Panel: Overcoming Barriers to Entry - How To Break Into Leadership Roles

Mallori Steele  
Hi

thank you guys so much for joining. I am Mallory Steele, I am the owner of productive consulting, I am a dark skinned black woman, dark brown wearing a black shirt, a little bit off the shoulder, green dangly earrings, glasses, and I just cut off all my hair in December. So very short little Afro with a white blurry background. This session, I'm so grateful to have our panelists, they're going to introduce themselves once we jump into the questions. But I would love for this session to be just as interactive as the last. So you know, anyone coming to do a panel or presentation, it's a certain level of openness and vulnerability. And so we would love your support by giving us some emojis sharing on your thoughts, opinions, questions in the comments, and just engaging with us. So going straight, I'm gonna go back and forth between sharing my screen so it'll get a little bit a little bit slow. But here we go. So overcoming barriers to entry how to break into leadership roles. I am going to address the first question to Carolyn. And so before you enter the question, please do introduce yourself, Carolyn, but the question is what inspired you to pursue a leadership role? And can you share any barriers you face? How did you overcome them? And I'll put the question back up.

Caroline Dumont  
Perfect. Yes. So my name is Carolyn Dumont. I am a white woman. Pretty long hair I color I'm not sure anymore. I think I've dated so so many times, but reddish, reddish brown, and wearing sort of a tweed jacket today. And I today I support the l&d team that supports the customer success and the customer support folks at Microsoft. So in terms of the question, you know, it's really interesting. I don't think I was very intentional when I came into leadership. And so let me kind of give the context there. When I was in university, I waitress to put myself through university and at 1.1 of the owners asked me if I want to manage his restaurant, and he said, Hey, maybe you can still go to school and manage the restaurant. And I thought, yeah, that sounds great. You know, I like the idea of leading people and making decisions and just kind of aligned. So that was my first leadership position, which I don't think I had really kind of, you know, been intentional about. And that really sort of propelled me forward, I would say, you know, over time, I, you know, there's always an element of, I'm gonna say luck, but I worked in smaller companies. And just when you work at a smaller company, there's so many gaps, so many opportunities, and that you that you see, and that you can raise your hand and say, Hi, I'd love to do that. And that really, you know, my first job was a telemarketer. And in six months later was director of sales, traveling the world selling, you know, an XML Database. So it wasn't that. For me, the barrier was actually I think I've been lucky that way. The barrier wasn't an external barrier. It was more internal. It was more Hey, can I do this? Do I have don't have the confidence to have the experience? I'm really young, should I be leading a team of salespeople when I don't really know exactly what I'm doing? So I think the Yeah, the barrier was myself and sort of like building on my experiences, learning, growing, having access to different folks who believed in me and coached me. And so I think it was as much internal as it was external, especially in the beginning.

Mallori Steele  
Yes, six months from

Caroline Dumont  
it was a very small company. To be fair, it was 25 people at the beginning.

Mallori Steele  
It's still impressive. It's still impressive. Put it in the chat. How many people worked in restaurants I can raise my hand and say I did. Courtney says she did to ignore all of us. So yeah, those are the days but sometimes I miss it. the hustle and bustle of it. coordinator same question to you what inspired you to become a leader?

Courtney Teague  
Okay, let me describe myself though. I am a paper sack brown woman wearing glasses, the red lipstick. Hair is a lot of different colors. Black, Brown blonde underneath, and I'm wearing a dress that has a snakeskin print. um wow. What inspired me to pursue leadership. I would like to say that I did not pursue leader leadership per se are pursue the opportunity to influence others. And when you pursue the opportunity to influence others and leverage your influence you quite naturally, people are giving you the title of being a leader. For me, I look at my belief, my faith, that guys my journey. And so therefore, I was placed into a leadership role by my behaviors in regards to the barriers that I face, every day, anytime you are doing good work, you will be faced with people who have opposing thought. And in order for you to learn, and let me just say this, I used to be a school teacher and I work at restaurants too. But as a school teacher, I was always taught to be a ongoing, continuous learner. And so the barriers that I'm dealing with day in day out is people asking me, How do you know what you know? Why should we trust you? Why should you be in this space? Who qualifies you to be in this space? So those are the barriers that I face and how I overcome them? I never take no from someone who does not have the authority to tell me yes. And if I'm told no, I may say, Okay, I can't go through your door, I can't sit at your table. But guess what I will bring the woods to build my own table is okay. And so that's how I overcome my barriers. And that's how I've, I guess, pursued leadership. But once again, I focused on being influential, and making an influence.

