A Filipino Warrior: Jennifer Cabalquinto
By Allie Gagalang (San Francisco Bay Area, California)
March 11, 2021
Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, “Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.” I remember these exact words, verbatim because I see them everywhere – shirts, frames, tote bags. But can we really say that these places are just as common as these aforementioned merchandises or precisely, they exist to serve as reminders that to this day, we lack spaces for women who are allowed to call the shots? Otherwise, there won’t be a need to see Ginsburg’s powerful words printed everywhere, right?
Luckily for us, in more recent events, we’ve been front row witnesses to women, specifically, women of color shattering glass ceilings and paving the way.
Ahead of her time, Jennifer Cabalquinto, a Filipino, based in the San Francisco Bay Area has been carving her own path since 1997. She served as the Chief Finance Officer for the six-time NBA champions, Golden State Warriors from 2013 and just recently transitioned to a Special Advisor position for the same organization.
Learning that a Filipino woman is in charge of the finances of a large company like the Warriors amazed me. I found out about it by coincidence in 2019 just before the pandemic started. I watched my first Warriors game at the then newly-built Chase Center. They were celebrating Filipino Heritage month and before tip-off, the courtside announcer said that they were honoring season ticket holders for which they called on the Warriors’ CFO. Upon hearing her name, I thought her last name sounded Filipino so I immediately looked her up on Google. Lo and behold, I was right but at that time, I didn’t have a place to use it for so I just locked it away as a good piece of information to have.
A year later, seven months after establishing Hiraya Media, I was able to connect with Jennifer through LinkedIn and managed to schedule a sit-down talk with her via Zoom.
At one point in the interview, I mentioned that I saw her as someone I look up to – a woman of color at the top of her game. So I asked her how she transitioned from being a CFO for companies like Telemundo, NBC Universal, and Universal Studios Hollywood to being the CFO of an NBA team. As it turns out, she was originally recruited for Pixar Studios but it didn’t pan out as the recruiter wanted someone who had a film background. Years later, the same recruiter reached out again, this time offering the position for the Golden State Warriors which she thought wasn’t the right fit for her because she didn’t have any experience in sports. This led us to talk about women’s tendency to “self-edit”.
Harvard Business Review published a study that showed 22% of women interviewed for the survey said they didn’t want to apply for a job not only because they didn’t think they were a match, but also because they feared putting themselves out there and then failing. This compared to only 13% of men in the same survey feeling the same way. When women think that we do not meet the criteria, we immediately exclude ourselves from the conversation without even trying – and it’s not even totally our fault! Jennifer attributed this to the fact that women are hired or interviewed based on our experiences whereas men get hired based on their potential which this article expanded on.
This made me think of Kim Ng, which I mentioned during the call. When Bleacher Report posted on Instagram the announcement that the Miami Marlins hired a woman of color as their General Manager, the comment section was filled with either three things: her appearance (she looks fab, btw!), her ethnicity (calling her Kim Jong Un like, really?) and her experiences with the sport (she’s been involved in the industry since the ‘90s, calm yourself) but these are the reasons why women often miss out on job opportunities. People question our capabilities, our experiences and are always asked to prove ourselves which leads us to not feeling confident enough to put ourselves out there.
Know Your Value
When the Warriors interviewed Jennifer for the job, she realized that she wasn’t actually being interviewed for the CFO job and was offered a Vice President position instead. I know, if I was in the same situation, I would have probably accepted the job thinking it was already a great opportunity just to be working for a big organization but in my conversation with her, she stressed the importance of knowing your self-value.
“When I think about that, I know they wouldn’t have done that to a man… and I’m not sure they would have done it to a white woman. So I said no, I turned down the job,” she said. Two weeks later, the Warriors offered her the CFO position, acknowledged that they made a mistake, and apologized. I should credit the Warriors organization on this. I don’t know many companies of that scale that would have made things right and much less, acknowledged that they undervalued someone. Jennifer agreed and thinks that if she had not spoken up for herself, she didn’t think the company would have respected her and eventually offered her the actual job she interviewed for.
