Welcome back to Doing It Anyway. So, Anne-Marie, I'm sure you get asked this all the time, but put yourself in the position of a parent, of a young girl who is thinking of getting into sciences, but might not feel they're good enough, might not feel it's cool enough, might somehow be discouraged from doing something that actually they have the capacity to do what would you tell those parents maybe it's too late maybe i should maybe we should be talking about 10 11 year olds well i was going to say i mean i was about to add the caveat of kind of 15 year old in the in the uk system has already made some some big decisions right unfortunately um that that mean that the pathway that your young person would take might be slightly alternative which is not a bad thing at all we are we are root agnostic at stemets so for a 15 year old it would be have an understanding you know what your 15 year old likes what they're interested in what what maybe drives them away or drives them as well kind of in the positive sense and so there will be spheres of stem of steam that overlap with what they are interested in and so wherever that is i mean the example i always love to give is a couple of years ago we hosted a hack in oxford there was a data hack so this was taking a big twitter data set and giving it to the young women showing them how to kind of play with it manipulate the data understand to take trends sentiment analysis all those kinds of things out of it and ask them to build an infographic you know around something interesting they discovered in the data and this was again like five up to about 18 and we had one girl who was obsessed with one direction so this tells you how far back we're going she went through the twitter streams and the data from the the directioners and analyzed that and came up with her own set of conclusions and infographic her mate supported chelsea the football team so she went through the twitter feed of all the chelsea players and came up with her own infographic whatever and then there was another girl who was five and if you know five-year-olds you know that they don't follow instructions so the five-year-old went and collected her own data on Build-A-Bear which she was obsessed with from those in the in attendance around the room and built an infographic on Build-A-Bear so it's the same data right same use the tech same be creative and tell a story with the data and they're at the same event in the same room at the same time with the same set of volunteers but because we've been asset based and girl led in what they're interested in and it's girls and girls and young non-binary folks and brothers also can come along sometimes and cousins but it's about then saying this is what you're interested in and here's how tech or science engineering the arts the maths is enabling that thing to be a thing it's why i started estimates i thought it was really weird back in 2013 the disconnect between what we were calling kind of computer science education and Instagram that all these teenagers were spending their whole lives on and I was like but the Instagram is the tech is tech driving the internet have you ever thought what do you not like about Instagram if you were going to build your own Instagram what would it look like and that was literally the premise on which Stimet started to say hey like it's part of your life already don't think it's this thing on the side just because the curriculum isn't doesn't have enough room right to show how this is showing up in society at the moment what is it I mean we live in a moment Amory it's part of the reason I wanted to do this series now because I feel like we live in a moment where there was this huge push to encourage more women's networks, more girls' networks.

31:31There was Girls on the Run and Girls Who Code and STEMettes and kind of women's networks and corporations. And now, at least in the States, there's been like this big, cold, freezing hand of don't go anywhere, put on all of that. And we're not even going to mention the fact that anyone is a girl or a woman. And let alone that the playing field is not level, even though we all know the playing field is still not level. How do you respond to that? I mean, I literally had somebody come up to me at a conference recently, a women's networking conference, and it was a guy who said, you know, I think it's, you know, so great.

32:02My wife took my daughter to this kind of group of CEOs, of women CEOs, and, you know, that's really great. But I also worry that it's all gone too far. And, you know, I should be able to have a seat on a board, but now they only want women. And I was like, I was about to pull my hair out. I could have slapped the guy. But how do you respond to this kind of backlash moment that we're in where we had a few years of trying to think we're going to try and level the playing field. And now it's like, nope, we'd rather actually have the playing field at 30 degrees and not have it level. And we don't want to actually mention that women or girls or any other minority or people of colour exist and more than exist have faced barriers to entry to power?