“We can empower other women in so many ways. By doing something as simple as informal coaching or seeking and accepting feedback after a meeting. Expanding each other’s networks
and celebrating successes.”
Q: What is your biggest motivator?
A: Helping others motivates me. Whether that’s using my skills to help the team at work, helping a customer to solve issues, helping to coach a team member so they can improve their skills, or even volunteering at the local library.
Q: What advice would you give to women starting out in this industry?
A: The advice I would give is to ask questions and seek to understand so we can all learn from each other and take the initiative to learn from all levels of the organization. Learning from different perspectives is really important. The other piece of advice is to get really comfortable steel toe shoes.
Q: What does success mean to you?
A: At work, success to me is working with integrity, adding value and supporting team member development and team member diversity.
Q: What is your superpower?
A: My superpower is continuous learning and continuous improvement personally and professionally. Professionally I’m learning new systems and processes and personally I learn through travel and new experiences.
Q: Who is someone that you admire?
A: My grandpa; Whenever anyone asked him how his day was, he would say every day is a great day when you wake up on this side of the roots. I always think about that because even when I’m having a tough day or there’s a difficult time, there’s always that silver lining that you can find in every situation. Even if you go through a failure or set back you can learn something from it and learn something positive that you can take away.
Q: How have you seen women empower other women in your workplace?
A: We can empower other women in so many ways. By doing something as simple as informal coaching or seeking and accepting feedback after a meeting. Expanding each other’s networks and celebrating successes. And also, that encouragement to dust yourself off and learn from failures. Those are all things I’ve seen and experienced and tried to do myself. Whether it’s proactively providing feedback or seeking feedback. When I have an opportunity to sing someone’s praises like, “Emily did a great job on this project” or “Barb did a fantastic job with this customer meeting” and not necessarily saying it directly to the person but when you tell your network that this person has this awesome skill, it kind of helps other people in the organization. It expands their network that way too.
Q: What is your personal motto or phrase that you live by?
A: It’s a little long but there’s a quote by Anthony Bourdain; It really speaks to me. He said “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” I’ve been to 47 countries and all 7 continents.
Q: What are some of your traveling tips?
A: Everywhere I go, even if it’s sad or uncomfortable or it’s not what you expected, you learn something from it and it becomes part of you. I’ve been to some sad places and I’ve been to some amazing places. That’s my biggest advice: you can plan but then you have to go with the flow and see what you can learn from the experience even if it’s tough. I can plan my hotel and plan my travel but if this place is booked up go somewhere else. You have to roll with the punches.
