Dorothy Chang
[00:00:00] Jolie Downs: Welcome to the Career Wanderlust podcast, your compass for new career horizons. Today, we are talking with Dorothy Chang.
[00:00:07] Dorothy has excelled in all avenues of communications. She started her career excelling in the PR agency world before starting her own public relations agency. Then she went on to become the first woman to start up a VC fund investing in the crypto blockchain space. From there, she went into the corporate world, holding head of communications and marketing roles for companies such as Foursquare and Paxos, and eventually becoming president of KodeWithKlossy.
[00:00:35] Today, Dorothy is now the co founder of Lynx Collective, a membership community built for tech startup founders and inspiring founders where they can learn and grow together. I think it's amazing and I'm excited to learn more. Dorothy, thank you for joining us on the Career Wanderlist podcast. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:53] It's great to be here. Oh, I'm really appreciate you coming and I'm super excited to learn a little bit about what you feel has helped propel you in your own career because you have excelled in all the avenues within comms. Is there any advice or belief you've found has helped you the most throughout your career?
[00:01:14] Dorothy Chang: Yeah, I'll tell you, when I first landed in PR, I didn't really know for sure if that was what I wanted to do and how long I would want to do it for, but I took an approach of saying, Hey, let me learn as much as I possibly can. And maybe I'll learn more about other roles that I can play and other industries and companies and different things.
[00:01:42] I felt like I knew so little about the world and how it worked, so I just took that approach of let me just learn as much as I can. Let me do as much as I can advance as much as I can. And I will better position myself for whatever is next, if there's something else. And I realized throughout my career, I've taken a lot of different kinds of turns,
[00:02:07] none of it was predictable, but having that mindset of, trying to learn as much as I could and do as well as I could, wherever I was really helped me to get a sense of the world and the part I wanted to play in it.
[00:02:25] Jolie Downs: Absolutely. And I love this advice because look when, especially when you're starting off and you're new in a new position or coming into new career, you don't always know exactly what it is that you want or what's going to resonate with you the best.
[00:02:37] And that is the best way to figure it out is to throw yourself in, to learn as much as you possibly can to keep that mind open, take in everything and then figure out what it is that you love, what it is you don't love and what's the right next step from there. And it seems like you've been doing this
[00:02:53] each step of your career. Just looking at how you expanded. Would you say that's true?
[00:02:59] Dorothy Chang: Yeah, absolutely. I started off In tech PR, working at different agencies. And I worked first with really big brands. but I had a lot of curiosity about startups and I learned a lot about them. And I realized that I was spending a lot of time on my own, just exploring the startup world and talking to founders and going to start at meetup events.
[00:03:24] And that was what was drawing me in. So then it made sense for me to focus on doing PR for startups, because that's that seemed to be where my passion was leading me. But if I'd only stayed focused on doing the job I was doing, it wouldn't have discovered that. And so I think that's a big part of it is having a curiosity about what is out there in the world.
[00:03:48] And going after how you can best satiate that curiosity is going to help you, right? You want to find where you have some natural affinities and interests and bring that closer to the work that you're doing because that's how you're going to bring the most passion, the most motivation, the most ambition if you're really excited about the work
[00:04:10] Jolie Downs: you're doing.
[00:04:11] Absolutely. As a caveat, I, mentioned that this is great advice for people earlier in their career, but it's actually just great advice for every step of your career, every step of your career. Yeah, you should consistently be asking yourself these questions and looking at how you can expand, how you can grow, where do you want to go next?
[00:04:27] What's, the right thing? So thank you. This is really good advice all around because a lot of times we get a little stuck, huh? I just feel like a lot of times we're not really. Looking around, you just get used to what it is that you're doing. So
[00:04:40] Dorothy Chang: yeah, I would say the other part of that too is, not being quiet about it either, about what you're interested in, right?
