Early in her career, Sadasia McCutchen was a part of a rigorous rotational program at Google. She found herself in a situation that would have derailed almost anyone.

Her manager didn’t see her at all.

No matter how hard she worked, he did not see her value. He didn’t even remember her name. He repeatedly called her by the wrong name, confusing her with the other Black woman on the team before her. He never offered her feedback or support. When the time came for her first performance review, he told her she was “meeting expectations.” It was at that moment when she had enough.

The review didn’t line up with how she understood herself. It didn’t match the effort she was putting in or the pace at which she was learning. More importantly, it clarified something she couldn’t ignore: No level of overperformance was going to change how this person saw her. He couldn’t even get her name right.

For many people, this is the moment where you start planning your exit strategy.

Sadasia made a different choice. She realized, “I can get my job done in four hours [a day, and] I’m not going to spend the other four trying to convince someone to see me.”

Instead, she redirected her time and attention toward something she had always been drawn to: people. And luckily for her, Google had an open calendar policy where she could ask for time with anyone.

She started meeting five new Googlers a day. Some connections became mentors, others were a bust, but in every new meeting, she found something to learn, a way to grow slope. 

When systems thinking meets emotional grounding

Sadasia now leads ecosystem in the venture capital industry, building networks that connect people and opportunity. The throughline in her career is not just persistence or action-orientation, though she has both in spades.

It is her ability to see the bigger picture and possibility, and design systems to help her stay grounded when most of us might break. 

Emotional grounding is the hardest PEAKS trait to observe because most of it happens internally. It’s also the aspect that most High Slope Talent names the most difficult to maintain. That’s what makes this conversation with Sadasia so special: we get a window inside of a High Slope Leader’s emotional grounding practices as well as her generous sharing of how you can build this emotional grounding safety net for yourself. 

When she faced obstacles in her work, she responded by widening her field of view. She saw the bigger picture of what a place like Google could afford her, and she wasn’t about to let one bad manager get in her way.

Meeting five new people a day allowed her to map the company and get re-inspired. She joined employee resource groups and eventually led one. She sought out people who could offer perspective when she continued to face challenging moments with her manager.

Looking back, she acknowledges that she has more clarity and purpose because of the adversity, not in spite of it. 

“I just knew he didn’t see me,” she said. “And no matter how much I worked or tried to prove myself, that wasn’t going to change. So I had to decide where my energy was better spent.”

That decision is easy to describe and difficult to execute. It requires a level of self-awareness and restraint that most people only develop later in their careers, if at all.

What building a network looks like in practice

The choice to meet five new people a day was intentional, her take on knowledge sponge.  Sadasia has always gone directly to people as her primary source of insight.  She’s built personal relationships with some of the most powerful and inspiring people in Silicon Valley, and it comes from her own unique take on what it means to be a knowledge sponge.

“There’s many ways to learn,” she said. “But I’ve always gone to the source. Let me talk to the person who’s done it.”

At Google, that translated into a disciplined practice. She booked time with anyone whose name came up frequently, anyone doing work she found interesting, anyone who seemed to be operating at a level she wanted to understand.

Here’s how she did it:

She built this 3 Cs framework for relationship building:

• Connect
• Common Ground
• Collaborate
  

She operationalizes the 3 Cs through this practical yet rigorous approach to building relationships:

1. Be Intentional: Make the Ask. Clearly identify who you want to connect with and initiate the conversation.
2. Prepare and Show Up Ready. Conduct your research prior to the meeting so you can contribute thoughtfully.
3. Establish Common Ground. Focus on finding shared interests and identifying the potential for a deeper, more meaningful relationship.
4. Follow Up: Your Biggest Opportunity. As Sadasia noted, this is where most people fail. A timely follow-up is your best chance to distinguish yourself.‍
5. Seek Opportunities for Collaboration. Over time, as the connection is maintained, look for ways to work together. This is the moment the relationship's true potential for growth will be revealed.
   

