Women Who Rokt: The Power of Connection in Action

Wow. That's amazing. And I I loved opening with, Red and shop with heart. I also say lead with heart. So it was a really important opening. I'm like sitting here thinking, god, it's all about the heart. And I always talk about there's the cognitive, which is you think, and then there's the heart you feel. And if you think too much, you're gonna overthink. We know we are very good at overthinking and it's textbook and it's status quo and it's following the rules. When you lead with heart, anything goes and I promise you, you won't go down the wrong path. And I I finally understood follow your heart or, you know, what that really means because it's that uncontrollable urge which makes you go for possibility. So I kinda wanna talk about that and then if anyone that knows me knows I'm gonna go off script right away. So I'm just giving you the heads up, right? You can get rid of these. I'm sorry, not sorry. Because we're talking about mentorship. And I always say there is no right mentor that has all of the answers. It's mentorship in the moment. Talk to someone with lived experience, been there, done that, and you'll get some good advice. And it's not top down, bottom up, it's all around. So I'm gonna gauge all of you too, which is breaking another pattern or another rule because we're here together to help each other. So if you have a burning question that ties into something you're dying to know or advice you wanna get from unbelievable leaders here, I'm gonna give you the mic. So I'm giving you all a heads up too. So let's start with who you are, what you do, and then I would love to hear either or and the best advice you got and or the worst advice you got. And you could do both because I love both of them. K. Lisa, you're up first because you're the bold, brave, fearless one that I know for a really long time, so you can't get mad at me. I I wanna you know, I always wanna go with the worst advice. We learn from that. We do learn. I'm Lisa Valentino. Nice to be here. Thank you for having me, Rokt. I oversee Best Buy ads. I just passed my one year, so I know a little bit more about retail and retail media to be dangerous. The worst advice I got was from a former boss who told me to be patient and that there was a ladder and it it wasn't your time yet. I wound up, by the way, quitting, like, six months later. I won't share names or brands because you guys will know all of them. But I I think it taught me a lot about, like, the path forward is not a linear one and, you know, the the person that drives the car of your life is you and if and be determined by that. But, you know, as a very young person being told, it's not your time. Like, the person ahead of you waited for ten years, so just be patient. And I walked out that night being like, oh my god. What how am I gonna do this for ten years kind of thing. And your heart said don't wait. No. Ba boom. Ba boom. Ba boom. And you know it's really amazing because according to the World Economic Forum, it's gonna take another hundred and thirty one years to close the gender gap. So we can wait. Not ten years. That's a hundred and thirty one. Your head says you're supposed to wait because that's what the survey says. And your heart is like, no effing way. We're not waiting. Go and create the change. Hi. I'm Maria Breeza, and I am the chief transformation officer at SiriusXM. So I am focused on driving business efficiency across the enterprise as well as making sure that we have really rational cases around how we're growing our business and how we're driving increased revenue. And while doing that, trying to change the way our organization works, trying to drive accountability and collaboration and transparency across the enterprise. So I'll go with with bad too because I feel like it's a little bit easier. This is getting juicy. So I had a manager once who sort of on the regular would say, like, why aren't you smiling or why aren't you happier? And I you know, there's a whole bunch of reasons to sort of maybe cringe about that. But I felt like it wasn't my authentic self to sort of be the person who pasted on a smile all the time, and that it was important to be really confident in where you are and speak your mind, and, you know, it's not always with a smile. And so, yeah, I learned you you don't have to smile all the time. And by the way, fake smiles give you artificial wrinkles. Thank you. Is that true? Is that proven? Kind of. Yeah. Botox can't fix that. Good evening. My name is Claire Sallie. I work with I work here at Rokt with all of our data science teams. I have been pretty lucky. I have been with Rokt for coming up to two years now. And our teams are all mathematicians and statisticians and computer scientists, and feels like now is a really good time to be working machine learning, computer science, AI. We're all the school kids that everybody used to laugh at and bully, and now, you know, now we're slowly taking over the world. So it's a pretty exciting time to work in AI and data science. I think your question about what's the what's the best piece of advice I received, and I wanna keep it positive. I know you've had, like, two examples of bad advice kind of dovetails into your point about, like, being the driver of your own car. I got some really good advice that if you if you don't like something, make a change. And I've had a pretty nonlinear career path. I dabbled in many different professions, which and I really do like this phrase, by the way, nonlinear career path. It's a polite way of saying I'm, like, nearly fifty and I don't know what I wanna do when I grow up yet. But I I tried many different things. I experimented with many different careers, and I made changes, and I changed countries, and I, you know, I practiced law for a while. I decided that wasn't for me. It was too adversarial, and then I I got a bit overexuberant and decided I was going to make change to the entire