Moreover, she said that it was great working for the organization and thought that the ownership group headed by Joe Lacob, was a big part of that. “It was thrilling to be in an environment where you were constantly challenged to do and be better,” she said of the organization.
Case in point, she recalled a story about the 2016 NBA finals where Golden State lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers. “I remember, I was just devastated. We came back to the office on Monday and feeling somebody had died, and the office was down, and I couldn’t bear it [the loss],” she recounts.
She remembers being on a call with Joe Lacob and instead of dwelling on the loss, she couldn’t believe that the owner of the team was consoling her instead. She then thought that such a gesture reflects the DNA of the organization. What she loved most about working for the Bay Area NBA team was not because they were THE Golden State Warriors but because she loved constantly learning and because it was “an interesting challenge” to work on building a fully privately-financed arena. “As a CFO, that’s a challenge. Prior to that, I was working in a division of a conglomerate and so I didn’t have that skillset… and I thought it was important for me professionally, to get that skill,” she said. She also mentioned her transition to having a board seat which allowed her to learn more about how to grow a business in a different capacity.
This truly intrigued me because if you looked at a lot of Fortune 500 and Russell 3000 Index companies, not many boards have women in them. It is only recently that almost 23% of women hold a board seat in the United States. Partially thanks to non-profits like 2020 Women on Boards and to the Nasdaq requirement that the more than 3000 companies listed on their stock exchange appoint at least one minority and one person that is a part of the LGBTQ+ community.
When asked if a career in the business of sports was a viable path for young women and girls, Cabalquinto’s advice was definitely compelling to me: “[I advise them] to start preparing themselves [so that] when the opportunity comes, they need to be ready to be able to say yes and they need to put themselves out there and ask for it.” And for me, those words were a much better way of saying, “If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.”
Realizing Your Superpower
We also talked about being on the receiving end of microaggressions. She prefaced by saying that the pieces of advice that were given to her early in her careers were “Just get along.” and “Don’t make waves.” – typical instructions that are given especially to us Asians, as we are conditioned by society to be the stereotypical “Model Minority” and just be agreeable so that we don’t rock the boat. Jennifer, however, acknowledges that the times have changed and women that are coming up don’t necessarily have to be in the same situation. We should realize that we have a voice and that we should use it. Albeit, she also cautioned to not come in and immediately assume the worst, not take things personally and rather use it to open a dialogue for learning. She even shares that she uses humor to not only diffuse the situation but also take it as a chance to raise awareness of the microaggressions.
Fair warning though, she does issue a “technical foul” when you still don’t get that you’re being mean. But with all these said, while she knows that the times are getting better, such issues are still in our midst. The important part is how you respond to it and how you can turn your experiences into a superpower.
Power of the Pinay Matriarch
Towards the end of the interview, I asked her if she has used any aspect of the Filipino culture at work and one of the things she said was something I haven’t really thought about before and it’s about drawing confidence and strength from our mothers and grandmothers. I looked back and found myself agreeing with the sentiment. Most of my decisions are rooted in the knowledge imparted by my own mother and if you think about it, a lot of us do. Just reflect back on all the different times you asked your mom instead of your dad for sound advice. I know I’ve done it for most of my life.
Purely for selfish reasons, I would have wanted for our conversation to last longer than 45 minutes because I loved talking to her and hearing great advice that I think young women of color, especially those thinking of pursuing a path in male-dominated fields like the NBA, should put in their back pockets. But the fact that I got this close to interacting with her, perhaps, it won’t be too unlikely for Jennifer and me to meet in person. When that time comes, I wish to talk to her more about her experiences as a high-ranking company executive, her projects, and maybe discuss how her favorite Warrior, Steph Curry, is so inspirational. The thought of two Filipinas from different generations in the land of the free talking over a plate of Palabok is something that I shall keep in my heart until this pandemic is over.
