Throughout her career, Elaine Welteroth has consistently carved out her own path to unprecedented success. A widely known and respected trailblazer, Welteroth has redefined what it means to break barriers within corporate America by being named Editor-in-Chief at Teen Vogue where she in 2017 became the youngest a person ever appointed Editor-in-Chief and in 2012 had been the first African-American ever to hold the post of beauty and health director at a Condé Nast publication.

Before Teen Vogue, she was the senior beauty editor at Glamour and the beauty and style editor at Ebony. She’s conquered the editorial and digital worlds as is an award-winning journalist, author of the memoir “More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say).” Now she’s fully venturing into entertainment by being a judge on Project Runway, has previously written for the hit show Grown-ish and has appeared on-camera for a range of media outlets including ABC News and Netflix.

The launch of her memoir this year, brought her back to her roots, childhood, and the memories of having to navigate between two cultural worlds within her interracial family with her white father and African-American mother, while being raised in the small idyllic town of Newark, California. When writing her book, Welteroth explored family stories, collected oral history and gained a new curiosity for discovering the roots of her family tree. Aside from her memoir sparking her interest in delving into her ancestry legacy, with Welthroth’s nuptials on the horizon next year and the loss of her great-grandmother earlier this year, the timing couldn’t have been more ideal to partner with Ancestry to further discover her ancestral history.

Welteroth’s Ancestry’s experience was twofold, she submitted an AncestryDNA test to discover her precise geographic regions, and also searched Ancestry’s unmatched collection of over 20 billion historical records (birth, marriage and death certificates, census and immigration records, military records, and more) to build her family tree. The magic of Ancestry happens when you combine the rich information in family trees and historical records, with the genetic details revealed in DNA. 

I spoke with Welteroth about her how her heritage impacts her work today, her eye-opening AncestryDNA experience, why she thinks knowing your heritage is important, and how tapping into the strength of her ancestors has influenced her future.

Dominique Fluker: As current Project Runway judge, NY Times bestselling author and former Editor-in-Chief of Teen Vogue you are a known trailblazer. How did your heritage and cultural background impact your career success and journey?

Elaine Welteroth: When you work in a public-facing position, especially in times like these, there’s no way to separate the work from your identity. You come to learn that you’re in a position to represent for those who’ve been underrepresented for too long. These public-facing roles come with a sense of responsibility and kind of a unique opportunity to bring more of your authentic voice to the role. I recognized that when I became Beauty Director at Teen Vogue before becoming Editor-in-Chief, and realized the role that my cultural background and lived experienced related to my heritage and how that played a factor because I was given the preverbal pen to write stories about beauty for a young impressionable audience at Teen Vogue. I’ve been a young teen girl that looked to the pages of magazines for advice and validation. I just remember not seeing myself reflected and how damaging that was for my self-esteem and confidence. There was only one place to go to see myself and that was ESSENCE Magazine. That feeling of being marginalized sticks with you. I just realized if I had the opportunity to effect change and make sure that any young person picking up Teen Vogue Magazine or reading our website could see themselves, and not just in the physical sense, which is very important but also to make it more inclusive of a broader range of experiences and interests. People are more than just the color of their skin and the shape of their bodies.

Young people are multifaceted and they exist at the intersection of many identities and they come to this world and approach self-discovery from a place of being curious about more than just fashion, beauty, and celebrities. They want to understand what issues will affect them and understand how they can affect change within the world and shape the new direction. At Teen Vogue, I started different conversations from the inside and pitched different stories that hadn’t been included in those spaces before and hired different kinds of people. Drawing upon my heritage and cultural background and racial identity and understanding those things more, not only did they influence the work that I did, they enhanced the work that I was able to do as a leader in a lot of ways but it also came after a long period of what I call “assimilation syndrome.” Like many other women of color in the workforce, we have been programmed to just fit in and disguise the things that make us different to gain respect. I did that for some time before recognizing the power of embracing all of who I am. I know for a fact that I couldn’t accomplish what I did at Teen Vogue, had I not fully embraced the unique experiences that come with being a young black woman in America, especially in a time like this.  

Fluker: What was your intention in writing your memoir, “More Than Enough: Claiming Space for Who You Are (No Matter What They Say?)”

Welteroth: I wanted to start conversations around what success and power look like and how to understand and navigate discussions around privilege. I wanted to speak about why representation matters from my personal experiences. I wanted to discuss how to derive power from our own identity from a world that might make you feel less than. There were a lot of conversations that I felt could only be done most effectively by telling parts of my story. By extending parts of my story to an audience that followed my career for some amount of time, I’m offering an invitation into deeper conversations that we don’t have enough as women, and especially as women of color coming up in this world trying to navigate their career.

I wanted to discuss the universal experiences of the “come-up” that get left out of our success stories that get told online. I wanted to go beyond the filtered images on Instagram to share some of the things that I wish someone would’ve shared with me. I do think that this generation coming up deserves more blueprints on how to design a successful life for themselves. White cis men have had generations of examples of what power and what success looks like and black women and women of color have had fewer examples of what that is. I feel a responsibility to go beyond the highlight reel online and share a little bit more about my journey to share tools and conversations, ultimately to help someone on their path. This book goes beyond career, it’s about identity, purpose and even romantic relationships. I basically wrote the book that I needed to read when I was in my twenties.