world, and I formed a nonprofit for a while and started that, and pivoted to something different. I and whilst that's been an unusual journey to get to where I am today, they're actually really valuable experiences. There's so many things I learnt along the way and so many lessons that I took away from different industries and different careers and different parts of the world and different bosses and different mentors that gave me a really, I think, well rounded picture that helped develop who I am as a person. So that idea of just making change and driving change and being comfortable with being the driver of your your own car, both in your career and your life, and actually not being afraid to turn the steering wheel, think is is a really good one. God, I love the car analogy, especially with Rokt and FQ F1, and all about that car. And so, know, I I love that and I also love that you might not know what you want to do but you can certainly find out what you don't wanna do but it takes doing it. And and I got a D in statistics and ended up pioneering online research, just saying. So I I wasn't very good in numbers but I was really good in storytelling and so writing my own script. As a matter of fact, my professor from university when he saw me on the cover of the newspaper called me up and said, you the same Shelly Zales that got a D in statistics in my class? And I'm like, yep. I said, but you are a terrible teacher. I said, you made it all about numbers and it's really hard. I said, instead of about stories contextualizing the data to tell a story? And so I just wanna elaborate on that because it's loaded with knowledge of you know, what you just said. Oscar Wilde says be yourself because everyone else has taken and change does require being brave. So I wanna go to leadership because you all are remarkable leaders in your fields, in your circles, in, you know, in in the peer groups that you have. What makes you a good leader, would you say? And I'd like you to brag about yourself. So don't don't be shy and modest. Go bold and oh, give it up. Oh, you want someone to They're giving me answers. Oh, what makes her a good leader? Tell me. What do you think? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. Like, I'm I'm gay. I don't catch. Like, Lisa is enabling everything you need to do and breaking down barriers. Like, Lisa is a a steamroller or a bulldozer or whatever other auto analogy you wanna use. An f one an f one vehicle, like, she is helping you navigate, but also just literally removing barriers and obstacles. Our relationship started a long time ago, but we finally have the opportunity to work together because we have a lot of mutual friends. And I'm Amy McGovern. I I work with Lisa and Jeff at Best Buy Ads. It's a privilege of mine. But when I had the opportunity to join Best Buy Ads and I said Lisa Valentino's running it, I'm I'm throwing my hat in the ring. I'm all in. She exudes confidence. There's an expectation that we are all division one athletes, and we bring our a game. And it's not only for Best Buy and for our clients. When we win, we all win together, but it's also for our personal brand. Love you guys. That was an unpaid sponsorship. That's a real smile. No wrinkles, bitch. I have a I I take care of that in other ways. I would I would just add one one other thing to it, which is I think leadership is a daily walk, and I think everybody in this room has the right to claim the title. And I didn't you don't realize these things until you get older. I'm old. So I I'm way older, so don't go old on me. I I wait I I don't know what day it was. I don't know what year it was, but a light bulb went off where I stopped giving a SHIT. And I was like, oh, I'm I'm a leader now. You're all leaders. You lead things. Own own that. And and the other thing I would just say, I say this to my kids all the time even though I kind of am a perfectionist. It's not about perfection, it's about progress. Just make progress every single day, and by the time you look back, you'll be like, oh, shit. Look at what we just did or look at what I just did. So those are just some of the things that I think about when I'm when I'm with leaders every day. You know, and it's so funny because I think about leadership and usually it's how many people work for you that makes you a leader. It's who are you and you're a leader of yourself, whether you have a team of one, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, you're the leader of you and leadership to me is choice. You have a choice of who you wanna be and how you wanna operate. Right? Just there just one other thing I would say and I don't mean to steal the mic at all is We're sharing the mic. Is that you are being watched every day. Like, there's someone in our company that just recently joined a very senior leader, and there was a they put a a playbook out, like a a handbook on how to work with me. I thought it was very very techy and very cute. But the reality is, I never have to say to anybody that works and a lot of my team doesn't doesn't live where I live. Here is how who I am as a leader. I am empathy and curiosity and it's they'll tell you who like, I I mean, I never heard my team say these words about me, which I'm just, like, beklempt about, but But you have to situate word for You you are the people people will decide, and you'll be defined the way you walk as a leader, not what you might, you know, put in a handbook or say on a panel, I guess. Right. And I was I think I was gonna add that, you know, I think one thing maybe for me as a leader, but everyone thinking about themselves as leaders. It it really changed the story for me when I started to own my conviction conviction about things. I think to be a leader, you really need to truly believe in what it is that you're driving other people to do. And so, you know, I would start with conviction, and then it is about how you bring people along with you. And that is telling the