[00:04:47] Like you can do a lot of research on your own, but you also learn so much from other people. So if you want to learn more about what somebody's work is, ask them, right? Don't be afraid. Don't be shy. People love to talk about themselves and what they do. And if you have a curiosity about them, ask them.
[00:05:04] THen even more they'll be even more willing to share what they know and share their life with you. And exercise that curiosity and ask for what you want to learn. Ask for what you want to get. You're not going to get what you don't ask for, and so it's a really, it seems like an obvious thing, but I think especially early in, in someone's career, you can just get stuck in that mindset of I'm just going to do what my boss tells me to do what I'm supposed to do.
[00:05:35] And, and the reality is you can have a lot more say in your career and what you do if you show what you're interested in and ask for what you're interested in and move in that direction and move yourself proactively in that direction.
[00:05:53] Jolie Downs: Absolutely. Speaking up is... it's a must, isn't it? really.
[00:05:58] and I don't think, I know you mentioned that it, seems obvious, but even though it may seem obvious, I believe the biggest percentage is not asking. And so it's really important to be reminded that we do need to ask, that you need to ask what it is and share what your interests are, what it is that you want to be doing next or what you're interested in learning.
[00:06:18] I love this advice. I think it's applicable a every stage and for anyone who's listening. So now what about.. Look, I'm curious if this is how you went from having your own PR agency to then investing into this crypto blockchain, starting a VC fund. that's a really interesting jump, so what helped you do that?
[00:06:44] Dorothy Chang: Yeah. So again, like I, I mentioned before, I, I found myself really drawn to the startup world and I was spending a lot of time in it. actually I want to tell two stories, the first one is about, when I first met you and Paradigm, right? So I was working at Edelman and we were mostly working with very big brands.
[00:07:12] But I was very curious about startups. We worked with one startup. I loved it. Worked with another startup within a large corporation. Loved that experience too. And just started to feel more of that draw towards the startup world. Read an article about Brooke Hammerling at Brew PR. Was fascinated by her and sat down one day and said I am going to write an email to her because I want to get to know her.
[00:07:39] And I want to see if maybe she could be a mentor or something. I want to grow up to be her. And when I sat down to write that email, and I was now in this mindset of, I want to make this connection. That's when I got a call from Paradigm. Working for Brooke Hammerling at Brew PR. And it was just such kismet and such an amazing moment.
[00:08:02] I was like, of course I want to take that phone call. That's exactly what I just sat down to try to open up that connection. I think that's, it's a little bit of asking for you want, but it's also manifesting your dream and, it just came together beautifully and it was an amazing experience.
[00:08:19] So that was when I took a first look into the startup world. And then from there, me and my, I think maybe he was my boyfriend at the time, now he's my husband, but he and I were both working in the startup world. And we had two friends who were running a hedge fund and they wanted to invest more in startups in New York city.
[00:08:45] And so when we had friends who were raising money, we would send them over to our friends with the money and then our friends with the money came across interesting startups that they wanted to consider investing in, they would ask us to help them evaluate them because we knew a lot about that world. And at some point we said, Hey, we are talking more and more about this.
[00:09:09] Why don't we actually do this together? And so that's how the fund came together. Now it wasn't a full time thing for us, for any of us, but it, we found it was a good idea actually to create a little bit of structure. They had the money and the experience with allocating capital. And we had more of a knowledge of the landscape and, and connections.
[00:09:35] And so we came together and we formed Liberty City Ventures. And then we ended up raising a fund specifically to invest in Bitcoin startups. Now, that was all them. I will give them all the credit for kind of coming into this space. Super early back in 2010, they started buying Bitcoin when it was only worth four or 5 cents.
[00:09:58] So they were very early in the Bitcoin world. And when they said they wanted to invest in Bitcoin startups, we were like that's crazy. But okay, sure. You guys seem to know what you're doing. You've been very successful and we don't know anything about investing. So we're going to follow your lead.
