Malvina Goldfeld, PayPal’s 32-year-old head of business development for Africa, lived one summer in a Japanese village. When she asked to join her host on a fishing trip, he warned that even men got seasick on the boat. “It’s not a good place for a woman,” he told her.
“Well, now he got me. I was going to go at any cost,” Goldfeld related in a TEDxTelAvivWomen presentation last December. Refusing his offer of seasickness pills (“I’m not some wimpy college kid; I’m an Israeli woman!”), she spent seven hours at sea keeping her nausea in check through sheer willpower.
“The problem with letting people put you in a box because of your gender or your ethnic identity or any other category is that your behavior shifts to conform to their expectations,” said Goldfeld. “Don’t let anyone put you in a box and set your limits. Only you do that for yourself.”
Born in Moldova, she immigrated to Israel with her family when she was 8. The gifted youngster from Ashdod was selected at age 13 to join the Israeli delegation to the Seeds of Peace summer camp in Maine for outstanding teens from conflict regions.
This story was reprinted with permission from Israel 21c, www.israel21c.org.