story of why you believe the world to be the way you believe it is, to help them understand how you see things, and then to tell them what you believe we need to do about that and what the next step is. So, I would say for myself, seeing myself as a leader, one of those sort of skills that I think helped me be who I am is owning that conviction in a way and then being able to bring people along and explain why I feel that way. Awesome. I actually I really like that. You used the word conviction. You talked about, like, being able to communicate that. I think the what I heard really in those words is the ability communicate a clear vision that is inspiring for other people. There's a couple of things I might add on to that. I've always believed that leaders are somebody who recognises the potential in others and can turn that into a greater human being and a more impactful human being. I think leaders I've always believed that leaders need to have multiple leadership styles. They need to be able to be autocratic. They need to be able to be participative. They need to know when to use which blend of skills at the right time suitable for the circumstances as well. I did something interesting a couple weeks ago. I've been interviewing a bunch of leaders for for various roles, and I added a new quick interview question I've been playing around with, which is it can be a little bit confronting, but it's a little bit extreme too, which I quite often ask the question. Let's say you're in a situation, you know, you're in a military or a force, and you're taking a team into battle. You've been asked to lead a team. So you're in a situation of impossible adversity where there's, you know, thousands of enemies, and you're asking these five people to go and run over the hill and put their lives on the line, I ask those candidates, like, what does a team need to hear from you in that moment? Because that's the most extreme of adversity, and part of our job as leaders is to rise people to that occasion and ask the question, what do want to tell those people? You're asking them to make the greatest sacrifice or take on the greatest impossible adversity. What do they need to hear from you as a leader? It's a really powerful end to your question. What's your answer? I I have a bit of an advantage here. We we we had a while ago one of the commanders of Navy SEAL Team six here in the office doing some breathing exercises. That video? Yeah. And Has everyone watched that video? Make Your Bed by the Navy SEAL officer? Yeah. Gotta watch that. So good. Okay. But there was there were three things he talked about when we asked that question directly, like, what do people really need to hear from in that moment in the greatest hardship and adversity? And, you know, he's very well trained military leader and he gave three key components to his response. The first one was, they want you to acknowledge that this is difficult. I don't want you to kind of put a veneer over this situation, pretend that everything is in any way kind of okay. Acknowledge the adversity. Acknowledge the realness and the seriousness of the situation is the first one. The second one, they want to hear that you are right there with them in that moment. You are not presiding over them. You're not judging them. You're not somewhere above them. You're right there. You're going to pick up a gun or join, and you're gonna stand shoulder to shoulder with them as part of the team is the first. Second, they wanna hear that you're there with them. You're not standing over them in any way. Then the third thing that I wanna hear is that you have confidence in them. And that's not to necessarily guarantee them that everything's gonna be alright, but to say that we are we are prepared for this moment, we are the we have the most chance for anybody, or we are the right people, that we are prepared to to take this on, that you have confidence in them. So the three things that this situation is serious, that you're right there with them, you're not judging them, you're right there standing shoulder to shoulder as part of the team, and thirdly, that you have confidence in collective effort. That's so powerful. It's so powerful. And, you know, I I always say I hire for passion, train for skill, unless you want to be a doctor, lawyer or an accountant or cardiologist. And you know I I think about that because this topic, it's the only thing I'll read back. It says empowering the next generation of women leaders and what that means. And so next generation, what's your favorite go to interview question? Do you have one? Well, I I do like to ask what was the last time you made a mistake and how did you handle it? Was one of my questions. The last mistake you made? I mean, if I were preparing for an interview question, I would I would do this. But you know what? One that I made in the last year, I would say, is we've launched this major transformation effort at SiriusXM. And, you know, I just talked about sort of how a leader needs to inspire people. And I think that I have strayed from talking about the why a little bit because it can feel hard to talk about sort of the hard things. And so you wanna talk about the where we're going and how great it's gonna be when we get there. And you you know, I have failed to talk about the why sometimes. And so that's something that I have gone back to the well on in the last couple of weeks and said, like, you know, you've moved away from this. You need to figure out how to bring that back into your narrative. Simon Sinek is gonna be very happy that you're bringing the why back. I don't know if it's just because of him, but maybe he will. Yes. Okay, Lisa. Hard question. Is that An interview question. Like, we want the next generation. I always ask how others would describe your leadership style. So how would folks that work for you talk about I mean, so it was interesting that this sort of played out A plus. That it did. People