[00:10:16] Let's do this together. And Liberty City Ventures raised 15 million to invest in Bitcoin startups. Now the fund has over a billion dollars in assets under management. It's crazy. I'm not involved anymore. I've taking a lot of other turns. but, yeah, that was the genesis of it.
[00:10:37] And, and again, it comes back to manifest what you want to do and speak up and say it, out loud and go for it. Oh, I love that. Gave me chills.
[00:10:47] Jolie Downs: I love that so much. What a great story. What a great experience all around. And I love that you just went for it. You just kept following, like you said, you kept following that curiosity, that interest, and you just kept following it down the line and it just kept leading you to new places.
[00:11:02] So I think that's wonderful. And I think that there's a lot to be learned from stories. Are there any other stories in your career that have had a big impact on you? Something that, or something that you've learned about your career that you think is beneficial for others to know as well?
[00:11:16] Dorothy Chang: Yeah. I think that especially for communications and PR pros, one of the things that I learned then, and then I, kept learning over and over with every step of the rest of my career is that actually, the skills that you develop in communications are really applicable to many other types of roles.
[00:11:38] And so when I first started that seed fund, Oh, I had imposter syndrome up the wazoo. Of course. I was like, what do I have doing here? What do I know? But quickly I started to realize actually, yeah, like the things that I have learned being, working on the PR agency side of things, when we are working with so many different clients at a time, and we're cycling on and off of them constantly, is that Yeah, I've learned how to evaluate a business and a product very quickly and learn my way around it.
[00:12:14] And I've learned a lot of different subspecialties. I've always worked in tech, but tech is everything, right? I did mobile tech, internet tech, health tech, all the different kinds, advertising tech, all the different kinds of technologies. And so I've learned a lot of different industries quickly.
[00:12:31] I've learned how to navigate the landscape. I've learned how to figure out what all the news sources are. So I can learn more about this industry. I know how to get there. I know how to talk about it. I know how to, analyze it. I know how to, what messaging points I would give somebody because I've learned how to position something in the landscape and I can see, there's so many, I know how to develop relationships with people, right?
[00:13:01] That's a huge one. You, when you ar becoming an investor with a founder, that's a very special relationship. You have to develop a lot of trust. If you're in PR, you know how to do that. So all you do, you realize that a lot of the skills that you learn in communications and you exercise in communications are really applicable elsewhere.
[00:13:21] And then a lot of the things you learn as you advance in your career are also the same things that other people are learning as they advance in their careers in other fields. You've learned how to manage people and hire them, and how to report up and how to report down, and how to evaluate a vendor for a software tool that you want to use.
[00:13:45] All of the things that everybody's doing in every department, those things are universal. And then, if you're doing corporate communications or you are handling executive communications, then you know that you don't need to do that much to write the messaging for an executive. And the reality is the work that you do all the time, you are writing their messaging, you actually
[00:14:17] know how to sit inside their mind and think about things the way that they are. And it's not just that you're mimicking the role that they're playing. You're actually doing it too. And so that becomes a really powerful thing because then you realize, okay, actually if I'm at the executive team level at a company that I've done communications for, I actually have just as much value to bring to those discussions at that higher level, because that's what I've been doing.
[00:14:50] I've been feeding that to somebody else and they've been the mouthpiece for it. But I can play that role too. So you develop a lot of confidence as you advance in your career. the more that you have exposure to that kind of work, the more you realize that you can play that role too.
[00:15:12] Jolie Downs: Absolutely. No, I'm inside.
[00:15:13] I was cheering like, yes, it is. It's so true. Communications is so powerful and all of those things that communications professionals are doing are absolutely applicableto all kinds of different facets of business and within our world. And I love that you bring this up because it's, I can't speak for everybody, but imagine there's a lot of people who maybe have a little bit more of a narrow focus of where they think that they can be or where, where they should be.
