By Understood
Whitney Valentine-Wafer has ADHD and never finished college. Yet she’s served as chief financial officer for several organizations and built a career as a nonprofit finance professional. Her journey includes employers like Creative Commons and the San Francisco Ballet. Whitney shares how she was diagnosed with ADHD as an adult — and how she found her way despite being fired from several jobs in her 20s. She says the key to her path was reflecting on what worked and what didn’t work for her brain. Hear her career advice, including why she says temping can be a great way to try out different work roles.
To find a transcript for this episode and more resources, visit the episode page at Understood. https://www.understood.org/podcast/ho…
We love hearing from our listeners. Email us at [email protected].
Understood is a nonprofit and social impact organization dedicated to shaping a world where the 1 in 5 people who learn and think differently can thrive. Learn more about “How’d You Get THAT Job?!” and all our podcasts at u.org/podcasts. Copyright © 2022 Understood for All, Inc. All rights reserved.
Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)
0:00
if you like listening to this podcast
0:02
then check out init a podcast that
0:05
explores the joys and frustrations of
0:07
supporting kids who learn and think
0:08
differently we chat with parents
0:10
teachers and sometimes kids about topics
0:12
that aren’t talked about enough ready to
0:15
listen subscribe to in it on apple
0:16
podcast spotify or wherever you get your
0:19
podcast
0:20
[Music]
0:26
from the understood podcast network this
0:28
is how’d you get that job a podcast that
0:31
explores the unique and often unexpected
0:33
career paths of people with learning and
0:35
thinking differences
0:37
my name is eleni matheau and i’m a user
0:39
researcher here at understood that means
0:41
i spend a lot of time thinking about how
0:43
we find jobs we love that reflect how we
0:45
learn and who we are
0:47
i’ll be your host
0:48
[Music]
0:50
whitney valentin wafer never finished
0:53
college but she was able to become the
0:55
chief financial officer for several
0:57
organizations
0:58
today she’s a consultant on financial
1:00
matters for not-for-profits
1:02
for years she didn’t know she had adhd
1:04
and was only recently diagnosed as an
1:06
adult welcome to the show whitney thank
1:09
you whitney you never finished college
1:11
but you ended up as a chief financial
1:13
officer and you’ve worked at some really
1:15
interesting places and i would love to
1:17
hear some of the highlights of cool
1:19
places that you’ve worked that you’re
1:21
proud of yeah one of my very favorites i
1:24
was the chief financial officer for 4505
1:27
meets which is both a packaged pork rind
1:30
company and also a barbecue restaurant
1:34
group
1:35
it’s especially amusing to me because i
1:37
am a vegetarian i also worked in a lot
1:39
of
1:40
non-profit spaces so i worked for the
1:43
san francisco ballet the san francisco
1:45
conservatory of music creative commons
1:48
so we recently did some research that
1:51
revealed five common catalysts that kind
1:54
of force adults to confront personal
1:57
challenges relating to thinking and
1:59
learning differences
2:00
and one of the things that comes up a
2:02
lot is seeing others go through
2:05
some sort of identification process or
2:07
close relatives being diagnosed
2:09
themselves i believe that this applies
2:11
to your story so i thought that would be
2:12
a nice place to start you went
2:14
undiagnosed for a really long time so if
2:16
you could just tell us a little bit
2:18
about what prompted your diagnosis
2:20
you know it’s very funny because my
2:22
daughter was diagnosed many years ago
2:25
it hadn’t occurred to me that would be
2:28
applicable to me and i hadn’t really
2:31
thought about it and i am in my early
2:33
40s and women who were growing up in the
2:37
80s and 90s it was so rare to see an
2:40
adhd diagnosis
2:43
and so you know i spent my whole school
2:46
career
2:47
doing
2:48
absolutely the bare minimum on the last
2:50
day before a project was due and
2:52
scraping by
2:54
and for some reason it just never
2:56
flagged for anyone and i was talking to
2:58
my mom about it a few years ago and she
3:00
said oh yeah i have adhd
3:03
this would have been really helpful to
3:04
know
3:06
i started really putting a lot of pieces
3:08
together and my husband’s really
3:11
addicted to tick tock and so he started
3:13