have a really hard time talking about themselves positively or negatively, so it's always interesting. I love what you just said because I'm also I'm new in a in a in a role of just a little over a year, and then I there are thing mistakes made, lots of them. Underestimations, a lot of them. And we did a lot of great things. And, like, not being afraid to talk about it. Otherwise, how do you how do you grow from it? So I I I really relate to that as well. I I I love all of these because I think that, you know, this is the first time in history we have actually six generations in the workplace. We always say five, but there's a six which is our interns coming in and no one counts for them. And you know, it is not about what age or the older generation learns or everyone is gonna learn from us. It's, you know, how do we all learn from each other? And every generation and I think it's based on lived experience has has wisdom and especially as AI. AI has been around for a long time, but we're now using it in a different way and universalizing it and contextualizing it. You know, so for the generation coming in which is bringing tremendous value, digital natives up the wazoo, You know, what are you thinking about from the AI perspective and not as an ingredient, but as really the transformation of of where we're going? Yeah. This will take twenty minutes, Tom. How much time do you have? I have no idea how much time we have because I don't see a clock. So I'm gonna keep going. For for someone who is a data scientist and a mathematician, I'm not so well qualified to talk about the social elements of this transformation, but I'll definitely give it a good try because I reckon I will there's good a chance to be You just like your accent, so keep talking. And by the way, every every board that I talked to over the last three or four days, the number of boards, a number of CEOs who are asking the same questions again and again and again. There's a pattern to them, by the way, is the same five or six questions, there is definitely a pattern. From a workforce perspective, this gets really interesting and especially there is some really interesting social dynamics that come out of play with where we going with some of this technology. The first one is in asking yourself the question, what does what does labor look like in a world where intelligence is proliferate, where it's everywhere all at once and it's cheap and it costs nothing to have access to intelligence is an interesting thought experiment to play around with. There was a lot of research from a Harvard professor by the name of Linda Hill who published a paper showing exactly what the skills are that are necessary to be successful in the era of AI. And none of it is the none of it is substantive skills or subject matter skills in particular fields of science or, you know, social sciences. It's all soft skills. And those are areas, whether because of it's her reasons of social conditioning or intentionally, that's an area that women have historically excelled in. The five most key personality characteristics and skills required to be successful in the AI era are adaptability, curiosity, creativity, comfort with ambiguity and digital literacy. Interesting, like, I caught moment where you used the word, like, what was the biggest mistake that you made or whatever. Those people who are adaptable will usually think about, like, a mistake as a learning opportunity more than anything else, and those people who are adaptable will think about problems as opportunities is the way they'll view it. And you can see that. We often see that even just in the interview going back to the interview example. You see that in the interview that I ask, I ask somebody about the most interesting problem that they've solved. The words that they use will tell me about how they think about these things and do they have that growth mindset and are they adaptable and flexible? So they're the kind of the skill set that you need. I think from a there's a lot of anxiety in the labor market and that's a good reason right now. It's very easy for people to see lots of jobs are going to go away. It's really hard to see what the new jobs will actually look like because if you think before the advent of the Internet, it would have been possible to understand that there were roles as a social media marketing manager before the introduction of the automobile. No one would have recognized that there were jobs doing tire manufacturing plants and roadworks and things. So whilst it's easy to see some labor that might be transformed, it's hard to deceive the new jobs that we created. But if you look at the history of all of major technological landmarks in history, they've all created more jobs than they've taken away. There's been a there's an economic fallacy which economists call the lump of labor fallacy, which is the idea that there's a finite amount of work to do in society and a finite amount of jobs, and it's that fallacy is actually being used to keep women out of the workforce for a long period of time. If we don't if we let all the women work, then there won't be enough jobs for all the men, was the argumentation. Economists who study this will tell you that it's not a fixed pie, and the more we work, the more opportunity there is, and frankly, if you look at the human experience overall, it's far from perfect today, so there's plenty of opportunity for people to excel. But the thing I'm most excited about with this more broadly is in a world where everybody has access to equivalent expertise and the only thing that matters is those social skills and entrepreneurial skills and soft skills, we start to get closer to a meritocracy where opportunity is more connected by, you know, people's ability than their pedigree and their access to networks and their access to educational upbringing, their access to capital and things that has the potential to bring with the right maybe economic