[00:15:42] And so I love this conversation that it opens it up because what you're doing and as a comms professional is so applicable to so many different things. So if you have these passions or interests in other areas, you absolutely can take your skill set and move forward in a very healthy, proactive way where you're actually head and shoulders above where you might think you are because you have all of these skills.
[00:16:05] Dorothy Chang: Absolutely. I definitely saw, I have run marketing at different companies and run different facets of marketing. And it was very clear to me that actually, if you come up from a from the PR line of things versus say getting your start in growth marketing or email marketing or paid advertising, you've actuall been privy to the more strategic conversations and decision making, than any of the other disciplines in marketing.
[00:16:36] So it's actually a really, I think it's more of a fast track, honestly, to those more strategic, executive levels. Very interesting.
[00:16:47] Jolie Downs: Very interesting. I'd like to talk to you about the imposter syndrome because I really appreciate that you brought that up because that's something that we all experience, but I don't feel like it's talked about enough.
[00:16:58] I really like I love the topic because for my own self, I struggled with imposter syndrome in many ways, and it absolutely kept me back because I didn't, I wasn't aware that's what it was. I thought that I thought maybe this voice knew something, or that this voice was right. And so what I've loved learning about imposter syndrome is that it's prevalent, that everyone has it.
[00:17:19] We all go through it. It's just basically, if you're stretching yourself, you're going to be faced with some imposter syndrome, which it's a good thing. It means you're expanding. So what I'd love to know is, was there anything that helped you overcome your imposter syndrome? Because I'm sure many people listening are.
[00:17:36] Potentially dealing it with themselves.
[00:17:38] Dorothy Chang: Yeah. I think that it's something that also doesn't necessarily go away. I still deal with it all the time. But I think it's about developing the right kind of frameworks to think through things in a more rational way and some of the things that, that I'll go through if I'm in one of those moments where I'm like, Oh,
[00:18:03] am I in over my head? It's reminding myself that it's not a matter of whether I am the perfect person for this specific role and if there's somebody else out there that's better suited for it than me. It's I'm in this role right now. This is the this is what I am situated to do so Can I do this?
[00:18:29] If not, then what skills do I need to develop so that I can do it, right? It's not I can or I can't or I never will be able to. It's what, where's the gap and how can I fill that gap? And if you try to really analyze what the actual gap is, then that turns it from being an emotional, h my gosh, I'm never going to be able to do this to when can I do this?
[00:18:55] When am I going to feel confident? And you start planning towards what's going to get you there. And what are the steps that you need to take? What do you need to do versus how am I feeling about it? How you're feeling about it, of course matters, but if you want to put those feelings away and shift your mindset into more of an action oriente how am I going to solve this problem? And how am I going to acquire the skills? I need to feel confident here then I think that helps a lot the other the last thing I would say that helps too Is this is silly, but this is the silly one that I think actually maybe helps the most and that's reminding myself that actually nobody knows what they're doing serious, right?
[00:19:41] What we're doing is making it up as we go and rying to make good decisions based on the information that you have, and nobody has been in the exact position you've been in before, ever. Everything's different all the time. So nobody knows what they're doing. We're all just pretending and making it up as we go along.
[00:20:03] And I am in the position right now to make up whatever this thing is, and I'm going to make the best decision I can. That's it. I love
[00:20:10] Jolie Downs: it. It's it's absolute truth. True story. We are all just making up as good, we're all flying by the seat of our pants, doing the best we can at any given moment. 100%. And this is I can say this with, certainty because I've learned this through all the conversations, through recruiting, through podcasting,
[00:20:30] and this is, something that is very true. So thank you for sharing that. I love it. So now tell us a little bit about Lynx Collective because I'm fascinated with what you've built here. Could you tell us a little bit about it and who are the type of people or companies that would be interested in your membership?
[00:20:45] Dorothy Chang: Yeah. So Lynx Collective is an organization, a community, a program that actually my husband and I developed together. So we're partners in this, co founders, and it's for early stage tech founders. again, I've been obsessed with startups for most of my career. It's what I live and breathe.
