After 15 years of writing & producing The Colbert Report, Community, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Madam Secretary I realized: Stories aren't just for the screen.

We constantly create narratives - it's how we describe ourselves, present, & act. It's the answer to: "How was work today?" or "So, what do you do?" That ever evolving story dictates how others perceive & react to us.

In the realm of work, that story is the difference between moving into positions we need to make the impact we want or not. The stakes, in other words, can be very high.

But I didn't always know that. The daughter of an American civil servant father and a Peruvian educator mother, I was raised to meet high standards, work hard, and to hold progressive values of cultural openness, and that the system works for people if people are invited to sit at the tables that shape it. This led me to attend Harvard and eventually sit at some of the most coveted tables in Hollywood.

But something felt deeply uncomfortable.