innovation has the potential to bring us closer to a meritocracy. You know, I I it does democratize the system and just for everyone out there, the hard skills collaborate the hard skills analytic, decisive analytic, aggressive, assertive, the soft skills collaborative, empathetic, compassionate. I think those are the critical essential skills. We we say soft and it seems weak. It actually is the most critical essential skills of leadership today in my opinion. So I wanna go back and I'm gonna start taking whatever questions you all have because this is for for you. And so I'd rather learn asking questions that are real questions than the ones I'm gonna ask. But if you were to rewrite the job description, because the job descriptions are very skill based and when you talk about you don't need a degree today, you could be certified in so many amazing ways. If you were to rewrite the job description with the language that you wanna use to ensure that you get the resumes from the the next generation leaders, give me an example of language you would use and what you would look for. I mean, just drafting, I love, like, curiosity was the second, you know I I think it's about being it's curiosity, it's creativity, it's risk taking, It's intentionality too. I I I'll tell you a story. I was we all travel for a living. We're always on planes in different situations. So so Tuesday night, I was in Chicago, and I had to step out to do a Zoom call with my sixteen year old son and his athletic director for baseball for college stuff. And there were about sixteen sixteen year olds on this call. And usually, I'd be sitting there with Liam, you know, off screen but kinda on screen, and I've never seen him on the other side of the screen. So, you know, I'm sitting there and I'm like, why is he slouching? Why is he doing this? And You were for clubbed. And when the call was over, he he called me right after. He's like, mom, how'd that go? And it was all about, like, this new curriculum that they're taking on. I said, Liam, you have to be intentional on these calls. Now I'm sitting there as your mom, but there were four other coaches, which is his version of a boss, sitting on the other side of that and you're sitting like this and you're kinda looking and I could see you're texting. And so it's really interesting when we look at the next generation coming up who have grown up very differently. I grew up I I got into the job market in ninety six when the Internet was being born. Now AI is being born. But I look at those skills, those hard and soft skills, and I think we just have to remember that the things that matter in terms of being intentional, making an impression, representing yourself with confidence in an AI world, not in an AI world. They really matter. They carry a lot of credibility and weight. They still do today for me who's still trying to learn other, you know, the curiosity is why I'm at Best Buy. But I think it's those type of skills and some of the words that that I would be looking for. I I love that. That's it is so true. But also don't underestimate the power of being together. People say, oh, we're going back to office. That sucks. No. It's being back with people and think about it in that way like slouching, not slouching, but this other generation grew some of them grew up in the workplace in the COVID day where we're getting very cozy at home, but there's something about that water cooler moment that you can't can't make that up, and you you can't gain that. So I just wanna add that to the mix. Mine my thought falls into a similar space. I think one of the things I'm looking for is someone who can collaborate and work with other people, particularly in this sort of space where AI is coming. But how do you judge that? And I think one thing that I'm looking for is somebody who feels very authentic to me, who doesn't feel like a caricature, who doesn't come off as only a Zoom person, or who I can really believe in, which helps me collaborate with them better. And so as we're moving into this kind of AI world where we're gonna have all of these agents who, like, you know, not human, How do we sort of bring that human authentic element? And I think we as people need to sort of, like, step it up. And so I'm looking for people who can really be themselves, which I think will help them collaborate and sort of build on some of the stuff that AI is gonna be building underneath us. I honestly like that. I think the idea that the idea that computers will abstract away and automate a lot of the work that you need to do around, like, administrative overhead and even some of the science of management, which is quite predictable and quite task oriented, frees frees us up to work on the human element of leadership and work with people and growing and developing people and developing their careers and investing in their development. And even just potentially, we just take that to the bigger picture about, like, what's happening at the macro level around society in the longer term. You know, in a in a post labor world or in a low labor world, at least, where so much of labor is abstracted away from us, what really counts then is the things that make us human, which is kindness, creativity, connection, community, caring, those things that are really intrinsically human that AI will never be able to do. Right? And they're the things that are gonna be most valuable for me for sure. Funny they're all c's. This guy is so funny. Yeah. That aura ring when you all get your aura thing done, there's something about the c's. K. I wanna ask you one last question and I'm coming to all of you guys, so prepare yourselves. I I have no idea what time we're supposed to end, so I'll I'm gonna I'm having fun. I don't know about everyone else. Last question. If you are probably approached by so many people to quote unquote mentor them, how do you who and how do you say yes to someone? What is it? What's that magic that pulls