How I Rediscovered Myself By Starting a Business

As an immigrant, I felt compelled to fit in. As a consultant, I felt a lack of control. As a founder, I feel fulfilled, finally.

It’s a strange feeling, being an overnight success at age 51. Four years ago, I founded my first company, Constellation Agency (No. 65 on the 2020 Inc. 5000 list). Today, we do north of $20 million in annual revenue providing microtargeted digital advertising creative to more than 900 auto dealerships across the country.

Just a few years before, though, I was at the bottom. At 40, I was a divorced single mom, consulting for auto manufacturers and burned-out by a career I wasn’t passionate about. I was doing OK, but I felt like a failure inside. I remember standing numb in front of the mirror and realizing I didn’t know what my favorite food was, what kind of movies I liked to watch, or even what clothes I liked to wear. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I know now that I needed to own my own company to feel happy and successful. But first, I needed to become the owner of my own life. That started with my name.

I have several.

My birth name is Sora; my family calls me that, or Columba, which is the Catholic name they gave me at birth (my mom wanted to be a nun). When I was 10, an immigration lawyer asked me to choose a different name–Sora, he said, wouldn’t cut it in the U.S., and I was an American now. On the spot, I reached for the woman I aspired to be at that moment: Wonder Woman. And so, Diana was born.

But the void I felt for much of my younger life, that lack of a recognizable personality, was because I had spent my whole life stuck between two worlds. It didn’t matter whether I was trying to be “Korean” or trying to be “American.” Either way, I kept coming up short.

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