sending me adhd tick tocks and saying
3:16
have you thought about the fact that you
3:18
might have adhd because everything here
3:22
is applicable to you and you know when i
3:24
was talking to the therapist about it
3:27
she really was able to highlight all of
3:29
the ways that you know in my career i
3:32
have kind of accidentally failed up in
3:35
some ways where i was really not
3:37
successful at lower level jobs that
3:40
didn’t require a lot of creative thought
3:42
terrible at it i was fired multiple
3:45
times in my 20s i
3:47
just was having a really hard time
3:49
finding the right fit but then as i got
3:52
more and more complex roles i would
3:54
really thrive in them and i
3:57
didn’t really understand that that was
3:58
partly just that’s the way that my brain
4:01
works that when there’s a challenge it’s
4:03
easier for me to do really well
4:05
yeah i love that and that actually
4:07
relates to
4:09
something else that we hear commonly in
4:10
research often when people are
4:12
struggling people don’t recognize that’s
4:15
related to a thinking and learning
4:16
difference in that moment but then we
4:18
hear especially with late diagnosis that
4:21
once people recognize what might be
4:23
going on they start to reflect back on
4:25
like childhood and past struggles yeah
4:27
it absolutely reframed 30-plus years of
4:31
failures that i had been like maybe i’m
4:33
just really bad at everything
4:36
and i think that
4:38
one of the big pieces has been really
4:40
helping my daughter navigate a remote
4:43
first year in college and really trying
4:45
to help her find tips and tricks to get
4:49
the adhd to work in an environment that
4:51
isn’t ideal for her and made everything
4:53
click for me like oh i just developed
4:57
all of these tips and tricks over the
4:59
years trying to make sure that i kept a
5:02
job do you want to talk a little bit
5:04
about some of the struggles you had
5:06
particularly around that time where you
5:09
said you were fired from a few jobs and
5:11
how that might actually relate to your
5:14
adhd so i ended up in my career path
5:18
because i had been a temp i said oh i
5:21
need to pay some bills and i started
5:23
temping and it turned out it was
5:24
something that i’m really great at and
5:26
partly just because it was a new
5:27
interesting
5:28
job every other week and so i ended up
5:31
in a longer term role in a pretty large
5:34
organization i had been tempting as a
5:36
staff accountant level and when i had
5:39
been working there the cfo for the whole
5:42
organization had
5:44
come up to me one day and said hey i
5:46
have an assistant controller role that
5:48
is for a different division and i think
5:50
you would be perfect at it and so
5:53
that job was really interesting to me
5:56
and that’s really the job where i
5:58
learned how to budget i had the
6:00
opportunity to work for the president
6:03
and he took the time to sit down with me
6:06
and say
6:07
i know you haven’t done this before but
6:08
let’s talk about what i think about when
6:11
i’m doing this process and it was a
6:14
little bit like getting to
6:16
learn on the job as opposed to taking
6:20
classes it was a really interesting
6:23
role and really made me
6:25
feel excited about what i was doing and
6:28
then the person who had hired me left
6:30
and there were a lot of changes and so i
6:32
transitioned into a slightly different
6:34
role at that same organization
6:37
and it was awful it was absolutely one
6:40
of the worst jobs i’ve ever had and it
6:42
was really just a lot of kind of data
6:45
entry and the more miserable i would get
6:48
the less i would be able to motivate
6:49
myself to do it so not only was this job
6:53
boring and monotonous but i was falling
6:55
behind because i couldn’t motivate
6:57
myself
6:58
to do the work and so i ultimately got
7:02
let go and it sort of forced me to say
7:05
okay what wasn’t working about that job
7:07
and i was able to really say okay i just
7:10
don’t want to do data entry that was not
7:12
interesting when previously the role at
7:14
the same organization had been build a
7:17
budget
7:18
and put together presentations and do
7:21
analytics yeah yeah so i just wanted to
7:24
touch on that and just say you know it’s
7:26
really interesting because obviously the
7:29
worst job is really subjective for
7:31
people and it really depends on people’s
7:33
like own preferences and strengths and
7:37
i think it was really interesting that
7:38
you after that job you reflected back on
7:41
