🌍 Why MULTI Is a Superpower

I have a theory.

The most underrated word in business isn’t a word at all.

It’s a prefix.

Multi.

Multilingual. Multicultural. Multinational. Multidimensional.

So much of professional life pushes us toward just one. One brand voice. One accent. One career path. One elevator pitch. One “culture fit.”

But the people I’ve seen who create the most value, in every company I’ve worked in, are almost never those who identify with only one type of other people.

They’re the MULTI people.

I grew up in a town of 2,500 people. Cornfields outside my window. One language spoken in most of my neighbors’ and classmates’ homes. Mostly one way of doing things.

So I went looking for more.

I read my father’s National Geographic magazines until the spines cracked. I had pen pals in Turkey, Scotland, and the Philippines. (Snail mail. Weeks between letters. I checked the mailbox every single day anyway.) My piano teacher was a Korean immigrant. I taught English to local migrant workers; they made my public-school Spanish a whole lot better.

Nobody in my town would have called that a strategy.

Not even me.

But looking back, I was collecting the thing that would shape my entire life.

More than one way of seeing the world.

And more than one way of understanding people, too.

My first full-time job was as a Spanish interpreter for AT&T. Thousands of calls. Banks, insurers, utilities, cable companies, 9-1-1 emergency calls.

The people I interpreted for were brilliant. Capable. Resourceful. Many had built entire lives from nothing in a new country.

And on the other end of the line, none of that was visible.

Not until, as an interpreter, I gave them a voice.

That’s what a second language really is. It’s not a party trick. Not a line on a résumé. It’s a door. Sometimes for you. And in the case of language professionals, often for someone else.

Over the years, after learning Spanish, I studied French, Italian, Japanese, Arabic, German, and other languages. Not all of them stuck. (Some of them, er, very much did not.) But every one of them stretched my brain in a new direction.

Each language you learn doesn’t just give you new words.

It gives you new thoughts.

Thoughts you couldn’t actually have otherwise.

Here’s what living between cultures does to you.

You don’t just speak more languages. You see more angles.

You notice who’s missing from the room. You hear the joke that won’t land before anyone gets to the punch line. You learn that “obvious” depends on where you are and where you’re from.

And, in the process, you become something every global company desperately needs.

A bridge builder.

The person who can connect people across functions, domains, teams, companies, and across cultures that don’t understand each other.

From interpreter to tech CMO, I’ve lived by one principle.

Think “many locals” from day one.

Don’t build for one culture and retrofit the rest later. Don’t launch at home and bolt on, er, translate, the rest of the world as an afterthought. Start global. Begin with multi-market in mind, from the beginning. (Even if it’s only two markets instead of one.)

I call this Global First. It’s how I describe that principle inside companies.

MULTI is what it looks like in a single person.

When I was a VP at HubSpot, I ended up leading two functions I had never led before: international operations and localization. Teams across time zones. Calls at 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. (Sometimes on the same day. Sometimes from the same kitchen table.)

What I learned is that multinational isn’t a footprint.

It’s a muscle.

You build it by working with people who don’t share your defaults. Again and again. Until “is this even the best strategy for a different market?” becomes the first question you ask, not the last.

From 12 to 17, I was a babysitter. A wedding singer. A church pianist. A lifeguard. A swim teacher.

From 17 to 20, I was a receptionist. A nanny. A data entry technician. A Spanish translator. An ESL instructor.

After that: interpreter, Fulbright scholar, entrepreneur, product developer, researcher, chief research officer, VP of marketing, CMO, author.

Not a straight line.

Not even close.

For years, I worried this looked scattered.
For years, I trimmed it to fit the job description.
For years, I treated the zigzag like something to explain away.
It was the whole point.

Multidimensional people bring more tools to solve every problem. The interpreter in me listens differently. The researcher in me asks better questions. The church pianist in me (yes, really) knows that timing is everything.

You don’t need all four. Most of us got here by different roads.

The Global Native. You grew up with two languages from birth. Maybe you translated at the doctor’s office or the parent-teacher conference at ten years old. Nobody called it a skill. It was. It was the most sophisticated communication training on earth, and you got it before middle school.

The Globally Brave. You moved abroad. You took the leap to a place where your credentials didn’t translate and nobody knew your name. You know what it’s like to be misunderstood, so you listen harder. You know what it’s like to start from zero, so you’re not afraid of it.

I got a small taste of this living in Ecuador as a student, and later as a Fulbright scholar in Quito, where I was the only non-native Spanish speaker in my Master’s degree program. Then many years later, I moved with my family to Ireland during the pandemic, where we all got to experience this together..

But even greater courage belongs to the people I’ve spent years watching up close. I’ve been in too many rooms where brilliant immigrants weren’t heard yet. As an interpreter, it was literally my job to make sure they were.