Some days all five new contacts were a miss, some days she met a life changing mentor who helped her interpret what she was experiencing. Peers who offered context when things felt ambiguous. Leaders who opened doors she didn’t know existed. In all cases, she identified something she could learn from every person she interacted with.

When you are moving quickly and operating at a high level, setbacks can feel personal. Deep relationships with common ground give you a way to process those moments when most might lose their footing.

Connection is especially important when you are N of 1

Sadasia employs systems thinking and emotional grounding to cultivate a community of meaningful connections. This network both supports her and allows her to support others as they navigate the often tumultuous journey of high-achieving careers, together.

“I need people I can go to and say, this is what I’m going through,” she said. “Is this me? What should I do about this?”

That question, Is this me? comes up often for High Slope Talent, especially those who find themselves “the only” in some organizational contexts.

Sadasia has spent much of her career as the only Black woman in the room, in organizations and industries that were not built with her in mind. That context is important because sometimes it isn’t clear what signals she should pay attention to or not. 

“I’ve been one of one on a lot of teams,” she said. “So you do start to wonder, is this about me? Or is it something else? And that’s where having people you trust really matters.”

Risk, Clarity, and the Role of Choice

Sadasia describes herself as a career “risk taker through and through”. It stems from her mantra she adopted in high school, “you have to take risks to know how far you can go”. 

Risk without emotional grounding tends to become chaotic and reactive.  It’s more than having deep relationships to fall back when risks don’t pan out, it’s a deep gratitude and grace, and a knowingness that everything has a way of working itself out.

One of her mentors, Ginny Clarke (whom she met in one of her hundreds of Open Calendar Google meetings!), gave her a framework that has stayed with her in how to take risks:

“There’s either fear or there’s love,” Ginny said. “If you’re moving from fear, you’re trying to escape. You don’t have to fight. You can choose love.”

That distinction has shaped how she evaluates decisions. She is not interested in making career moves out of panic or urgency. She wants to understand what she is optimizing for, what she is building toward, and what each step makes possible.

It is also why she did not treat her early experience at Google as something to run from immediately. She treated it as a constraint to work within, at least for a time, while she expanded her access to other parts of the system.

Even in that difficult relationship, she found something worth keeping. She could still choose love. She could still see that there was something to learn from this bad boss:

“He was an operational genius,” she said. “I learned how he structured things, how he presented, how he whiteboarded. There’s always something to learn from someone.”

That ability to extract value without absorbing the rest is part of what keeps her steady.

Lessons for High Slope Talent

I asked Sadasia what lessons she might give her younger self, or to emerging career High Slope Talent. Her lessons are a must-read for anyone, even experienced career folks, looking to emotionally ground themselves in high-stakes environments:

1. Make connections. Prepare. Follow up. Look to learn directly from those you admire, but be sure to not waste their time. Be clear on your ask, and prepare so they know why they are there. These meetings will yield insights, recommendations, and opportunities in your conversations. What you do with that information determines whether the relationship deepens or disappears.
2. Take the lessons, leave the rest. Some conversations will not lead anywhere, and some bosses will be bad. Not everyone is meant to be in your life forever. Take the learnings that land and move on. There is always something to take with you, even in negative situations.
3. Do not make decisions from fear. Fight or flight is a normal reaction, but not every difficult situation is a signal to leave. Not every uncomfortable moment is a sign that something is wrong. Let love guide you over fear; be pulled toward something versus pushed from something. If you feel stuck, expand your view of the situation you find yourself in and chart a new course.

The course Sadasia is charting from here

Sadasia now builds relationships at scale. It’s literally her job. She develops relationships and introduces people to opportunities for the many stakeholders within venture capital ecosystems.

What she is thinking about for the next leg of her High Slope journey now goes a step further.

She wants to shorten the path for others .

“If it took me ten years,” she said, “it should take the next person five. And the next three.”

She is exploring how to help people identify, with precision, the handful of relationships that could unlock their next chapter. To build bigger and better connections between people.

It is, in many ways, an extension of the same instinct that led her to meet five new people a day. She is taking the system she built for herself and turning it outward, making it easier for others to find their footing earlier, and to keep it as they grow.

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