Job Digital Lab with ING Italia: advice from Tanja Tierie to women looking to their future.
“Three elements have guided my choices and defined the perimeter of what I love doing: transformative innovation, flexibility and my love for all things digital. If I were to give a suggestion to young men and women, I would say: find your purpose and experiment, not only professionally.”
Tanja Tierie is Chief Operating Officer at ING Italia. She participated in the final event of the StartUp Lab, an educational initiative organised by Job Digital Lab – Training to Get Back in Action and conceived to help women create their own enterprises.
With the help of Nicoletta Vulpetti, a true lover of identity stories, the second edition of Job Digital Lab, the educational programme developed with ING Italia, presents the stories of the protagonists of personal and community change.
My name is Tanja Tierie. I live in Milan with my husband and nine-year-old daughter. I moved to Italy in September 2021 for my job as Chief Operating Officer at ING. I am also a board member. So, yes, I have a lot of responsibilities.
All of this did not happen by chance, or maybe it did?
When I was 17, I was uncertain whether to study archaeology or business. I opted for the latter and this decision directed my future. During my last year at university, I did an internship at ING and never left is since.
Did I have a meticulously developed plan to reach where I am now? No, I didn’t. Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. We must grasp all the opportunities that present themselves and recognise the fil rouge that unites them.
Three elements have guided my choices and defined the perimeter of what I love doing: transformative innovation, flexibility and my love for all things digital. If I were to give a suggestion to young men and women, I would say: find your purpose and experiment, not only professionally. Explore your passion, nourish your vision of the world. I love to read, drink wine with friends, and plan. It allows me to connect the dots. And never be afraid of your limits. Abandon the idea of being able to control everything.
I learned that, too, and it was not easy. I faced critical, tiring periods, but each was a lesson that allowed me to become more resilient and understand that we must abandon the illusion of control.
If you wish to move ahead and make your ambitions, your entrepreneurial dreams, come true, look for meaning in what you do. Seek the spark that will get you up in the morning. There will be moments when you feel both strong and vulnerable, but if you concentrate on your objectives, your route will open up before you.
Over the course of the years, I learned that it is important to speak up, to express who we are and what we want. Saying these things will provide a further opportunity for our desires to come true.
And never stop investing time and energy in training. It means becoming ourselves.
In conclusion, I would like to share the first verses of a poem by Marianne Williamson that has always inspired me:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?'
Actually, who are you NOT to be?
