Viktorija
Grant
Program Manager, Business Strategy, Discover Financial Services
Some young people with ambition wonder if their hometown will be big enough to hold them and their dreams. Viktorija Grant wondered if her entire country was too small. “In Latvia, where I grew up,” she says, “there are fewer than two million people. I always did well academically. I had bold dreams for my career. And I kind of kept thinking, ‘Is this playground big enough? Are there enough companies that I could work for here? What could I do?’”
Her chance to find out came when she participated in an essay-writing contest sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in Latvia. She was asked to describe, in English, what she thought the future held for her and her nation. Viktorija’s essay won, which got her free admission to the SAT college boards that year plus educational consulting if she wanted to study in the U.S. Up to that point, she hadn’t been thinking of traveling farther away than Europe for school. Suddenly, new possibilities were opening up.
“I was very naïve,” she smiles. “I thought, ‘If I’m going to apply to a college 4,000 miles away, I might as well pick the very best place.’” And, not knowing the odds of getting in, she applied to just one school—Yale.
It didn’t hurt that Viktorija was at the top of her high school class and fluent in five languages (Latvian, English, Russian, French and German).
But Latvia is also one of the poorest countries in the European Union, still working to overcome centuries of domination by foreign powers plus two world wars.
“My mother was always very encouraging about the process,” says Viktorija. “She kept telling me that it’s fine not to be like everyone else—that where someone comes from doesn’t make them less; it makes them strong because it gives them a different perspective.”
Her father took another tack—what Viktorija calls the “no excuses” option, as in “there are no excuses for not performing.”
“In middle school, I used to kind of whine about this one teacher who didn’t seem to like me,” she says. “The teacher would pick on me all the time, scrutinize my work more closely than anyone else’s, and then grade it unfairly. Was it because I was a shy kid? The way I dressed? The fact that I’m a girl? I just could not get an ‘A’ in that class, nor did I know how to handle the situation. And I wanted my dad to say, ‘Yeah, it’s not you. It’s the teacher.’” Instead, he told Viktorija she had to aim to be so flawless—so above expectations—that the teacher would have no choice but to give her an ‘A.’ From that, Viktorija learned that as soon as someone told her she wasn’t good enough, she was determined to prove them wrong.
So Viktorija applied to college in the U.S. She got in. And in 2010, she arrived to begin college—at Yale.
“Sometimes,” she laughs, “if you don’t know it’s a long shot, you get opportunities others wouldn’t even consider.”
Studying at Yale led to serving as an intern at the European Human Rights Court and staying in the U.S. after graduation to work in global development at a non-profit. That led to a busy career in data-driven strategic marketing and financial services, plus marriage, plus the recent arrival of a baby daughter. Today, Viktorija is leading a full life working as a program manager in business strategy for a Fortune 500 company, being a new parent, and growing her career through the Evening and Weekend MBA program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. She’s also been a volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago, an alumni interviewer for Yale admissions, and a communications coordinator for Military & Veterans group. (Viktorija’s husband is a West Point grad and served in the U.S. Army.)
At Kellogg, yet another piece of good fortune has come her way. Viktorija is the recipient of a Drake Scholarship—a program aiming to increase women’s leadership in business by underwriting the graduate education of select female students. Receiving this scholarship, Viktorija has said, “reminds me to always aim high and dream big.”
Counting her blessings, she says, also helps her realize she wants to pay it forward for young women on their way up.
“I definitely am very passionate about encouraging women to go for it when they doubt themselves,” she says. “We bring this this whole skill set to the table. Not to stereotype, but women tend to be better at connecting with different kinds of people; we’re better at building relationships; we’re better at open communication. And this people-centered leadership style is exactly what the business world needs today.”
Yet one obstacle Viktorija sees to women advancing in leadership is that they tend to be over-mentored and under-sponsored.
“Mentorship is about feedback or answering your questions—advice on how to succeed,” she says. “Women get plenty of that. But sponsorship is different. It’s whether, at the end of the day when senior leaders are in the room with the doors closed and you’re not in there, someone is willing to fight for you—to use their political capital to get you the project or the promotion. And I’m not sure women do that enough for each other.”
Having been sponsored and inspired by other women in her life, Viktorija knows the value of encouragement when it comes to seizing the opportunities that can suddenly show up.“You never know where life will take you,” she says—including, in her case, to a college and a country and a career 4,000 miles away from the place she called home. “And here’s the thing: Don’t ever let someone tell you there’s something wrong with the way that you think or how you view the world. It’s good to strive to always do better. But it’s really important to remain authentic to who you are, to stick to your values, and to know that you’re always enough just the way you are.”