like why wasn’t that the right job for
7:42
you
7:43
so i wanted to talk a little bit more
7:46
about what you learnt about yourself in
7:49
those times where you were in a job that
7:51
you really hated and also what
7:54
encouraged you to keep going and figure
7:56
out what was the right environment for
7:59
you
8:00
yeah so i moved across the country and i
8:02
had to take another lower level job than
8:04
what i had previously been doing which
8:06
is actually at the san francisco ballet
8:09
but i had a boss who
8:11
was able to really
8:13
sit down with me and say here’s how we
8:15
can make this job interesting for you
8:18
you really said i know that you’re
8:19
overqualified for this but let’s figure
8:21
out how to get you into the right role
8:23
moving forward and
8:25
i learned so much from her that it
8:28
really helped me
8:29
going into my next few roles i’ve really
8:32
tried to
8:34
think about all of the areas that i can
8:37
really
8:38
make a positive difference reflecting on
8:40
the ways that i have had bad fits in
8:43
jobs i think have made me a way better
8:46
manager of people
8:48
all of my staff for the last five years
8:51
have been willing to follow me anywhere
8:55
and i think that’s partly me reflecting
8:57
on the things that i don’t enjoy or i
8:59
don’t excel at really has made me a
9:02
little bit more receptive to
9:04
understanding when there are other areas
9:06
where people who work for me don’t excel
9:08
at and then talking with them about how
9:10
we can
9:11
reorganize a team to make sure that
9:13
everyone is doing the things that are
9:15
the best fit for them or how we can make
9:18
it so that the
9:20
less desirable parts of the job aren’t
9:23
overwhelming because i definitely know
9:26
that in the jobs where i have been let
9:28
go it’s that the part of the job that
9:31
doesn’t work for me is overwhelming and
9:33
then i recognize that cycle in myself
9:36
where
9:36
i get overwhelmed by something that i
9:38
absolutely don’t want to do and i’m
9:40
dreading and then i fall behind and then
9:42
it’s you know sort of spirals out and
9:44
you know i can be down
9:46
working on just raw data but if i do
9:49
that all day every day i will eventually
9:51
burn out and my brain will just stop
9:54
caring about it
9:56
yeah so it sounds like you did a lot of
9:58
self-reflecting and now you’re really
10:00
aware that tends to be the pattern for
10:02
you so what is it about finance that you
10:05
find exciting and that you find really
10:08
works with your brain yeah there’s two
10:10
big pieces one is that in a lot of ways
10:14
finance feels like a giant puzzle to be
10:17
solved right so it’s how do we get the
10:19
answer that we’re trying to
10:21
get in terms of either growth or kind of
10:25
end results and how do we get the
10:27
information in a way that is really
10:29
clear for everyone that’s another
10:32
favorite part of the job for me is i
10:35
love to make a presentation and it turns
10:37
out that you make a lot of presentations
10:40
when you’re at that higher level so for
10:43
me it’s not just solving the big picture
10:45
problem but it’s also solving how to
10:49
tell the story of what’s happening at
10:52
the organization so how do you paint the
10:55
picture that you need to tell to whoever
10:58
that audience is one of my very favorite
11:01
things is thinking about
11:04
how do i present the same information in
11:06
four different ways so that the person
11:09
who is getting the information
11:11
understands it in a way that makes sense
11:13
to them and that particularly applies to
11:16
me when i think about how a lot of times
11:18
i haven’t really understood what
11:20
somebody’s asking me and then i now am
11:23
really
11:24
good at asking
11:26
a lot of clarifying questions so that i
11:28
can get to the kind of root of what the
11:31
question is
11:32
but i really love
11:34
being able to interpret information and
11:37
be able to package it in a way that
11:40
whoever is receiving that information
11:43
can understand and get what they need
11:45
out of it and that to me has been really
11:48
satisfying do you have a particular
11:50
moment where
11:51
you had that realization or things
11:53
really turned around for you and you
11:55
were able to find your place in your
11:57
groove yeah i absolutely have actually
12:00
that happened i always say that i had a
12:03
moment which i always called like
12:05
whatever the opposite of imposter
12:07
syndrome is happened to me in 2015.
