Brian Rumao, Managing Director @ Next Play Ventures, Chief of Staff @ LinkedIn
Brian Rumao is currently Managing Director at Next Play Ventures and VP, Chief of Staff to the Executive Chairman at LinkedIn. At Next Play Ventures, Brian works with Founding Partner Jeff Weiner to coach and invest in entrepreneurial leaders building world-class, purpose-driven organizations. Previously, Brian spent over six years working alongside the executive team to manage cross-functional strategic and operational initiatives as Chief of Staff to the CEO of LinkedIn. During this time, he led post-acquisition integration with Microsoft and launched and managed the Economic Graph team. Previously Brian was a Manager on the Business Operations team at LinkedIn and a consultant at McKinsey & Company.
In this episode we spoke with Brian about the following:
How he developed his personal mission statement, which is to compound wisdom, trust, and love
How separating what he should do from what he wanted to do showed him that he didn’t want to become a CEO
Why investing in long-term professional relationships and managing ego helps you become more comfortable with your career decisions
You can listen to her below or wherever else you get to your podcasts.
On gratitude for family
I grew up in Detroit, Michigan to parents who immigrated from India. My parents grew up Catholic, which was another part of our Indian upbringing in the United States. That’s why my name is Brian, my father’s name is James, and my brother’s name is Justin. While there may have been other Indians in my community, because of the fact we didn’t have the same religion nor the same dialect, we didn’t have a strong sense of community.
I think outside of that, I’m just very grateful for the experience I had growing up. It was very modest. You’re familiar with the classic American story of coming to this country with 10 bucks to people’s names. That was true for my parents. So I just have a ton of gratitude for my parents and for my uncles and aunts who blazed the trail for all of us. I always think about this Vietnamese proverb which I really love: when eating fruit, remember who planted the tree. I always remember that because the fruits that I’m now enjoying and eating are thanks to the family members who planted those trees years ago.
How Brian grew into his Asian American identity
Understanding more about my identity is very timely. Not only because of what’s happening in our country but also because my wife and I had our first child last year. Now we’re thinking about how we make sure our daughter understands our cultural background.
One of the things I did back in 2010 right after graduating from Michigan with my master’s degree was knowing that I wanted to spend more time with my family. What I did was actually set off to produce a documentary where I interviewed all of my family members and I asked them about their stories. Growing up their stories about coming to the US for the first time and what that challenge was like. I did that on my father’s side and recently did it on my mother’s side as well.
I’ve now produced two 50 minute documentaries which were so insightful. For me to learn those stories, and the best thing for me is now I can share that with my daughter and she’s older. She can understand where she came from, and all of the sacrificed they made along the way too.
Brian’s mission statement for his life
I've been working with a coach over the last several months to help me to get to this point where I feel confident about my mission statement. My mission is pretty simple. It's to compound wisdom, trust, and love. That's it. And so if I just break that down briefly, compounding has been a really profound insight for me.
The value of compounding for me is what it means to be getting 1% better every day. What I choose to do and how I spend my time fall into these three words. Trust is about long-term games with long-term people. This is something I have come to appreciate the value of more than ever through my work with LinkedIn. Working with Jeff over the last seven years has shown me that it’s all about the people you really care about at the end of the day.
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Until next time,
Jay and Angie