you to say yes? I think for me, I'm interested to know what they hope to get out of it for the most part. There are some things where and I'll always try and, you know, support people in their growth and development. Sometimes, depending on what they're trying to achieve, I might be better connecting them with a career coach. I might be better connecting them with a different mentor if they're working on a really particular skill set that's focused and they wanna develop a particular skill. But I wanna kinda just separate maybe mentorship from sponsorship a little bit. And sponsorship is about helping as you climb up the ladder, you know, helping the next person up a little bit. What ladder? The the career. No. I'm talking about what Lisa said at the beginning. Right. So I feel I kind of feel like just separating those things apart. Sponsorship is quite a tactical thing about investing in growth, in particular high potential individuals, and spotlighting them and helping connect them with opportunity. And I always feel the best way I can do that is just with introductions, continuing to bring them into rooms they might not have the opportunity to be in. But from a mentorship perspective, I'm usually looking to understand exactly what people want to get out of the experience, because I might not often might not be the right person. I'll have a think about what they need and then try and figure out how I can connect them with the skills that they need to help get to where they want to be. And I just want to say that visual of a ladder, it's linear. Sometimes you have to zig one other's zag. And so it might not be you're not just climbing rung by run. I keep thinking of the staircase. If the stairs are wet, you might have to zig and climb over to get there versus retreat and go back, which takes taking risk and being a risk taker, not being afraid to fail, but being how much risk are you willing to take? And I think sometimes you can get a hand with that too. Like, I'm trying to make a pivot, a horizontal pivot. I wanna enter into a different area. I'm thinking about becoming a speech writer or a politician or whatever. It's like, alright. That's a change from computer science. Ladders don't go sideways. But pivoting does. But quite often, just either through life experience or connections or just positions of privilege, you might be able to connect them and help them make that lateral move as well or that pivot as well. So even if people are not necessarily looking to climb a ladder, but looking to shift the ladder to a different direction, quite often, you might be in a position to help them. And then sometimes I go out and have a think about it for a few days and try to understand how I can help them get to where they wanna be. It's a it's a matter of leadership service, I think, from my side. Servant leadership. I I would say and there are definitely people that I mentor in maybe more formalized ways, but I I do think as leaders, just creating space for more open dialogue. I I think that it it it kinda goes to the latter, but, you know, I I think about when I was starting out in this career, the idea that I would have access to the president of my company that I could walk in and say and this happened today with actually one of our associate managers. Here's what I'm thinking. What do you think? The fact that they feel comfortable even walking into it, and it was a Zoom. You know, it's not always a a face to face or saying, hey. Let's do a walk and talk. Or sometimes it's that little thing of, like, access. You know, it was it was a a gift to me. There was a woman when I started I started at an ad agency. She was in the corner office. I don't even know what her title was, but she was the boss. And I went in there maybe three times a year, and my knees were knocking because she had the whole the look, the brains, everything I wanted to be in life professionally was in this office. And I got in there three three and I made I I prepped, like and, you know, all she wanted to talk about what was, like, what's happening in culture, and I was like, wow. This is so cool. I don't ever want I don't wanna be that leader. I want I wanna have openness in my calendar where folks say, hey. Can I run something by you? Or I can say to them, hey. I noticed we're close to closing a piece of business. Great job. I saw you present. That was awesome. Let's talk about it. In a in a pointing at Olga, I think, up there. In in a I'm pointing to my team who's sitting right by our number one client, right behind our team. But that just that those lines and that opportunity to touch generations below or for them to have access to us. And look, there's it's not always available, but to me, that's kind of the way I want that motion to go a little bit differently. And by the way, that one open moment can lead to a lifetime of change Yeah. Which is remarkable, being seen. So for me, I've spent quite a bit of time mentoring. And sort of as I've gotten more senior, it's been harder and harder to do that, to have the time to do it. But for me, mentoring was a very conscious choice when I started doing it because I never had that mentor that I felt like understood me or seemed like me or looked like me or approached problems the way I did. And I really felt like I missed that. So I think as I was building some of my early relationships with mentees, I was I was seeing the people who kind of, you know, felt like me, and I found that I was most able to support them. But, like, that's not really where it ends, and it also was a lot of giving and getting. So I feel like I I got a lot from those kind of mentees who would see me in a different way and sort of helped me build confidence in a different way. And then, you know, fast forward ten, fifteen years, I started to build up some peer mentors, people who were my peers who could reflect back to me things that I wasn't getting from the people that I worked with or my my my bosses