12:11
i had come out of a really challenging
12:12
role where the fit was really bad and i
12:15
had stayed at a job for four years and
12:17
it just
12:18
i had been feeling really discouraged
12:21
and i said okay i’m gonna just go back
12:22
to temping for a little bit and i ended
12:24
up at an organization which was a
12:27
children’s clothing company they had a
12:29
brand new cfo i talked to him i said
12:31
everything’s a mess i just need you to
12:33
know that they don’t really know what
12:35
they’re doing none of this makes sense i
12:38
am happy to work with you so he actually
12:40
hired me on brought me on as director of
12:42
finance
12:44
and
12:45
we started to build a budget and i said
12:47
this is bad the budget like all of the
12:49
templates we’re using are bad and none
12:51
of these numbers make sense and i went
12:54
through and i dug in and i rebuilt
12:56
everything from the ground up and i said
12:58
we’re gonna go bankrupt and
13:00
my boss said no way
13:02
absolutely not that’s not the case and i
13:05
walked him through it and he said oh
13:07
you’re right we are gonna go bankrupt
13:11
and we did actually go bankrupt but i
13:14
remember the moment that i had spent so
13:16
many years saying okay do i really know
13:18
what i’m doing and i was on a call me
13:22
without my degree
13:23
being the expert answering questions to
13:26
two sets of lawyers on this call so that
13:29
we could do all of the filings for this
13:31
bankruptcy and that was the moment when
13:34
i said oh no i’m i am way smarter than
13:36
i’ve been giving myself credit for and
13:39
after that moment i have never doubted
13:41
my ability
13:43
to do what i can do because after that
13:45
even when i was doing jobs that were
13:47
boring or parts that were really tedious
13:50
i said okay i just need to get through
13:52
this i just need to figure out how i can
13:54
plan out my week month year so that we
13:57
can barrel through this where previously
14:00
i had been like oh maybe i’m just bad at
14:02
this rather than no this is just a
14:04
boring piece of the work that i don’t
14:06
particularly find engaging but i need to
14:09
make sure that i’m getting it done and
14:11
over with
14:13
yeah and that’s such an important
14:14
distinction it’s am i bad at this or do
14:17
i just not enjoy yeah and i think that
14:19
until i’d had that moment where i
14:21
suddenly realized that i did know what i
14:23
was talking about that kind of prior to
14:26
that i just assumed that i was bad at
14:28
things and now i say oh no i just don’t
14:30
like this particular piece and now that
14:32
you’ve gone through that is there
14:34
anything that you feel like might have
14:37
helped you
14:38
come to that realization sooner or get
14:41
on the right path i think that it would
14:43
have been really helpful if i had been
14:46
able to either recognize or somebody
14:47
else had been able to recognize hey
14:49
something weird is going on here that
14:52
you’re either absolutely doing amazing
14:55
or you’re just absolutely failing and i
14:59
wish that i
15:00
knew what i know now but i don’t regret
15:04
any of the past there are definitely
15:07
pivotal moments in my life where i think
15:09
that if i had
15:10
understood what my challenges were and
15:14
how adhd was creating an impact that i
15:16
definitely could have had a different
15:18
trajectory i think i could have finished
15:21
my degree really easily if i had
15:22
understood why i was having such a hard
15:24
time i maybe would have left jobs sooner
15:27
if i had realized that they were a
15:29
really bad fit for me yeah i think the
15:32
fact that you didn’t finish college and
15:35
had not a very traditional trajectory is
15:38
actually super interesting and yeah i
15:41
agree like particularly uncommon in
15:43
finance most people do follow more of
15:45
traditional education path to get to
15:48
finance the thing that everyone says
15:50
that is both a compliment and a huge
15:53
frustration of mine is you have such an
15:56
unusual background
15:58
and i think it’s because typically most
16:02
people who work in finance have done go
16:06
get your degree go get your mba
16:08
work for two years with a consulting
16:10
firm and then go be
16:13
an executive at these organizations and
16:15
i
16:16
worked my way up through every possible
16:19
job that’s been a struggle sometimes
16:22
because some people absolutely don’t
16:24
care about it because 20 years of
16:26
experience is a lot of experience and
16:29
some people really care about it and
16:32
it’s sort of absolutely a non-starter
16:34
for them so i know that you mentioned
16:35
that you’re consulting now and so i
16:37
would love to hear about why that works
16:40
so well for you i have had a real
16:42
opportunity to be exposed to a huge
16:45
range of scales of organizations and so
16:47
i’ve been able to really help a lot of
