Elaine Welteroth opens up about her course on MasterClass, imposter syndrome and more

In an exclusive interview, Elaine Welteroth sat down with theGrio and opened up about her new course on MasterClass, what impact she wants it to have and other topics.

Thursday night, Oct. 14, Welteroth returns as a judge on the 19th season of Bravo’s hit competition show Project Runway, serving alongside Nina Garcia and Brandon Maxwell. Christian Siriano, the series’ season four winner, will be back as the participating designers’ mentor.

From breaking boundaries in 2016 as editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue to her best-selling writing career and transition later to television personality on The Talk, Welteroth’s journey has been a fascinating one to watch. Now, through her new course on MasterClass, she’s ready to shed some light onto how she got to where she is today. In “Designing Your Career,” Welteroth teaches how to “harness your values, skills, and passions to create your dream career path.”

The talented multi-hyphenate sat down with TheGrio and broke down for whom this new course is, how she practices intentionality, alignment and more.

“This class is for everyone who is brave enough to take a bet on themselves,” Welteroth told TheGrio’s Natasha S. Alford. “It is for mid-career pivoters, folks who are just coming out of college trying to figure out what their passion is and what to pursue professionally. It’s for folks like my mother, who, while I was making this class, was wrapping up 35 years at a company that she dedicated her life to and is moving into her retirement phase, and has a lot of life left in her!”

“Designing Your Career,” she explained, is also for freelancers or simply anyone who “isn’t currently feeling fulfilled” in their current situation.

“There’s a lot of different ways to define success for yourself,” said Welteroth. This reframing of success is not new for the 34-year-old, as she went deep on this topic in her New York Times bestseller More Than Enough. Speaking on alignment — which she calls her “word of 2021” — she contended “full alignment is it. If it does not feel like full alignment, I do not want it, and that’s a filter that applies in every area of life.”

Her past experience making it to the top of the corporate media world in New York City, taught Welteroth just this.

“I do think that this moment in time is about coming into alignment with our highest intentions,” she said. “I think, for a lot of us, we have been living on autopilot for a long time. I climbed the ranks of corporate America in the media world, in New York City … where I was very intentional about my career and moves that I made. But I do think that the sense of just grinding it out, and maybe prioritizing professional wins over certain aspects of personal development, eventually threw me a bit out of alignment in some ways.”

While looking at Welteroth’s impressive resume, one would imagine she would never have a moment in which she doubts herself. Well, her MasterClass course asks her students to think again. In it, she has a lesson on imposter syndrome, something many people face while striving to reach their goals.

“It’s the realest thing,” Welteroth said. “Imposter syndrome almost stopped me from doing this MasterClass. I’ll be honest: When they called me and offered me the chance to do a MasterClass, I literally was like, ‘Me?! But I’m not….I’m not a master!’”

While she reveals she thought she had “outgrown” imposter syndrome, she realized she couldn’t “hide in shame” when feeling it.

“There is so much power in speaking your fears,” she said. “Some people are, ‘fake it til’ you make it,’ but that’s not how I roll. If I feel resistance from the inside, I have to speak it to get it out. I have to confront the fear and find somebody to talk to who can remind me who I am.”

For more on MasterClass and Welteroth’s course, head to the official website here.

Have you subscribed to theGrio’s podcast, “Dear Culture?” Download our newest episodes now!
TheGrio is now on Apple TV, Amazon Fire and Roku. Download theGrio today!