Ep 44 Navigating American Tech Culture as a Brazilian [Interview with Juliano Forti, Senior Solutions Architect]

Congresswoman Analilia Mejía is diplomatic, but never shies away from confrontation. As the first Afro-Latina elected to the United States Congress and a daughter of Dominican and Colombian immigrants, she's spent 25 years learning how to build trust across real political and cultural differences. This conversation covers clarity of purpose as the anchor for adapting across cultures, a concrete framework for disagreeing without becoming disagreeable, and a surprising tactic she uses in the highest-stakes rooms in the country. This conversation is for you if you've ever wondered how much of your accent, your culture, or your real self you're allowed to bring into a room that doesn't look or sound like you. --- Timestamps 0:00 Introduction 0:40 Adapting to the room versus editing who you are 2:44 Clarity of purpose as a center of gravity 4:33 The housing story, and what assumption got wrong 7:55 Disagree without being disagreeable 10:51 Letting go of microaggressions, honestly 13:00 Never pick doormat 13:37 The language-buffer tactic 16:26 Building trust with someone who sees the world differently 19:05 People power and the Overton window23:03 The best question to ask anyone you admire --- THE GUEST Congresswoman Analilia Mejia represents New Jersey's 11th Congressional District. Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, to Colombian and Dominican immigrant parents, she spent 25 years as a labor organizer, policy advocate, and coalition builder before winning a special election to Congress in April 2026. Her organizing career included leading the New Jersey Working Families Alliance, serving as Bernie Sanders's national political director during the 2020 presidential campaign, and later serving as deputy director of the Women's Bureau at the U.S. Department of Labor. As a member of Congress, she also sits on the House Homeland Security and Small Business committees. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/analiliafornj Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/repanalilia/ --- THE HOST Tannia Suárez is an executive communication coach who works with senior leaders, directors, and founders navigating high-stakes professional environments in English as non-native speakers. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanniasuarez/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asktannia/ --- THE COMMUNITY Become a Leadership English Insider: https://tanniasuarez.com/insider Watch more episodes of Leadership English: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcast

You're in a boardroom. Someone asks you a simple question, are we going to hit the numbers this quarter. You know the answer. You've known it for two weeks. But what comes out is context, and more context, and somewhere around the word "July" you can feel the room start to drift. And then, very kindly, someone asks, "Sorry, so is that a yes?" If that moment made your stomach drop, this one's for you. I walk through why over-explaining isn't actually a language problem (the people I see do this most are the ones with the most expertise, not the least English), the three layers underneath it, and why "be more concise" almost never means what you think it means. You'll leave with the exact question to ask yourself before you answer anything important, a set of openers that force the answer out first, and a one-week exercise you can start today. This one is for you if you've ever watched a room lose patience with you mid-explanation and walked away thinking it was your English, when it wasn't. 📌 In this episode: 0:00 The boardroom scene 1:06 What's actually happening 2:10 The three layers 7:17 Why the usual fixes don't work 8:26 The one question 8:59 The before and after 10:04 The openers 11:21 Explaining vs. persuading and the ladder 13:55 Offer the depth1 4:47 The silence and the intonation piece 17:00 The story after the point 17:50 The exercise 19:37 The closing reframe 20:41 The CTA If this one hit home, I'd love for you to join my Leadership English Accelerator, where we take ideas like this one and practice them with expert feedback: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/leadership 📌 Follow Tannia: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asktannia LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanniasuarez/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asktannia/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@asktannia YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tanniasuarez Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6i2KREABJOlsZmIuEoDsig?si=777b14460e6a4357 Podcast: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcastBlog: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/blog Listen to the full conversation and catch every episode of Leadership English: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcast 🔴 Want exclusive access to episode bonuses? Join the Leadership English Insider community: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/insider-bonus #LeadershipCommunication #ExecutivePresence #BusinessEnglish

For non-native English speakers who've ever felt like the funniest, sharpest version of themselves only exists in their first language, this conversation names something rarely said out loud. Omer Haciomeroglu spent eleven years building a tech company in English, his second language, and slowly noticed a specific superpower wasn't translating: his humor. The timing, the cultural references, the split-second wit that builds trust with investors and teammates, all of it moved slower in English, and by the time the joke was ready, the room had moved on. We talk about what he calls the chokehold, the fear-based overthinking that freezes even highly capable founders mid-sentence, the invisible stress most immigrant founders carry alone, and the breakdown at a dinner table that changed how he leads. We also get into why, after eleven years and two major breakdowns, he refuses to call any of it failure, and the forty-four years it took him to fully claim his identity as a sculptor alongside his coaching work. This conversation is for you if you've ever felt like your personality gets lost somewhere between your first language and your second. --- 📌 In this episode: 0:00 Introduction 1:01 Meet Omer Haciomeroglu 1:20 The "stolen superpower": losing his humor in English 4:10 "By the time you communicate, it's already late" 5:54 The engine brake: choking under high-stakes pressure 8:01 Years of stuttering and the inner work that changed it 10:12 Removing yourself from the equation 12:01 The 100 open browser tabs metaphor 12:46 Why simplifying reads as more competent, not less 14:39 Culture, communication styles, and adapting without losing yourself 16:42 The fear underneath every communication block 19:06 The overthinking chokehold 20:14 Intention versus expectation 22:53 The debrief: how real transformation actually happens 25:39 The five-minute grounding call 27:31 Scar tissue, not failure 29:58 The dinner where it all came out 31:49 44 years to say yes to being a sculptor 32:44 The fear of being seen 34:20 It's like breathing, you have to do it 35:34 Leaving the startup for breathing room 36:22 "And, not or": integrating art, tech, and leadership 37:22 Expression versus communication 38:25 Closing thoughts --- 📌 About Omer Haciomeroglu: Omer Haciomeroglu is a founder coach and contemporary artist based in Austin, Texas. Born in Istanbul, he studied in the US and has lived across California, Sweden, and Turkey. He spent eleven years as a tech founder in deep-tech product design, hardware, software, UI/UX, and industrial design, navigating two major breakdowns he now treats as raw material rather than failure. Today he advises deep-tech founders hands-on, from post-MVP through Seed to Series B, on execution and leadership. Alongside his coaching work, he is a self-taught sculptor working primarily in animal bones and epoxy clay, an identity it took him forty-four years to fully claim. 📌 Follow Omer: Instagram (@omerh.xyz) — https://www.instagram.com/omerh.xyz/ and LinkedIn (Omer Haciomeroglu) — https://www.linkedin.com/in/omerha/ 📌 More from Omer: https://omerh.xyz and https://www.qwake.tech --- Listen to the full conversation and catch every episode of Leadership English: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcast 🔴 Want exclusive access to episode bonuses? Join the Leadership English Insider community: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/insider --- 📱 Follow Tannia:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asktanniaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanniasuarez/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asktannia/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@asktanniaYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tanniasuarezSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6i2KREABJOlsZmIuEoDsig?si=777b14460e6a4357Podcast: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcastBlog: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/blog🔔 Subscribe for weekly strategies on executive presence and leadership communication for global professionals.

