Mints Mods Unplugged - Annie Tsai

We’re back with our second installment of “Mints Mods Unplugged,” post, a series that gives an unfiltered glimpse into the background and passions of the incredible moderators who help make our community the supportive place that it is today. 

This month, we’re featuring Annie Tsai - a true renaissance woman whose leadership and voice resonate across companies and causes throughout California’s Bay Area. Her impact on our community is hard to overstate. She not only moderates our main group and many subgroups, but she is also the driving force behind our popular event series. From the boardroom to her backyard garden, and everywhere in between, Annie brings energy, know-how, and heart to all that she does. We can’t wait to introduce her and share more about what keeps her motivated. 

Missed our previous spotlight of Angela Schmeideke? Be sure to check it out, and stay tuned for more inspiring mods in the months ahead! 

• How long have you been a mod/volunteer with Mints?

  Oh gosh, I think it was May 2018? My first job was to support post engagement and today I curate and lead workshops. 
  
  

• What initially attracted you to the community?
  My friend invited me to join. I had my first child in 2013 and it was rocky to be generous. Very lonely, and I didn’t have the tools or words to describe and acknowledge how much of a toll that experience had on me. When I was working on my startup years later, I found myself with chunks of time here and there and just loved the feeling of having others who knew what I was going through. It was the first time in a long time where I didn’t feel like I was on an island.
  

• Which subgroups are we most likely to find you in on any given day?
  I love the main group, Mints Startups and Entrepreneurs, Mints Personal Finance, Mints Jobs Networking, Mints Skincare and Makeup, and Mints Home Renovations - but I support several other subgroups.
  
  

• What do you do in your professional life?
  By day I’m chief operating officer at interact. I am also a weekly columnist at the San Mateo Daily Journal (most Tuesdays), and am a part time partner with The House Fund where I have really loved supporting portfolio founders. I’ve also been fairly involved in local and state level civics for several years now, and sit on the Housing and Community Development Committee for the County of San Mateo, focused on supporting effective funding for affordable housing developments and funding services for high needs community members. I am Library Board Trustee for the City of San Mateo public library system, and recently joined the board of the San Mateo Area Chamber of Commerce. 
  
  

• What has been the most useful or valuable advice/interaction/learning that you’ve had through your membership in Mints?
  Personally, I’ve learned a lot about the toll that playing the role of the “sweeper” - the person that just makes sure that everything that isn’t done at the end of the day gets done and life is magical - is the hardest job that I can imagine. I think it was really important to hear that it’s simply unrealistic to do this. I want to say that most mothers with youngish children today aren’t prepared for where modern parenthood sits - at this impossible intersection of “always engaged,” “magically magical,” “friend and parent,” and “killing it at work.” For years I just figured working harder and smarter was necessary. But really, we all have a choice, and prioritizing one part of one’s life right now and then prioritizing something else later is perfectly okay. 
  
  

• What advice do you have for a new mom in tech? What helped you most when you were a new mom?
  Between the birth of my first and second child, I learned that it’s okay if you’re in a stage of motherhood that you’re not connecting with. Not every stage is going to be your jam. Obviously, we all need to get through those periods as best we can, but I’ve observed that mothers have a hard time acknowledging that “hey, I’m not great at the infant stage because I need some reciprocation or feedback, and I’m much more engaged and excited about toddlers and grade school and on,” myself included.
  
  All of this is perfectly okay and you are not a better or worse mother. It’s simply acknowledging reality - no one is good at all of it. That’s part of why leaning on communities like Moms in Tech is so incredibly important.
  The other thing I would say to new moms is this - fed is best. I spent so many hours trying to nurse and pump that I was in this infinite loop of pumping for let down, then nursing, then pumping again while my husband bottle fed the rest, then cleaning, then playing, then doing it all over again every 3 hours. And, as I did this around the clock for seven months it nearly killed me. At the end of it all, I decided that if we had another child, I wasn’t going to sweat it. Fed is best - and so is being present and mentally healthy for your family - and I enjoyed being a mother so much more. 
  
  

• What is your favorite thing to do with your kids?
  I really love being in my garden with the kids. I love watching them pick fresh organic fruit that we’ve grown together and sitting on the edge of a garden box to gobble it all up. I also love painting with my kids, or working with our hands together (sometimes that’s working with clay, other times that’s woodworking or crafting).
  
  

• What’s your favorite thing to do in your spare time?
  My favorite thing to do is open a bottle of wine with some good friends and catch up. Schedules are incredibly complex. I was just in a thread of three people trying to get dinner on the calendar, and the first date coinciding was 6 weeks out.
  
  

• What are some areas in which you’re hoping to grow your career or professional development? And, how can other Mints help?
  I’ve been diving head first into developing with AI, and I would love to have some go-to people where I can ping for questions here and there. 
  
  

• Is there anything else that you’d like to share with fellow Mints? Or anything you wish I’d asked that you’d like to add?
  I think about what the future holds for our kids a lot. I think it’s really easy to go down a rabbit hole of despair. And I know that I bias towards action over sitting on feelings, so take it for a grain of salt if it doesn’t resonate with you…but we are playing such an important role in charting what that future looks like.
  
  We have such an incredible opportunity to prepare our kids for a world where tactical professional skills - advanced Excel, coding, production - will be relegated to technology for execution.
  
  In this new world, different things rise to the top. Focusing on deep interpersonal, relational, and communication skills. Focusing on designing solutions while focusing on understanding the actual problem. Focusing on building trust in one’s intuition, which is essentially the human’s ability to use our brain’s incredibly powerful compute power without being able to explain it. These are such important skills in the new economy. And as parents, we can help our kids prioritize and nurture these skills. It feels like such a 180 for people who grew up during the 80’s / 90’s / 00’s - but it’s very real. PEOPLE SKILLS!!!