Daily Inspiration: Meet Michael Colorge

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Colorge.

Hi Michael, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
Hi folks, my name is Michael Colorge. I was born in the Philippines and my family moved to Los Angeles in 1990.

I’ve been a valley resident since… go fig! Growing up in a Filipino household, people outside our family assumed that my siblings and I were born in the US as we didn’t have the accent that a lot of Filipinos emigrating to the US had.

The secret: our late mother sent us to American schools before we moved to the US and my siblings and I grew up watching American cartoons and TV shows before the move. It made the transition easier and we just fit right in when we started going to school in LA. And yet I always looked at things from the outsider’s perspective from within. I’m used to having people make assumptions about me… I always like to upend people’s expectations about me and what I can do.

I eventually attended Cal State University, Northridge for my political science major but ended up having a career in tech instead. Our mother wanted a lawyer in the family, hence the poli sci major. Unfortunately, that life didn’t appeal to me at all… so I randomly responded to a job post on campus for a tech job and the rest is history. At the same time, I was getting heavily involved in Democratic Party politics as a young activist and decided to make politics a hobby that I would do on weekends and off-hours. 20 years later I’m still doing this political hobby while working full-time for a major tech firm. I currently serve on 3 Democratic Party boards: Democratic Party of the San Fernando Valley and Pilipino American LA Democrats as an elected officer and Stonewall Democratic Club as their Program Chair. I’m still shocked that I find time to be this involved, but I’m good at time management.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Nothing in life goes as planned. I was expected to be a lawyer… yet that life didn’t appeal to me at all. I chose tech after accidentally stumbling upon a job post on campus for a QA role. And that started my tech career. As for my political hobby, that was supposed to be just a temporary high school summer activity that my dad sent me to just to get me out of the house. It became quite the second job/second life for me.

The biggest struggle in general has always been and continues to be finding time for everything I want to do. Finding the perfect balancing act is futile… things change on the fly and you have to be ready to just go with the changes. And those changes mean that you have to give up something to make room for new things… and that’s okay.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am a Product Manager with 10+ years of experience across consumer and enterprise applications. While most product managers start off in product management or from an MBA program, I came into product management after spending years in startup engineering teams.

I started my career in Quality Assurance then moved into project management and operations before settling into the product. My experience working closely with developers along with QA and project management helps me push things into production much faster than normal.

What’s next?
I used to make 5-year plans but that was when I thought life would be predictable. I just stop making plans and live for the moment. It’s been working for me so far.

Contact Info:

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