Mallori Steele  
I love that I remember hearing some time ago from someone that's used the phrase qualify yourself, right? When sometimes you feel like, Am I qualified to do this? And it's like, yeah, I'm self qualified. I'm gonna pat myself on the back, I would have put this question to Nora. Nora, please feel free to share your inspiration of how you, you know, decided to get into leadership roles. But this question is, have you ever encountered a situation where you your qualifications or experience were questioned because of your gender? How did you respond to this? And what advice do you have for others who may face similar challenges?

Nora Pykkonnen  
So my name is Nora Pykkonnen. So I am currently at AWS. And before coming to Amazon, I was an entrepreneur for 20 plus years. So and describing myself I am a white female, about five, five, I am 58 years old, I wear glasses, and my hair is naturally red. And I also have to dye it to keep it from turning completely white at this age. So definitely has been dyed. So this one actually hits home. So I didn't actually pursue a leadership role. I you know, right out of college, I was a an auditor, I worked for Arthur Andersen. And then I was a controller of Autodesk, and love my job. And it was actually following my heart that I fell into a leadership role, or I basically became an entrepreneur. So one of my best friends from high school died within a week, and I needed to move very quickly to Denver. And I actually interviewed with a company. And they basically told me that they needed to always look and feel the resume and resumes would never be automated. And I walked out of that interview and called who, someone who then became my partner and said, Hey, if this company can do this, and therefore 100 million dollars, we couldn't do this. So I actually three weeks later started what is now slalom consulting, and it's a 4 billion plus consulting firm. And I started it, because I really followed my heart so did not, you know, really pursue a leadership role. It was more out of desperation, I needed to move to Colorado start a company. And what happened is we were about a year in of when I founded the company, and the person who's now the CEO of slalom, worked for one of the big six accounting firms. And he wanted to meet with the managing partner of that big six firm and have them be our managing partner. And I basically started that company and worked how I needed to work. And I had a three and a half year old when I started the company. And so we went to meet this managing partner in Seattle with my three, three and a half year old. And basically he said, If you plan on bringing your children to the office, and that's the way you're going to work, you're going to fail and walked out of that meeting and said to Brad who became my partner, we're not going with that firm and you know, we're going to do it our way. And the culture of slalom today is very fast. family oriented, and family is first. And so definitely it wasn't just because of my gender. But it was because of the way I was working that I was told it was impossible. And at that time we were we were profitable in the second month, it was starting small and with $10,000. And so at that time, we were probably a $3 million company. But always, I never had anyone else take care of my kids. I brought my kids to the office, I had three more well, with slalom and always worked the way I felt I needed everyone else to work and everyone was able to bring their kids to the office and put their families first.

Mallori Steele  
Nora, listen, I think you have all the moms Our hearts are like this story, right? Because we've, we felt that and I love when you said how it for you was more desperation. And I think that was kind of my journey, starting my consulting into 2020. At the time living in Turkey, and just my whole story, which I won't get into, but sometimes it's desperation, right? It's not even inspiration or doubt. It's just, you know, I have to do it. But hearing about the family friendly and you having what before kids or children.

Nora Pykkonnen  
I now have four Yeah, yeah.

Mallori Steele  
I can see the chat, I saw the emotions of everyone like yes, all the all the moms, it's a it's so hard sometimes to balance and to be able to have that confidence to say, you know, my kids are a priority. I want to bring the same question to Carolyn and Courtney. Did you ever experienced out based on your qualifications or experience? And, you know, how did you deal with it?