or the leaders that I was working with. And now, you know, time has sort of evolved again. And in my most recent role before I took this, was chief of staff to the CEO, and I spent a lot of time drawing connections and getting people to the right place to help them get what they need to build their careers and to get the advice and to get the feedback and to help them grow. And so now sort of more and more as I think of sponsorship, when folks come and ask me if I'll be their mentor, I always take the meeting. I always sit with them. I hear what they're trying to learn. I think that's really important. And then, you know, since I don't have time to be that person for everybody, I really try to draw those connections and help build the relationship so everybody can can continue to grow. I love that. Can I I just wanna tell a story about you because I feel like it's very relevant? No time. By the way A lot of time. So first CES trip, I can't remember which company it was, but I I my company was like, you can go to CES. You better have a a lot of meetings and, you know, bring back whatever. And I go and That's the definition of productivity. We had a lot of meetings. A lot of meetings and bring something back. And I got to Vegas, and I was lost. Huge, overwhelming. You know, I wasn't the type of person that liked to just navigate open rooms, and I found the girls' lounge. And it was one of the early days girls' lounges, and I walked in, and I thought I I thought I was in heaven. I'm like, am I re is this real? I hear hair dryers. I see retail in the corner. There is there is musical like, I don't even know if you were doing musical acts yet, but but mentorship was found there. So I would just say you kinda have to seek it out. I stumbled upon it. And so what anytime I walk into the girls' lounge, I was there in Cannes, and I just have this I just have this smile on my face when I see it's all the young people. They are all networking. I just feel like that is a hub of mentorship. It doesn't always have to be like, big one to one. Will you sign up for me for the rest of your life to be my mentor? It can be the New York ad club, the girls lounge. Like, what you built was a a mentor sort of hub that we could always go, and we would see the same people, and we would have the conversations that you couldn't have in all the places. And Thank you. You know? Like, we did that. Yes. Okay. So Thank you. You know, the truth is but that's what this is about. It's not about top down, bottom up. It's all around. We all learn something from someone else. I call pairing and sharing because I think that we all gain wisdom from each other and I think that's important. So time is up. I okay. But I do wanna take questions because I did promise. So I'm the boss. Ashley's the boss. She says I could take two and then we'll be here to answer everyone that has questions. So two good two goodies. Hi. Thank you so much for this informative panel. It's so inspiring to see everyone's career journey. I am Angela from ops at Rokt. And my question is, what is the biggest barrier you've had to overcome to get to where you are today? I have too many. You go. Well, I'm fifty one years old. And when I joined the media business, there were no women. I also happen to love sports, I thought it would be great to work at ESPN, which even created more of a magnifier. I mean, we live in a world today where women are dominating. Dominate and I played sports my whole life. Probably the biggest barrier was when I was six years old and I wanted to be a soccer player, and I had to play on the boys team because there was no girls team. And it was the best life lesson of my entire life, so I'll probably just leave it. It wasn't a career moment. It was a life moment, and it's kind of corny. But when people ask me the hard questions for big jobs in interviews, I always go back to, like, sports days and everything sports taught me. But unfortunately, I was or fortunately, I was playing on a field of boys. I'm turning sixty four. Imagine the difference even then. So at fifty one, if it was hard, it was we wore the ugly suits, the pantyhose, and it was tied up to our neck because that's the way it was. Just saying. Very different. You didn't have to wear the pantyhose, probably. But that's tights. Those are those are the transparent tights. I'll show you what we wore. This is a really hard question for me, the biggest barrier that I've had to overcome. Why does that have be so hard? You know what? I'm going to actually do something different. I'm going to break in for a minute because I want to get one more question in because I'm going make a call. So if one of you could answer the question that's the most No, don't answer this one. Let's get another one because we have so many people that wanna ask questions and I'm only allowed two. So instead of all three of us answering, I'd rather take three questions with one answer. Okay. You so much. And I'm sure you get asked all the time about giving advice to your younger self, but specifically, if you have goals of eventually maybe one day sitting on a panel like this, and obviously, you don't know what you don't know. So for somebody who's at the start of their career and they're thinking about what the future looks like and how do they traverse, obviously not in a linear way, but across digging and zagging. What advice would you give to someone starting out? Yes, yours. I better answer for this one. So I think what what I've never seen anybody so excited about a question. I feel like it it's it's I can just have a better answer on this because I feel more confident. So for me, I didn't plan my career really at all. So I I I was a dance major in college, and I moved to New York City to be a dancer. And I think, you know, many young people I see feel very sure that there's one way. You know, Shelley was talking about the the icy steps, and sometimes you have to zig and zag. And I think there are so