Why Daisy Auger-Dominguez's Grandmother Never Taught Her To Cook

Raised in the Dominican Republic, Daisy Auger-Dominguez moved to The United States when she was 16 years old. It was a shock. Literally, a shock: "I moved a couple of weeks before Halloween, and I had never experienced an American Halloween," she laughs in an interview with Latina to Latina host Alicia Menendez. "I'm fixated with the images of people dressing up and going to get candy from people's houses... [It] was a very strange cultural experience for me!"

Now a powerhouse who has held top roles at Google, Viacom, and Disney, Auger-Dominguez has internalized her experience of moving to America in other ways. As a junior in high school, a bully "would just berate me with racial slurs that, quite frankly, I didn't even know were racial slurs," she remembers. She had never experienced anything like it.

It wasn't just kids at school who sought to define her. The United States as a whole did, too: "The term 'Hispanic' was completely unknown to me until I moved to the States," Auger-Dominguez tells Menendez.

Which brings us to her high-powered role now, which is to promote diversity and inclusion at Viacom from the ground up. It sounds like corporate-speak, but it's something Auger-Dominguez is deeply passionate about. "[It] has been the most transformative experience of my life and where I found my purpose," she says.

Auger-Dominguez and Menendez also talk about the human side of corporate inclusion, how biracial people can "flex" between spaces, and what you should actually be doing at networking events.

Listen to the podcast here.

Latina to Latina is a new Bustle podcast where Alicia Menendez talks to remarkable Latinas about making it, faking it, and everything in between. Starting April 10, every Tuesday there will be a new episode of Latina to Latina that will center on the challenges of existing, and then thriving, as women of color.

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You can read the full transcript of the episode here.