Caroline Dumont  
Yeah, yes, definitely, I would say probably more. So in the beginning of my career, as well, it's so I can imagine 25 Traveling the world meeting with chief technology officers trying to sell and it was daily. It was literally every sale of initial sales meeting was, it wasn't unusual for them to look at me and say, All right, who are we really meeting with? Right? You. So so that's how I started a lot of the meetings. And that that was for about a year and a half, two years. In a way it was a great breeding ground, actually, because it really made me clear on who I was. It made me more assertive than I was naturally had to become that it actually bolstered my confidence over time as well. Because obviously, if you start like that, I felt like it could only go up. So some of those companies, I had a lot of success with them develop great relationships with some some doubters along the way. So for me, it was a great breeding ground, in a way even though it's really, really hard. And some of it was you know, sometimes that wasn't sure it was a gender was it age was it you know, it was a lot of things sort of like stacked on top of each other. So it's sometimes hard to know exactly where that was coming from. But as my as my career has evolved, now, I find it to be slightly different. Just because I've been an l&d for so long, probably over 20 years, I tend to be the l&d expert in a room with other you know, VPS or something. So for the most part, if we're talking about something around scaling or learning, I haven't felt those kinds of things. Because usually, they understand that, that I have the background. It's when there's a conversation around, you know, something or on finance or strategy or something else that's not lnd related, and then I might interject, that's where I might sometimes feel something where they're not sure about, you know, they're not really believing what I'm or they're definitely pushing back on what I'm saying or not necessarily feeling the same way as when I talk about something, l&d specific. So again, there's a lot of things going on in those spaces. There's gender, sometimes I'm still the youngest person in the room sometimes if there's a lot of things going on. But for me, for the most part, when I've encountered something that's really direct, is that we all have those moments where it was pretty, pretty clear that there's some some bias there. I've actually taken some of those folks out to lunch. And, you know, be Hey, you know, had enjoyed our conversation. We'd love to know more about you. And I've probably taken some detractors out to lunch 10 or 15 times in my career. It's made for some some uncomfortable lunches sometimes the beginning but I found that you know, you develop a relationship. You get to know each other a little bit better trust starts to build. And then for some I've actually gotten really comfortable over time, and then we have a conversation about hey, do you remember that time? Let's talk about that. This is how I perceived it. How did you perceive it? You And then sometimes I've learned things that I didn't know about, right? They, how I perceive what was going on was completely different than what they were thinking. And they had no idea that I was receiving what they were saying in that way. So it's been, you know, it's made for some great relationships and some difficult ones as well. But, and I know that it's not as scalable way to go if you can't take everybody out to lunch in the company. But I've been very mindful of doing that. And you know, one of the biggest ones I've ever had was the biggest distract detractor. I had it one of the companies, not exactly sure where it came from originally. But after working with him for five years and gaining his trust, and you know, we've worked really well on certain projects when I left that organization. I mean, it was the most authentic, kindest email I've ever had from somebody about how I influenced him organically, so that was great. So again, not necessarily a scalable model all the time, but one that I've had success with over time. Yeah, we

Mallori Steele  
have to find a alternative, right? Because I'm like, I think most people are like, Okay, do I fly in and take them to lunch? Yeah, everyone's everyone's remote.

Caroline Dumont  
You're gonna have coffee. I've also done that.

Mallori Steele  
Yeah. Just hearing, you know, that we were talking about in the earlier session about the intersectionality. of race, gender, ethnicity, age, right. And so that's a good point. When you're, you feel something you're not exactly sure what it is and where it's coming from. But you know, you feel it. And that intuition that we have within us when you know, you know, Courtney, if you want to piggyback on doubt, please jump in. But I want to ask you, how has mentorship played a role in your career growth and development? And how did you get a mentor? This is a, this is a tough question, right? How did you help people want to know, how do you get mentors? And then can you share a specific experience or a mentor helped you overcome a barrier to entry?