[00:21:08] And, what we're doing is just trying to make it, the whole startup ecosystem more accessible to more founders. If you're a founder, if you're an aspiring founder, you can join us for events, for talks, speaker series, workshops. and we have a little bit of a membership. model as well. Our community members can jump into our Slack channel with all of our community, and get discounts and, priority for the different events that we do.
[00:21:39] So for example, we have a series called Inside BC. We kicked it off a couple of weeks ago with Union Square Ventures, which is a big firm in New York. We went there, I interviewed their newest partner, 400 founders registered to attend. We can only take 75, but we do events like that regularly to try to create more access for founders who are new to the game to get connected with the right people and with each other.
[00:22:08] It's really important to have community, and to be a successful founder sometimes can seem so daunting, but it's a lot easier if you're If you see other people that look like you who are doing it too, and it makes it more concrete and feel moretangible. So that's the idea. It's encouraging more people of all types to go after that tech startup dream and, and find a
[00:22:33] Jolie Downs: supportive community for it.
[00:22:34] That's fantastic. How beneficial for anyone in that stage of life right now, that sounds perfect for the next steps. So now what about, okay.
[00:22:44] Dorothy Chang: I just feel
[00:22:44] Jolie Downs: like
[00:22:47] Dorothy Chang: there's another thing we just announced it today. What is it? I joined a preseed fund called Next Wave NYC. it's funded by Flybridge Capital and we invest in early stage startups
[00:23:03] and so it's a fund of 14 founders and operators who are again, this is another theme of my career on the side. We're investing in startups are focused mostly on AI startups in New York City.
[00:23:16] Jolie Downs: Fascinating. AI is, I'm fascinated in all aspects of AI. I'm trying to learn as much as possible right now.
[00:23:23] Yeah. Are there any new tools that you've noticed in AI that's been something that people should be noticing if they haven't taken a look at it yet?
[00:23:32] Dorothy Chang: Question. I don't know that I have one in particular to recommend. I think a lot of the tools that I've been looking at are really specific to different niches.
[00:23:49] So for example, one that is a tool for elderly people who are experiencing the first signs of dementia. Oh, here's a really cool one called Latimer, which is an LLM that has proprietary access to an archive of several different African American newspapers in the U. S. and so their language model really takes into account I guess the right way to talk about issues as they relate to the Black population and it's really equity focused LLM really fascinating.
[00:24:39] so that's an interesting one for maybe communications professionals to Oh, yeah, I hadn't heard
[00:24:44] Jolie Downs: about that. So that's fascinating. Thank you. We're feeding our mind constantly. In fact, we're not always feeding our mind. We're just being fed constantly and so i'm really passionate about proactively feeding the mind.
[00:24:57] How do you proactively feed your mind? Is there anything that you consume whether it's read watch or listen that you would suggest to other people?
[00:25:06] Dorothy Chang: Yeah, I don't think that I have one specific recommendation on a book or a movie, because I think everybody's in, different stages and, things means something different to depending on when it hits on you.
[00:25:19] But I think that the most valuable thing I would have to share in that regard is the mindset towards what you consume. Okay. I think that it's important even when you're not working and you're just enjoying, watching, binge watching some stupid TV show, I think there's still a lot that you can learn, and I think that's the thing that is important to consider, especially if you're a communications person, right?
[00:25:45] Anything you read, watch, listen to, there's going to be an aspect of communications related to that, right? So there's always something that you can learn. There's always some, if you are actively engaged, you can think about how would I have put that? Oh, that was, why was that turn of phrase so awkward?
[00:26:04] What would I have said instead? Or how would I have positioned that? How would I have introduced that differently? That interpersonal relationship is really interesting. What did they get wrong? Like, how would I do that differently? and I think that, everyone has a lot to learn from anything that we consume and, but the key is being really actively engaged with it, and thinking about how you, what you would apply to that and how you would learn from that to your life.