Fluker: You frequently reference the Shonda Rimes term, “First. Only. Different” as it relates to your career. Share how taking up space in traditionally white spaces further fueled your authenticity and solidified your personal identity.

Welteroth: I recognize that there was an opportunity to bring more of my authentic self to my job and as scary as it can feel at times, I realized that I could make an impact and difference. Everyone has to define for themselves what authenticity really looks like within their professional life. For me it was sort of incumbent upon me as a leader, a young female leader of color, to make sure that my hiring decisions helped change the culture from the inside out. The work that I wanted to do was not work that I could do alone, so recognizing that we need unique allies in making a big difference and change within these spaces. The power of being a leader and the “First. Only. Different” which is a term that I do use a lot, because it purposely captures an emerging class of people who are rising through the ranks without a roadmap and without a generational advantage that comes with generational wealth. When I was the beauty director at Teen Vogue, I was able to recognize that there was white space that I could fill by leaning into stories that only I could tell. Everyone’s responsibility and opportunity really are to identify for themselves what their zone of genius is. Because we use the term authenticity so much, it has kind of lost its meaning, for me I care more about the zone of genius. What is it that you can do that no one can do quite like you?

Fluker: Recently you submitted an AncestryDNA kit to discover your roots and further expand upon your family tree with your parents. How was this experience eye-opening for you? What did you discover?

Welteroth: I decided to learn more about my ancestry because I never been somebody who has been very interested in looking at my family tree or looking back or digging into my lineage. Especially after moving to New York, I have been running and racing ahead towards my goals and future and really not thinking so much about the past at all and how it informs who I am or where I’m going but learning my roots has created many full circle moments for me. Particularly because I decided to write so much about my parents and their love story and lineage is what forms the foundation of my story. Taking the time to reflect on that made me more curious to go further back and then also, I wrote about my great grandmother Maggie within my book, who recently passed away right after my book came out. I always felt so lucky to have my great grandmother alive and well because it’s a privilege that so few people get to enjoy. Yet, I took it for granted because I didn’t realize that with her dies so many of our stories and our family history, the oral history that was passed down from generation to generation. All the questions that I never asked her flooded my mind and I just wondered what were the things that she never said to anyone that we’ll never know? She was a deep root for our whole family. Her death gave birth to all these new questions about my family history that I never took the time to think about. Also, I’m getting married next year and I’m reckoning what it means to combines family trees with somebody. For me, a defining aspect of growing up has been recognizing that my story and my journey are not singular but it is part of a larger collective experience. I’m entering a stage of my life where I’m just recognizing how much bigger my purpose is and how big all of our purposes are and how interconnected they all are. That’s why I was really interested in digging into my ancestry. 

One thing that I learned during the AncestryDNA process was how genetics actually works. I always thought that you pull an equal amount of DNA from each of your grandparents. We are 50 percent of our mom and dad’s DNA but thought that meant that we are also 25 percent of our grandparents but what I learned is that DNA isn’t a cocktail. When my DNA results came back I found out that I’m one 1 percent German, which was a shocker to me because my last name is German and my dad is German and Irish. What I’ve learned is that I’ve pulled from my grandmother’s DNA, which is Irish. Now I want everyone in my family to go through the AncestryDNA process! It was a fascinating exercise, the reveal was very interesting to me and opened up a lot of questions. It made me more curious about my grandmother’s life, knowing that her DNA is part of who I am.  

I also got to see a picture of my great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother and they were one generation removed from slavery. Being able to see a picture of your family members from that long ago is haunting and special and moving. It gave me all the feels! Looking at them, I saw a resemblance. Also, they were very well dressed! Black people from the south in that era? I was very impressed with how well dressed they were. Very fashionable and very stylish. Being able to put an image to some of that DNA just made it very real for me. I learned about the occupations of my ancestors. I learned that my mother’s family has for the most part always been in the same area of Georgia, which gives me a deeper connection to Georgia and to that land. I think for black people in America, so much of our history has been erased so to be able to uncover it, it’s meaningful on a different level.

For me, I learned that my African ancestry is rooted in Central Africa and we come from the Bantu people and Congo. I just never knew that! We always have to guess, like, “I think maybe I’m from Ghana.” My mom has high cheekbones so I always thought her family was from West Africa but I was wrong. It’s just the beginning of a longer journey, there’s always more to discover but from the initial family tree and DNA, I got so much out of it. I was actually able to go through my results with my parents on their 35^th wedding anniversary.  

Fluker: You strongly believe that tapping into the strength of your ancestors has influenced your future. Share why you need to continue to learn about your heritage. 

Welteroth: Very distinctly, you have to know where you came from to know who you are and where you’re going. I think that in this stage of my life that sentiment has never resonated more than it does now. As I embark on telling parts of my story through the book and connecting with people about their stories and getting married, I think looking back and understanding really who I am is empowering and adds context to the journey of understanding what my purpose is. Self-discovery is bigger than self. It’s really about looking at the context that makes you, you. The context is really your family, their experiences, your ancestors their experiences and all of that has the stage the life that you’re living. Paying gratitude for those who came before you is a really important exercise that I started to embrace at this point in my career.