Courtney Teague  
Oh, wow. mentorship, I actually can say that I learned more through my mentor than I have learned throughout my years in colleges, mentors gave me absolute examples that I could look at, I could touch I can experience and they were able to share how they problem solve. Like oftentimes they say, Hey, if you want to learn something, get a mentor, get a coach, and it shortens your learning curve, because that person has experience. And they're able to offer that perspective. I also want to name that. And it may sound strange, you all don't laugh at me in the chat. But your mentor does not have to be alive, I find that I have plenty of books that I have said Napoleon Hill is my mentor. And they're like that guy's deceased. Yes, he is. But his words still live, and they're still applicable. So I leverage books, I leverage videos, like, I'll go back and watch the video of this conversation, and up to be three ladies, you will be my mentor, whether you know it or not. I will also say with my mentor, I went, I traveled this leap to actually observe my mentor in their element. And I reached out to my mentor, because he was a former professor of mine. But I reached out and I asked, Hey, this is an area of opportunity for me, how can I support you with your vision, your mission and learn while doing as well, because when we think about our mentorship relationships, we have to also be mindful that mentorship is not about that person that you have opted to be your mentor giving you, you have to be able to add value to them as well. And so like, I'll go on LinkedIn, you all may wild talk and make it a link from me requests from me, because I want to be able to support you with executing your vision and learning as well. And, oh, one more thing, use social media. If you want to learn, do a hashtag search and reach out to strangers, and talk to them.

Mallori Steele  
Reach out to a stranger. You're told when you're younger, don't talk to strangers. And then the minute that you're like 1819. It's like you got to network and talk to strangers. Nora's same question to you. But I want to pull a question from the chat. And thank you so much, Allison for providing it. So what are people's say? What are your perceptions of formal mentors slash models versus informal mentors and models? And she says people tout formal but I find informal, more informal, more important. And so what are your thoughts on that and as well as in your entrepreneurial days? Did you have mentors during that journey?

Nora Pykkonnen  
Yeah, so great question. I completely agree that in for me personally, informal mentors have been much more effective effective than formal mentors and through my days of entrepreneurship, I did not have a lot of mentors. It was, you know, basically taking it and running. And you know, I had a lot of people doubting us and telling us we are crazy. And I should go back to Autodesk or to a larger company. So and I definitely agree with Courtney, that a lot of mentors are books or people I honestly my biggest mentor has always been my mother that she always said, Hey, you can do anything. And she always removed all barriers. And she has been my biggest mentor, and she's not alive today. But still, I think of her as far as you know, when I am in very difficult situations and what I need to do. And I also agree with Courtney, that it's very, very important for mentorship to be a give and take. Right now I'm very involved in a mentorship programs globally, with Accenture and with AWS and we really need everybody can give something to our mentor. So definitely making sure that you're helping out and, and it's a give and take relationship.

Mallori Steele  
Thank you for that. Carolyn, any thoughts on mentorship?

Caroline Dumont  
I think I everything that Courtney and Nora just said definitely resonated with me. Same Same here. I've never asked anybody to be a mentor. And so I think the informal piece of it as well, it's it's almost like working with folks or or meeting some folks at conference or and then having a chance to to work together or connect, and then it just kind of evolves into a mentorship even though I don't think I've ever said I think I said it was one time to one person, hey, I'm putting you on this slide as my mentor, do you agree? Because we had never kind of formalized it or anything, it was just sort of like organic. And the I think the most powerful mentorships are the ones that are given take to the appoint even when I'm trying to find some mentors for some team members on my team right now. And I always just encourage them to also explore, and hey, are there people that you work with that you think would would be, you know, ideal for this and that you already connect with? Let's start there. If not, you know, when I'm interviewing people, or I'm talking to people, but the mentors for for maybe some more junior people on my team, I'm also trying to really understand what their interests are and where they want to grow, to see if there's an opportunity for that give and take. That's where I find the value of mentorship to to, to really stick if not attends to my experience has been it doesn't go the distance. And obviously when you do that you want something to go the distance.

Mallori Steele  
Yeah, it sounds like this is these two could have been switched, in this case where networking will be first and then mentorship comes later. But from a one to attend. How effective has networking been in your career journey? And what are some effective strategies for building meaningful connections and relationships? So I'm going to adapt this question slightly to the remote world that we live in, right? Because we are networking in a very virtual space. And so do you have any strategies? In that case, and then of course, just give us a rating from a one to a 10? How effective has networking been, and I'll start with Courtney.

Courtney Teague  
How we'll say it has been a 10. I'm here. This is a result of me networking with you Mallory via social media, few strategies remote, whether remote or in person. When I'm in our share in person, when I'm in person with someone, I always take a picture with them, we take a selfie, and I send a text with our picture in there. So for one, it makes that connection as it relates to being remote. I think strategy is sharing once again, share information. If I find an article, I know that Nora likes x, y and z, if I find an article, I'll send that over to Nora or I'll consolidate and curate content that will add value to her and share with her. Also joining groups being active in groups being vocal, but most importantly, when you're networking, show up as your authentic self show up as who you are. Because you you have to make those connections and establish them on a foundation that is solid and real. So show up as yourself so people will know and they'll be able to make a decision whether or not they want to connect with you.

