What are the key milestones on your path to leadership?
My trajectory took me from an undergraduate degree from University of Virginia, to investment banking in New York and back to business school, which brought me to private equity and in the wine industry. After craving a move abroad, I moved to France working in growth strategy and then banking (again) in Paris.
Through this time, a transformation started to happen where I was grappling finding a role I was really passionate about, while combining with my appreciation of the rigor and analysis of financial inductive thinking and analysis. I was looking to apply my finance skill set in an industry that I was passionate about but not go down the traditional consulting pathway, which was why I went and sought a French firm where I can learn a language and a new culture and a new way of being, and approached my career in that space. What I realized throughout is that I was most interested in a style of thinking and a culture, rather than a category.
In my free time I like to learn about wine but I also write comedy, I'd been getting my creative kicks on the side for a long time and I didn't think that it was possible to marry those two things together, (or at least particularly given my background in finance) and that’s when I stumbled upon Fahrenheit. The company's philosophy is to bring those two sides of thinking together and that represents a sort of dualism that I had been battling with.
At the time I couldn't quite articulate or fully understand and so when I landed at Fahrenheit, it was a big unlock for me. This was both in terms of the work, the philosophy and the approach but also the culture around bringing all these different parts of your full self to work into the office. So, it was sort of serendipitous. But, hugely meaningful for me not just on a professional level but also on a personal basis because I was able to kind of reconcile these two forces within.
What are the key challenges you have faced as a leader?
I think some of the biggest challenges are the unseen ones in terms of getting people and teams exposed to different styles of leadership. We tend to get used to what we know - if a role has been done the same way or a story has been told a certain way, you get used to that.
Sometimes it's difficult to even understand what, when and where there are biases. Your concept of what a leader is and what that role is, is set by the person or people that came before you. So, sometimes some of the biggest challenges are being able to point out the benefits of something that's done differently, whether that's a style or an actual action. And that can take many different forms - it can be in your personality or in your approach to problem solving.
My natural desire is to be thoughtful, deliberate, to process information, probably take a little bit longer in the decision making process if I'm left to my own devices. I would prefer to spend more time than I typically have. My mind probably isn't going to change in terms of how it likes to sift through information and arrive at a decision, but what I can do is balance myself and pair myself with someone who's less conceptual or more implementation-oriented to serve as a counterbalance for my preferred thinking style to push things forward.
And you know that's an area that I think about, I think knowing when to pick your battles is helpful, particularly if you're pushing teams, people, individuals, and/or projects. Be understanding when to push, when to elevate standards, and when it's okay to relax them and sort of let it be.
Describe your leadership style / what are your core values as a leader?
There are several pillars to my style - I like to craft a big vision to get people excited about building something bigger other than the objective that we are trying to achieve. I like to pull out experience and greatness in others and some of that comes from my own focus on self-improvement and active learning.
The personal relationships transcend for me, so I try to lead with that in mind. I also try to balance courageous, but rational, risk taking while keeping a sense of humor and perspective. I lead with the notion that the personal relationships transcend so if we are no longer working together one day [or on a project], I hope that the relationship lasts because it is built on something beyond just a working relationship.
A lot of this has been a journey of self-reflection, my own style and what seems to be working. It is something that is always evolving and adapting. One leadership style may work in one situation but not be the best for others.
What advice do you have for women who are trying to establish themselves as leaders?
Whatever approach you take, be true to yourself, who you are, and your own style of things. What’s been helpful for me is having sounding boards that I can talk to and say, “Hey, what’s your take on this particular situation, how would you respond to it? Am I reading it the right way? Are there things that you would think about?”
It’s important to have people who don't agree with you, who are on your side but can push you. I like to make sure that I'm not being limited by my own perspectives and bouncing things off of others who are close to me and who I trust helps me get out of my own head.
Sometimes we make mistakes in our decision making but the important thing is to be transparent about the steps we took to arrive at our decisions and be willing to reflect and learn from them, I believe that is the best that we can do.
How would you advise organisations who want to foster diversity and gender equity in leadership?
When it comes to recruitment, I think it is more than just “hiring more diversity”. We have to understand people’s backgrounds, beyond just “male” and “female” or “race” - we have to understand their different ways of thinking and working.
We can then understand how those people have performed within the organization and get a sense of what makes someone succeed here. It’s also understanding, “do we have any biases in terms of how we give feedback or how we reward people”?
I would love to see more women on top. I think a huge piece of it is putting in the structural support to enable women to continue to grow and thrive. But it’s also making sure that if you are saying that you don't have enough women in your organization, it comes with a recognition that it is not because there are not enough qualified women but because there's something wrong with your recruitment pipeline - there's something wrong with your criteria, there's something wrong with your questions (that goes beyond just women, that could be about racial background and economic status too).
Sometimes you don't realize that some system that you put in places is not working anymore. It is sitting there for so long and it's a matter of like where you're looking at wrong or the wrong criteria, wrong pipelines, wrong person feeding the pipeline, or so many other things. So that's what I mean about putting the right structures in place as a top priority.
How would you feel about the future of the innovation industry?
I think a lot of progress has been made and I think that there's still quite a ways to go. I feel a lot of encouraging signs and movement. I see a very very strong, powerful, close community of women here at this office who stand together to support one another to raise each other up. It's a culture that sometimes thrives behind the scenes.
So, whether it's sharing information or deodorant, it's a community of really strong support. I think it is a generalization but as women we tend to celebrate our community achievements and our team achievements. Very very broadly which is amazing and, which I don't want to to change because so much of success comes from collaboration. However, I think it's important to make sure that at the same time we also continue taking credit individually for our accomplishments as well. Because it's important, right, it's important as we carve out our paths.