[00:26:33] Yes. Yes.
[00:26:35] Jolie Downs: Yeah. I, I can see that now that you, say that, I can even think of just. fiction novels and how much you can learn about, just how much you can learn about relationships and how maybe the other sex is thinking, or someone in a different stage of life, or different situations, circumstances, get in their mind how they're thinking, which will help with their communications.
[00:26:52] I think that's really interesting.
[00:26:53] Dorothy Chang: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. And so it's a funny thing, actually, because I have I had this conversation with my eight year old son where I'll ask him like, Oh, what did you learn about today? And he thinks about the world in terms of facts, like what I learned in science class and what did I learn here?
[00:27:10] and, but what I've been encouraging him to think about is, I think more deeply about is what about that story that was read to you? What did you learn from that and what did you observe and how did people, how did those characters feel? What did you learn from that?
[00:27:24] It's not facts, but that kind of interpersonal relationships and social emotional learning is really important too.
[00:27:33] Jolie Downs: Oh, I kudos that's very powerful. When you use, when you teach people how to learn from, just being a part of conversations, from learning, within a book of the conversations, paying attention to how people are interacting with each other, paying attention to what you can learn from stories.
[00:27:50] When you start doing that, and if you start doing that at a young age, my goodness, the amount that you can learn is so incredible. So incredible. I know adults who aren't doing that right now. So I love that. That's a great piece of advice to be taking forward for anyone who's not doing that. This has been fantastic.
[00:28:11] Dorothy, before you go, I would love to ask you about your personal superpower, because I feel that we're all born with certain superpowers, but that we also developed certain superpowers over time. Is there a superpower that you've developed over time that you feel really benefits your life?
[00:28:26] Dorothy Chang: Yeah, I think I've told people this a lot, but I think things are changing now My early career in PR was so helpful for me to get comfortable with talking to strangers and pitching them.
[00:28:45] But I think it's different now because back then I had my Bacon's book and I would call reporters on the phone, cold, right? Yeah. And I had to actually talk to them. I don't think young PR people are pitching over the phone anymore. I don't know.
[00:29:05] I know they're pitching. Yeah, I think it's mostly email these days. I don't know, Twitter. I did a lot of it's different. I think I benefited from happening to be at that point in time where the first couple of years of my career, I was just cold calling reporters. And I had no idea what I was talking about.
[00:29:29] It was like some really gorpy technical thing about a server. And I just had, you just had to go with it and you had to do your best and try to make friends and I learned a lot from that. And so now I'm super comfortable talking to anybody about anything. And I think a big part of that is learning how to ask good questions and show curiosity and connect with people and, learn to talk about anything and learn things quickly.
[00:30:02] It's all skills that I learned from, PR. So
[00:30:06] Jolie Downs: such invaluable skills to that carries you through everything, okay? I'm gonna let you go but really fast because a lot of people struggle with this yeah, but it's something that you learn. This is why I ask because we can all develop this skill: Do you have a go to question that you ask strangers that helps open them up?
[00:30:22] Dorothy Chang: I do The one I've been asking people lately is Hey, tell me your story. I do. I do. I do. And it gets a really different response from what do you do? Or where are you from? It's tell me your story. That gives them a chance to tell you what they want to tell you about in a narrative form. It's going to be emotional.
[00:30:45] There's going to be twists and turns and it's a much it's warmer way to connect with somebody and get to know them.
[00:30:53] Jolie Downs: Absolutely. Thank you so much for this, Dorothy. I have fully enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so much.
[00:31:00]
[00:31:00] Jolie Downs: Thank you for joining us on the Career Wanderlust Podcast. If you find value in learning from others, give us a like and subscribe. If you're looking to grow your communications, marketing, public relations, or sales and biz dev team with the best talent and quickly, check us out at Paradigmstaffing. com and submit a request.
[00:31:24] We are wishing you a most successful and fulfilling career. Until next time.