many people who just sort of are are young, they think, okay. I'm gonna do this and then this and then this and this, and then I'm gonna have this job, and everything's gonna be amazing. But I think the reality is there's so many options that you don't think about, whether or not it's just a different path to get where you're thinking. Like, you don't wanna wait around for however long Lisa's boss said you had to wait for the next job to be open. Like, where is the open job that you can go now that can, like, move you in that direction? But also how do you think about how the world is changing and evolving? And so one thing that was very, I guess, lucky or interesting about my career is that I moved here and I needed a job to support myself while I was a dancer and Internet advertising wasn't really a thing and nobody knew how to do it and no one had gone to school and you needed to be smart and you needed to be willing to think about change, you needed to have a lot of the soft skills. And there's so many times in your career that there's a lot of options open to you and if you really are very specific about your trajectory, you kind of I think slow yourself down. And so I would say to be open to more paths than just one to where you think you wanna get to. Okay. One more and then we're done for now. And then I'm gonna get in trouble. So that's it. Hi. I'm Sophie from Rokt. Thank you so much for sharing. I can't see you, but I'm here. So I guess this question is for you, Claire. When giving feedback, I would love to hear what kind of style you prefer to emulate and why. When I'm when I'm giving feedback? I think I I have a bit of I teach managers a formula when I'm working with new managers or first time leaders. I have a bit of a formula for giving feedback, and part of that is about the growth mindset. So I usually start off with asking for permission, first of all, And not because I need permission. I'm gonna give people feedback no matter what. It's part of the job requirement. The company respite requires me to give feedback, and they should, to help you reach your full potential. You deserve feedback as well. So it's something that's gonna happen no matter what. But the reason I ask the question, is it okay if we give you some feedback or is now okay or can we chat about what happened? Is usually to get you into a growth mindset that you you get out of that defensive mindset and into, okay, this is something that's intended to help me grow in this moment. That's the first part of the formula for me. Ask for ask for permission. The second part of the formula is I usually state what happened. So if you think about the client meeting that we had yesterday afternoon, here's what played out. Here's what what happened. And then I'll usually state either what the consequences of that were when we, you know, when we described this thing to the client or we did that or we behaved or whatever. We this is how we conveyed ourselves. Did you notice the client reacted negatively to that and they're less likely to petrol or whatever the outcome might have been? So state the behavior. State what the outcome was. And then depending on if I'm looking for something different or I'm looking for more of the same, I'll exactly ask that. And the question that I usually put is, what do you think you can do differently? Which is empowering to you because now I'm allowing you to own the problem. I'm not telling you the behavior that I want. I'm just stating this happened. This was the outcome. That wasn't a win moment. How do we learn from it type thing? What what do you think you would do differently? What have you learned from this experience? And then if it's if it's been a really successful thing, I'll usually say, how can you do more of that? How can we get more of that? That was a success story. How do we do more of the same thing? And then when I work with new managers, what I usually do is to make sure that they're giving feedback to all their teams, I'll get them to draw up a sheet of paper and just put some columns on it and write every time they give feedback, write the the date, the initials of the person that they give feedback to on their team, just a plus or a minus, whether it was affirming feedback or growth oriented feedback, and just a short description of what it was. And that way, as they're learning and growing as managers, they I'll sit with them every week when I do review with them and make sure, did everybody on the team get feedback? Did everybody on the team get a balance of positive and negative feedback? And are there any patterns in this that we could actually address across the entire team that is systemic? And that's you're you're basically really good. Well, I mean I mean, that's scary. I'm scared. Well, as soon as you said signatures, my first review, it was typewritten, six page typewritten. The first paragraph was nice. I'm smart. I'm kind. And the rest ripped me to shreds because I spent too much time with clients. I pushed people out of their comfort zone. I said yes and then made everyone and they wanted me to sign. And I couldn't sign. My head said sign because I need the job. My heart said no way. That's not that's not who I am and I I don't agree. I didn't sign, I got demoted. And then I was written up in this magazine, a few page spread and and they asked me like what was the worst thing that happened? I said my first review was terrible, I got shit on. And they said well, you know, how do you think he feels today about you? I said, I don't know. Call him and ask him. They called him. They called Bill. They said, well, do you remember that review? Because of course I did. They said, did you regret it? Do you feel bad? He goes, no. And they said, why? He says, because if she listened to me, she wouldn't be where she is today. Chief troublemaker. Okay. Thank you so much. That was amazing. I learned so much from you. I hope you all did too. Give a big round of applause.