On Empathy with Patty Smith, Co-Founder of Managerie & People Analytics Partner at Cruise

There is a warmth that radiates off Mariana Acuña Acosta from the moment you meet her, and it is a warmth magnified by the commanding assuredness of her personality. She is a woman wearing many hats. She is a long time entrepreneur, currently leading as co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Glassbox Technologies, creating next-gen virtual production software tools for stunning and immersive film, TV, animation, and gaming content. She is a devoted mother and daughter, a fun-loving partner, a gregarious burner, and a boisterous friend. I wanted to learn how Mariana juggles all these personas while staying true to her sense of self. During our conversation we dug deep into her thoughts on authenticity, identity, and the impact the pandemic has had on it all.

What does authenticity mean to you?

Authenticity, to me, means being real truthful to yourself and your values and who you are as a person. Treat others as you want to be treated. I learned very, very early on in my career that people will respect you a lot more if you’re genuine and tell the truth about yourself, about your products, about the competition. Even in the male dominated industries I’ve worked in, where egos tend to run very high and very hard, if you stand your ground and speak the truth, you get further in life. So I managed to build a reputation of telling it like it is, and I try to do that in all aspects of my life.

Do you get pushback for “telling it like it is”?

I have. Multiple times. I’ve been told that I should be a little bit more quiet or that people can’t handle the truth. I’ve also been asked to not tweet certain points of view, for example how I feel about unions and visual effects or how artists are treated in the industry. I’ve been told to keep quiet or to filter myself.

You have a number of identities. Entrepreneur, leader, mother, daughter, partner, burner. How do you differentiate them?

They’re separated in the sense that you can continue to be yourself, be genuine and authentic, but you have to wear different hats. They’re just different roles. I can’t talk the same way to my team as I speak to my son or how I speak to my mom, or when you’re at Burning Man. It’s like working at a startup; you have to do many different roles, wear many different hats while being truthful to your value center. You can’t behave the same way, or say exactly the same things or speak the exact same way to your family, to your team, with your partners, at Burning Man.

And it’s interesting that you brought up the burner personality thing, because I feel that’s a very special one. That’s where you can definitely be completely, at least for me, turned off from the world, and off the grid, and not be a mom or a daughter or a partner or an entrepreneur or a team leader. Where you can just remember how to be an individual without all the responsibility of the real world.

I feel like, with everything else, every other aspect of our lives, especially as a woman, we have all these little standards. We have double standards having to face the world and the world has expectations of you.

Is there an identity that’s more you than the others?

Leaving aside that special burner one: I feel it with my son. He definitely makes me a better person.

Something came unlocked when I became a mother. I did not want to be a mom. I hated children with all my might. And then I met his father and it was like a light switch; it turned on. From the moment he was born my true self has come out even more.

I feel so much lighter when I’m with him, when we’re talking, because he asks me really fun, naive, child questions. It’s a lighter environment. We laugh a lot. He makes me happy. We dance, we play games. You have zero expectations on you. I feel like, with everything else, every other aspect of our lives, especially as a woman, we have all these little standards. We have double standards having to face the world and the world has expectations of you. But with this little cute one that you give birth to, it is just unconditional love. You don’t really have the expectations that you have from everywhere else in the world. And he has definitely made me stronger throughout this pandemic.

What is your experience bringing authenticity into the workplace as a leader and modeling that for your employees?

Tricky, tricky question. You have to be truthful to yourself and be authentic, because again, I think I’ve said it before: pretending to be somebody that you’re not sooner or later is going to sprout its ugly head. When you are a thought leader or run a workplace, especially if it’s in a very male dominated industry, you have to be very careful with the words that you choose. I especially feel this is true in this day and age, and in this country, where you have to be politically correct, or you may be cancelled for any reason whatsoever because somebody feels that what you said is incorrect. You have to lead by example. I feel you also have to be as neutral as possible, be an active listener and neutral.

For example, say your team members are having a disagreement between themselves and things are beginning to escalate. You have to be able to de escalate, right? That’s what I mean being neutral. You have to be able to de escalate, and not add to the confusion or to the chaos. However, this is also tricky, because the pandemic has proven at the end of the day, we’re all only humans, right? And humans fail, and we make mistakes, and we fall into temptation. Also, double standards are a thing here. They exist and they will continue to exist. So as a woman you have to be even more careful with your choice of words, which are how you present yourself, while at the same time not being a hypocrite or being disingenuous or not being truthful.

I can think of a good example right now, with our governor appearing almost weekly, talking nonstop at these conferences, talking about not gathering, avoid parties, don’t see your family, don’t see your friends. And then all of a sudden we see pictures of him at a friend’s birthday party with all these people, no mask, in an indoors restaurant. He has admitted his mistake, and publicly apologized, but he’s not being genuine. He is pretending the rest of us can do better when he’s the one that has to lead by example and yet is not able to comply with the restrictions and the rules that he’s putting in place.

When do you feel you’re at your most disingenuous, if ever?

At the present time, through this pandemic, because you can’t crack like an egg even if you feel like you are cracking on the inside. Even when I had my son, I never thought that we’d be 24 hours, 8 months, just together. At all times I’m having to be a teacher, supervisor, friend, daughter, mom, and entrepreneur, dog caretaker, health caretaker, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You have to put up a tough front. That has been very taxing emotionally. And I can’t hug people, I can’t see my friends, I can’t travel, I can’t talk on stage. I can’t go into my office. I have to be paranoid at all times because I live with my mom and my son, especially my mom being high risk. I can’t do any of the things that made me feel like myself. I’ve been asking myself a lot of questions of, you know, was I just taking all these things for granted, without these things then who am I, am I still this person? Or what has changed?

And all we want to do is go to a corner and cry for a few hours. You can’t do that because we have to make dinner, help with homework. We have all these zoom meetings, you have to do all these things. I really miss having people over. I really miss the company of other humans.

What do you want the world to know?

This too shall pass. Even if it’s isolating and chaotic, frustrating and boring, at the end of the day, we’ll come out of this stronger. Maybe caring more about each other. Hopefully some of us will be better people. We can go back to playing the roles outside of the house that are important for our mental health and cognitive development. We didn’t die. We didn’t get sick, knock on wood, that that doesn’t happen. So, yeah, that is the only thing I would like the world to know: this too shall pass.

Thank you.

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