For non-native English speakers who've ever said the right thing in a meeting and watched someone else get the credit for it, this episode names exactly why that keeps happening, and it isn't your English.Tannia breaks down why most executive presence training was never built with non-native speakers in mind, reverse-engineered instead from what already sounded familiar to the native English speakers writing the rules. She walks through the real mechanics of the translation lag (a timing problem, not a fluency problem), why directness needs calibration rather than a fixed formula, and why the apology for an accent costs more credibility than the accent itself ever does.This conversation is for you if you've ever felt like you were doing everything the leadership books tell you to do, and it still didn't feel like it fit. 📌 In this episode: 0:00 The meeting where someone else got the credit for your point 1:06 Why the executive presence model was never built for you 2:43 The reframe: wrong scoreboard, not behind 3:14 Three things nobody tells you about executive presence 3:21 The translation lag is a timing problem, not a fluency problem 4:26 Client story: replacing nervous filler with grounded pauses 5:21 Directness isn't rudeness, it's calibration 6:35 Client story: the executive told she was too quiet 7:36 Your accent isn't costing you the room, your apology is 8:53 Client story: the executive who over-explained to compensate 9:55 The three moves to build instead 11:51 Closing thoughts 📌 About Tannia:Tannia Suárez is an Executive and Leadership Communication Coach who helps ambitious non-native English-speaking professionals build executive presence, communicate with clarity, and lead with confidence in English. Through her coaching practice and the Leadership English Podcast, she works with international executives across industries to close the gap between who they already are and how they're perceived under pressure.Listen to the full conversation and catch every episode of Leadership English: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/podcast 🔴 Want exclusive access and bonuses? Join the Leadership English Insider community: https://www.tanniasuarez.com/insider#LeadershipCommunication

For non-native English speakers building executive presence, this conversation asks a question most leaders feel but rarely say out loud: what does it actually cost to spend years hiding your accent just to fit into the room? Silke Meixner was born in Frankfurt, baptized in Kabul, and raised across Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and the Congo before her family settled in Germany. By the time she built her career at IBM and Deloitte, she'd learned to sound as proper as possible, toning down her accent and her international background at every turn. We talk about the moment that changed her relationship with her own executive presence: a teammate's comment, "you were actually really fun," that revealed the extra-formal persona she'd built for consulting. From there, we get into the three-legged stool she uses to stay grounded in high-stakes meetings, cultural fluency as a leadership skill, why small talk works differently across cultures, how intonation alone can shift English from sounding confident to sounding aggressive, and the framework she calls cautious authenticity, knowing what to share at work and when. This conversation is for you if you're a non-native English speaker who has ever wondered whether the polished, formal version of yourself is actually helping your credibility, or quietly working against it. 📌 In this episode: 0:00 Introduction 0:59 Meet Silke Meixner 1:44 Growing up across Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Congo, and Germany 2:46 Why her multicultural upbringing became a career asset 4:08 Owning her accent instead of hiding it 6:23 Building an "extra formal" persona in consulting 7:56 "You were actually really fun" 9:01 Why relaxing is received better than staying formal 10:16 How ease unlocks clearer thinking 11:25 Staying grounded as the only non-native speaker, only woman, only virtual attendee 12:03 The three-legged stool framework 14:49 Active listening and reading hidden agendas 16:45 Why small talk is relationship infrastructure 17:35 The ask-and-share formula for small talk 20:31 The "what?" intonation exercise 21:38 Male-dominated rooms and choosing what to conform to24:02 Sharing her passion for benevolent AI 27:35 Cautious authenticity, what's safe to share and when 29:20 Her rule: never ask about kids or a spouse unless mentioned 31:38 What she wishes more people asked her 33:19 "And, not or," integrating AI and ancient wisdom 35:02 Closing thoughts 📌 About Silke Meixner: Silke Meixner is a Principal at ZS Consulting, where she leads customer-centric marketing and digital transformation work for global organizations. Born in Frankfurt and raised across Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and the Congo before settling in Germany for her high school years, she went on to study and work in the UK before building her career at IBM and Deloitte. She now lives in Los Angeles, holds dual German and US citizenship, and travels internationally for her work in technology and innovation consulting. Alongside her corporate career, Silke is involved in initiatives promoting benevolent AI and describes herself as "a hippie in corporate clothing," integrating ancient wisdom traditions with her work in digital transformation. 📌 Follow Silke on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/silkemeixner/