Meet Suzanne Borders

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Suzanne Borders a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Suzanne, thank you so much for opening up with us about some important, but sometimes personal topics. One that really matters to us is overcoming Imposter Syndrome because we’ve seen how so many people are held back in life because of this and so we’d really appreciate hearing about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome.

I love this question! Even though all humans can feel imposter syndrome, it’s something I feel that women, especially, experience. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why that is, and, I feel like women grow up with fewer examples of what leadership ‘looks like’ because we see far fewer examples of female leaders in our life, media, and pop culture. Resultingly, women often struggle with the question of what being a good leader means, how to embody it, and we often feel like we don’t really belong in the positions of leadership in which we find ourselves.


My strategy for overcoming this imposter syndrome is really just to push through it; which is my solution to many of life’s challenges! When I start feeling like I’m not qualified enough, or somehow I don’t deserve the position I currently have, I just remind myself that it doesn’t really matter. Who is really qualified enough; what does that even mean? Who determines who’s ‘deserving’ of anything in life? At the end of the day, the only person who can really make any of these determinations is YOU. If you look to the outside world for that validation, especially as woman, you’ll always find someone telling you you’re not qualified enough, not experienced enough, etc. There’s always gonna be someone out there who’s ‘more’ than you, or who thinks you’re not enough! So stop looking externally for that validation. You’re qualified enough, deserving enough, and experiened enough — when you decide that you are.

And that’s it! It’s that simple. That’s the secret. You have to be your own biggest cheerleader and you have to believe in yourself, no matter what. You cannot let the world around you or the people around you dictate what you deserve, or what you’re ‘qualified’ to have. In my opinion, the act of doing anything is qualification enough. You’re qualified to start a business when you start your business; in a world where so many people are too hesitant to act, if you can find within yourself the boldness to just do it, you’re already ahead of the game.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

The biggest focus of my life at the moment is my technology company, BadVR. I founded the company in 2017 and we became operational in 2018 – and it’s been a crazy wild journey ever since then! We are proudly an economically-disadvantaged, woman-owned small business, and super proudly located in Los Angeles!

As for what we do: BadVR is the world’s first immersive (augmented and virtual reality) data visualization and analytics platform. We bring data into high definition, making it easier to discover and identify hidden problems and opportunities, helping businesses make better decisions faster. We have attracted industry attention with its pioneering AR and VR demos, allowing people to – quite literally – ‘step inside their data.’ We are known for using immersive technology to visualize large, complex datasets, making it easier for everyone to access their data, to help make better business decisions faster. An example is our product, SeeSignal, that allows anyone to put on a headset and see the RF spectrum! You can see your entire WiFi or cellular network data in a single glance, updated in real-time. Instead of wondering about dead zones and hot spots, you can easily and immediately see the entire network via interactive holograms and watch the data flow through it in real-time. It’s pretty cool!

I am most proud of our company’s mission: to democratize insight. I’m very passionate about making it possible for everyone, regardless of technical skill level, background, or industry, to access, and work with, the world’s data. I strongly feel that right now, only a certain set of highly technical people are privy to the world’s most valuable resource – data – and that this imbalance of access results in an unfortunate inequality of power. Additionally, because data is generally analyzed by mathematicians and data scientists, all of whom often attend the same schools and come from the same socio-economic background, we end up with the same conclusions drawn and the same understanding. Boring! What are we missing by excluding most of the world’s population from this process? What if a poet or an artist could see and understand the data? How would their unique and different perspective change the way we understood and contextualized the insights drawn from these datasets? This way of viewing the world, this way of understanding data, and who has the ‘right’ to access and understand us sets BadVR apart. Art, music, poetry – all of these things are baked into the core DNA of our business and our passion for inclusion and diversity (vs elitism and exclusion) makes me proud. I look forward to continuing our mission and someday making the world’s data as accessible to artists as it is current to data scientists.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

It’s hard to answer this, because honestly, these traits really depend on the person. What skills and qualities you develop really depend on who you are and your unique strengths. I think it’s very important to lean into what makes you, you and to play up your inherent, natural talents to become the best version of yourself. It doesn’t make sense to force everyone into one specific mold, nor does it make sense that the skills that worked for me, would work for others. I think that’s important to call out. It’s all just so dependent on the individual.

That being said, for me personally, boldness, authenticity, and courage have impacted me the most on my journey. I’m naturally a very forceful, driven, naturally aggressive person, and I value these 3 traits because they form the core parts of who I am as an individual. I think everyone can cultivate authenticity by choosing to be true to themselves on a daily basis; same with honesty. However, it takes committing to being truthful, first with yourself, and then with others. Many people are ‘people pleasers’ who try to bend and contort themselves into being whomever pleases those around them the most. I don’t particularly struggle with this myself, but many of my loved ones do. It can get confusing when you’re never really fully ‘you’ and when you feel like you have to ‘be someone else’ to be liked or loved. The way to combat this is to just decide on a small level, every day, to make decisions authentic to you. Start with stuff like ‘Pepsi or Coke?’ and make the choice you want; not the choice you feel is ‘right’ or the choice you ‘should’ make, but the choice you WANT to make, and grow it from there. Another part in cultivating authenticity is dressing authentically to yourself and expressing yourself authentically in your physical environment. Being able to physically manifest your own desires goes a long way towards developing the bravery and courage needed to be fully authentic to yourself in all situations. It also helps you get to know yourself, which is an important thing to do, especially if you’re a ‘people-pleaser’ who’s spent a lifetime shape-shifting into other personalities. As with all things in life, developing authenticity takes time and effort, but it’s very worthwhile, for what’s the point of life, if not to live it authentically?

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

Oh there are so many! I love books. I’m a total nerd when it comes to reading and the written word has been my best friend – oftentimes, my only friend – through many of the toughest years of my life. If forced to pick just one life-changing book, I’d pick ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ by Rainier Maria Rilke. My father gave me a copy of this book when I turned 16 and told me it had the answers to all of life’s most meaningful questions – and he wasn’t wrong! It’s chock full of insights and wisdom; it’s quite literally a manual for how to be a human, how to love, how to grieve, how to live and how to cherish life! I sound hyperbolic but like truly, this book will change your life. Don’t get me wrong, Rilke’s books of poetry are lovely too, but the format of ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ is perfect for imparting wisdom to young truth seekers. In the book, Rilke is (quite literally) writing letters full of advice and wisdom to troubled young adults; his letters were compiled and published and that’e the content of this book. No matter how large (or small) your questions, you will find the answers within this book.

My favorite ‘wisdom nugget’ from the book is:
“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” – Rilke

Other life-changing books for me include ‘Narcopolis’ by Jeet Thayil and ‘The English Patient’ by Michael Ondaatje.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.badvr.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/srborders/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/SuzanneBorders
• Other: https://medium.com/@srborders1985

Image Credits

Suzie Borders 2.jpeg – Credit: “Antony Vitillo”
Suzie Borders 1, 3, 4, and 5.jpeg – Credit: “BadVR, Inc.”