Eliana Wahnon has a secret weapon in her career arsenal. As a child, she experienced a wealth of cultural traditions stemming from her Jewish father and catholic mother as well as from her upbringing in Caracas, Venezuela. (She celebrated Christmas along with Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, and attended a bilingual school where she learned english and U.S. history.) Today, Eliana, 36, lives in Eden Prairie, MN, with her husband, Eduardo Morales, and their two children, Eduardo, 5, and Diana, 3. She finds that her childhood has given her crucial skills to use in her role as “the voice of the consumer” at General Mills, where she works as global consumer insights manager. “There are always different points of view and there’s always common ground, and that’s what I’m trying to find,” says Eliana, who moved to the United States in 2006. “It’s a perfect fit for who I am.”

Let’s hear it for family traditions—those rituals of childhood and forces of personal history that may have at one point made multicultural women seem somehow different. Today, as women of color move into roles of greater leadership and responsibility, they are realizing the positive influence their backgrounds can have on their careers—and on corporate America.

Whether these customs included gathering every night for dinner, embracing multiple generations or learning how to make your voice heard in an argument with a traditional-minded father, youthful experiences can empower women to confront challenges and stay focused in their careers, says Stephanie Creary, a doctoral candidate at Boston College who’s studying the impact of identities on workplaces. “Research has shown that being able to draw on different parts of your upbringing that make you feel good helps mitigate stress and, overall, offers a boost to your psychological well-being.” For instance, you may benefit if you’ve come from a family where mom instilled certain values, traditions and beliefs like When times are tough, we keep charging on. “These things become important to people as they enter and navigate a workplace,” says Creary. “It helps them cope and thrive.”

Such traditions have certainly fueled Eliana’s rise. Her role models include her mom—an architect and lawyer—and also her two grandmothers, who both ran businesses after being widowed young. “I wanted to follow their example,” she says. “If they can do it, I certainly can do it.”

The lesson Laura Bartlett learned from childhood is that she’s capable of adapting and succeeding. She didn’t have much choice, since every three years moving vans would pull up to her house. “Dad was in the military, so I lived around the world,” including Korea, Germany (twice), Kentucky, Washington State and Tennessee. “My mother very quickly made wherever we were our home,” says Laura. “we were unpacked in a day. She is very organized and efficient.”

So it’s no surprise that Laura, 51, is, too. The product vice president and state manager of the northeast region for Allstate Insurance grew up immersed in the cultures of the world. But none were more influential than the African American (by way of Dad) and Korean (Mom) traditions her family observed: “The ways of my family, including moving all the time, made me who I am. I can adapt really easily. I’m very resilient. I don’t get stressed or frazzled when I’m in a situation where I'm not the expert.” She now lives outside Chicago with husband Donovan and son Myles, 9, but has never been afraid to uproot the family to take advantage of career opportunities. “I have wanderlust, but what makes moving worthwhile is the opportunities i’ve been able to take advantage of,” says Laura, whose work has taken her to Tennessee and Ohio as well. “That’s been very helpful to my career.”

Rosie Cofre drew inspiration from her upbringing, too—she wanted to show her parents that their cultural expectations were too limiting. One of seven children, including five brothers, Rosie liked playing tennis and helping her dad fix the roof and mow the lawn in Woodlake, CA, where she grew up. But Rosie’s parents, immigrants from Mexico, had little formal education and felt that girls were supposed to sew and cook and take care of a household. No way, protested Rosie: “When I told my dad I wanted to be a business manager, he told me, ‘You’re a girl. Girls can’t be leaders.’”

So she earned two undergraduate degrees and a master’s degree in business. “I was always breaking these cultural barriers.” Today, Rosie’s parents tell everyone how proud they are of her. And as an employee resource organization strategist at Cisco Systems, she’s still forging her own path. After her first child was born seven years ago, Rosie went into the office half the week, then worked from home the rest of the time. Only she didn’t alert her manager ahead of time to her new work schedule. “I felt if I asked permission, they would tell me no,” says Rosie, who now has three children (ages 7, 5 and 3) and works remotely full-time from her home in San Jose, CA. “I decided this is what I needed for myself and my family,” which includes her husband Carlos.

“Technology makes it work. I’ve got a dental appointment with my kids and I’m there on my phone working.” When a company like Cisco Systems accepts a variety of traditions, women of color can more easily find balance at work, says Katherine Phillips, PhD, the Paul Calello Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia University Business School in New York City. “Women of color can find strength in who they are. Cultural traditions and values help us persevere and give us a sense of belonging to something larger than our organizations.”

For Tiffany Prudhomme, the key to her history is that sense of belonging. She hails from Houston, but since her parents grew up in rural Louisiana, she is well versed in the traditions of the Deep South, where family means everything. Tiffany was nurtured by a host of women—her mother, sisters, aunts—whom she calls her village. As she got older, the village expanded to include her mother-in-law, college sorority sisters and other friends. “I still love my care packages from my mother, daily phone calls from my sister and text messages from my 70-year-old aunt, she says.

Not surprisingly, Tiffany, 39, who is African American, has created a professional village as well, a collection of mentors who have helped her rise to audit partner in the professional practice network at Deloitte. “Within Deloitte, I have a number of mentors—women of color, white women, men of any race—I will seek counsel from,” says Tiffany, who lives in Stamford, CT, with her husband, Reginald, and their two children, ages 9 and 6. “My mentors challenge me. The women in my family challenge me. You have to be able to take risks to further your career. My village supports and encourages me in every way.