The Globally Curious. The trip that cost more than it should have. The friendships across time zones. The language class nobody required. Nobody made you do this. You chose it. Because you’re a naturally curious person and always wanted to explore beyond the confines of your own back yard.

This is where I started. A kid with a mailbox and a stack of foreign stamps.

Later, a friend to foreign exchange students, until I became one myself.

Choosing the world, over and over, when no one is asking you to? That is curiosity as a discipline.

(You might be a little bit of all three of these!)

Let me be very clear.

MULTI is not a “nice to have.” It is not a line under “Interests” at the bottom of your LinkedIn profile.

In my research and writing for Harvard Business Review, I keep coming back to the same finding. Multicultural people consistently make some of the most valuable workers, and founders.

Why?

Because they’ve done the hard thing over and over. Adapt. Translate. Read between the lines. Hold two truths at once.

I’ll go further. Multiculturalism isn’t just good for people.

It’s a financial strategy.

The companies, investors, and teams that learn to spot it will outperform the ones that don’t.

It’s lived experience on steroids.

For too long, many of us have asked the wrong question.

Is my accent holding me back?
Does my zigzag career look unfocused?
Should I leave the “unusual” parts off my résumé?

Wrong question.

The real question is this: Where does my version of MULTI create value that no one else can offer, except me?

Right now, that question matters MORE than ever.

AI can generate content in a hundred languages in seconds. Volume is no longer the hard part. What’s hard is knowing whether a message will land. Whether it respects the person reading it. Whether it fits the moment, the market, the culture.

That takes something machines don’t have on their own.

Context.

Lived, felt, multicultural context.

Gained only from lived experiences.

MULTI experiences? These are lived experiences on steroids.

And if you’re here, I am betting that’s you.

You are MULTI by chosen profession, and very special among the MULTI.

Multilingual by training. Multicultural by necessity. Multinational in every project you touch. Multidimensional, because you have to become a mini-expert in medicine, law, software, and marketing, sometimes all in one week.

Every product that launched well in a new market, every patient who understood their diagnosis, every customer who felt respected in their own language: you were there.

I was one of you. In many ways, I always will be.

I know your industry is under extreme pressure. But your work has never been more important. And I intend to keep saying so, loudly, for as long as anyone will listen.

A superpower you hide is just a secret. Why not flex yours?

Three things to try this week:

Embrace it. Which MULTI is yours? Write it down. Own it. View it for the benefit it really is. Make it a true differentiator. Part of your identity.

Promote it. Put it in your bio, your intro, your interviews. Not as a footnote. As the headline. Let the world know, and be proud of it!

Leverage it. Volunteer for the cross-market project. Flag the assumption no one else caught. Be the one who asks, “Has anyone spoken to the team in Seoul?”

I grew up in a place where most things were similar.

One language. One main road out of town. One way of doing things.

I’ve spent my whole life collecting “more than one.” More languages. More cultures. More countries. More versions of myself.

And here’s what I know now.

The world doesn’t need fewer MULTI people.

It needs us to help drive it, from the center.

MULTI isn’t a tactic. It’s way more than just a prefix.

It’s how you see the world.

And it changes what you’re capable of.

Tell me, which road brought you here?

🌍 Born global — 2+ languages, 2+ cultures, from Day One

🌍 Global by choice — working abroad and building a career, or working in localization

🌍 Globally curious — loving languages, travel, food, and other cultures, in search of a more global life

🌍 Scaling globally — founders and executives helping companies expanding across borders

I’d love to know!

It’s peak fall foliage this weekend in New England, and I am amazed by how fast this year has flown by. We’re in Q4 already, which seems surreal. Is it just me? Or is the AI disruption happening in tech actually warping our collective sense of time? I have been on the road a lot recently with Zappi, and in just the past month have traveled to Atlanta, London, and New York (twice!) So maybe that’s part of it too.

One thing I know: every quarter I make it a habit to look back on what I have accomplished, and to set priorities for the quarter ahead. But Q4 is also when I begin looking at my goals for the year ahead (none of this New Year’s Resolution nonsense for me. I prefer Annual Planning instead. For both work and life.)

I’m in a more somber mood on this Sunday than most, due to new waves of tech lay-offs hitting the news. The tech industry has been rocky ever since the pandemic, and with AI, there is no sign of calm seas yet.

But by the same token, this week, a talented friend and former team member of mine from a prior company, who was laid off, recently got a job working near where I live, and that made me very happy.

If you’re in a lay-off situation, please know that every person I know who lost their job in such waves is now gainfully employed. And some have set out on their own as entrepreneurs, and are making more than they ever could have in their prior roles. I hope that gives folks who need it some hope. Hang in there, and may whatever is ahead for you be far better than where you were.

Here are some other ways you can connect with me:

See you next week,

Nataly 🌍

#GlobalFirst