16:49
kind of smaller non-profits think about
16:52
how to both budget and how to manage
16:55
pieces a lot of organizations when
16:58
they’re smaller don’t necessarily think
17:00
about building that longer range plan
17:03
and build in a longer range cash
17:05
forecast and because i have sort of been
17:07
living and dying by cash in in these
17:10
smaller organizations that’s one of the
17:13
skills that i learned how to do really
17:14
quickly is here’s how we can build both
17:17
a budget and then also here’s how we can
17:19
translate that budget into
17:22
what your cash flow looks like yeah it’s
17:24
interesting how all of your experience
17:27
like you’re able to refer
17:29
back and be able to figure out like what
17:31
applies where yeah that’s one of my
17:34
favorite things and as i have slipped
17:36
between different industries
17:38
fundamentally at the end of the day
17:40
finances finance one of the most fun
17:42
jobs i had was working at the
17:44
conservatory of music and it wasn’t a
17:46
good fit but i did have one very fun
17:48
piece of that job and that was teaching
17:50
musicians how to budget because it was
17:53
all of these faculty who were orchestra
17:56
musicians and professors of music and if
17:59
you can teach
18:01
an orchestra musician how to
18:04
make a department budget you can teach
18:06
anyone how to make a budget
18:10
okay so i would love for you to share
18:12
any advice or insights that you have for
18:15
other young people with thinking
18:16
learning differences that think maybe
18:18
college isn’t for them i think that what
18:21
i
18:22
learned as i’ve gone through this
18:24
process is for me i found that temping
18:27
really worked
18:28
well i got a huge
18:31
range of opportunities and i got to
18:33
understand the things that i was good at
18:36
and to also show that even though i
18:38
didn’t have the background on paper that
18:40
they were looking for that i was in fact
18:43
more than capable of doing the job and
18:45
so
18:46
that ended up really being my secret to
18:49
success and if your brain works that way
18:52
it can be a really great way to find the
18:55
right fit and also to find out what’s
18:57
not the right fit because temping
18:59
definitely early on gave me
19:02
the exposure to a huge number of
19:04
organizations and that was a great way
19:07
to gain a lot of experience without
19:10
having gone a traditional path thanks
19:13
for being on the show with me thank you
19:14
so much for having me it was really a
19:16
pleasure
19:19
[Music]
19:28
this has been how’d you get that job a
19:30
part of the understood podcast network
19:33
you can listen and subscribe to how did
19:34
you get that job on apple spotify or
19:37
wherever you get your podcast
19:39
and if you like what you heard today
19:40
tell someone about it
19:42
how’d you get that job is for you so we
19:44
want to make sure you’re getting what
19:45
you need go to u.org that job to share
19:48
your thoughts and to find resources from
19:50
every episode that’s the letter u as in
19:52
understood.org
19:55
that job
19:56
do you have a learning difference in a
19:57
job you’re passionate about email us at
20:00
that job understood.org if you’d like to
20:02
tell us how you got that job we’d love
20:05
to hear from you
20:06
as a non-profit and social impact
20:08
organization i’m just literalizing the
20:10
help of listeners like you to create
20:12
podcasts like this one to reach and
20:13
support more people in more places we
20:15
have an ambitious mission to shape the
20:17
world for difference and we welcome you
20:19
to join us in achieving our goals learn
20:21
more at understood.org
20:23
mission
20:25
how to get that job was created by
20:26
andrew lee and is produced by gretchen
20:29
viestra and justin d wright who also
20:32
wrote our theme song laura key is our
20:34
editorial director at understood
20:36
scott cashier is our creative director
20:39
seth melnick and brianna berry are our
20:41
production directors thanks again for
20:43
listening
20:48
[Music]
21:04
you
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
***
From The Good Men Project on Medium
What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean? | My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me | The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex | The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence |
Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS.
A $50 annual membership gives you an all access pass. You can be a part of every call, group, class and community.
A $25 annual membership gives you access to one class, one Social Interest group and our online communities.
A $12 annual membership gives you access to our Friday calls with the publisher, our online community.
Register New Account
Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: Shutterstock