Mallori Steele  
Thank you for that. Nora, how about you.

Nora Pykkonnen  
So definitely agree that networking has always been a 10. And definitely, in my slalom days. You know the first customers I had were people I worked with at Arthur Andersen and they were the first customers and Then, when I sold slalom, I took a hiatus from technology and had a little a ran ski racing area. And I thought I was done with consulting. And then when I came back, I had a data science company. And I had to network because I didn't know any PhDs that specialized in NLP. And so basically it was 100% networking, define my employees to and I did have contractors, but it was all networking. And none of these individuals, I knew it was all through LinkedIn, putting together teams to build products and to win contracts. And that company was having. So that's before I came to Amazon, but definitely believe in always taking care of your network and making sure that you always respond to any messages.

Mallori Steele  
So Nora, how many businesses have you owned

Nora Pykkonnen  
to? Well, three, so I owe a slalom, which so we did not start a slalom consulting, we started as a counting quest, it was rebranded to two degrees and then to slalom. Then I bought a a ski mountain Alpine race Training Center. And I ran that for four years. And then hub a was a data science company that I had for four years, specialized in NLP and IoT and smart cities, before I came to work with Amazon, so basically, I had some very large smart city contracts. But after COVID, they all came to a halt. And so I needed to get on somebody else's payroll. And that's when I came on with Amazon.

Mallori Steele  
So everybody who's here, who's kind of back and forth about starting a business, just do the thing just started. Carolina, the same question to you, but I'm gonna add to it from the question in the chat. So, in addition to networking and kind of rating, how effective it's been for your career, how do you decide with whom you mentor? This person said, I always choose to support or enhance the underdog who is bullied or sidelined. And so just any thoughts on kind of your decision process when it comes to mentorship?

Caroline Dumont  
That's a really good question. I don't know that. If I think about I probably. I mean, I have had a lot of team members on my team who would probably say that I did mentor them and and maybe I'm not thinking about them in that way right now. Because obviously, right? So there's, there's sort of informal mentorship and maybe more formal if you want to call it that way. I don't think it's just one thing I think I've had, I've had some some I remember, one person just knocked on my door, sign of desperation. You know, I'm getting passed over, I just not getting promoted. I don't know what's going on. Somebody's in a different team. And so I felt urgency. I honestly, I felt I was I could feel like I had empathy. And I knew she was really good. So like, okay, let's figure out what's going on. Right. So that was one that's actually still here to this day, I still met her her 10 years later. And I've learned as much from her as she's learned from me in that time. So. So that's one instance. I've had some people that I've mentored that their managers reached out to me and said, hey, this person is really interested, I think you'd be a good fit, or, you know, are you open to that, and then I start that, and then if it holds and the relationships there, then that also goes on for a long time. So it's not necessarily one or the other. I think I've I've seen many different scenarios, where I've taken on mentorship, and when I've been mentored as well, in the same way, either. Informally, we work together, the relationships there, we like each other, we want to spend more time that develops into that. And other times where I have never knocked on the door, it said, Please be my mentor. It's been more hey, I need your advice. Like I really like how you handle these things. Like I would just love to learn from you. And then that, that to me, I found has been, it's hard for people to say no, when you when you open that way, of course, like they want to help for the most part. So that's been another avenue even for myself to find a mentor to just be vulnerable in a way and just say, you know, I need help.

Mallori Steele  
Yeah, I think this is I'm learning and taking away from this because I've been looking at mentorship and trying to kind of grow my mentors, circle, so to speak with being very formal, and making sure like, how do I approach them? How do I ask do I ask them that, you know, the best way and how do I show that this is a going to be a valuable relationship, right that I'm willing to do the work and take their advice. And I think I just need to probably relax. It's what I'm reading and taking from this right but it just let it be in a formal I've had a lot of informal mentoring relationships. That has really worked out well for me and so just I think embracing that but it doesn't always have to be a formal kind of flow, it can flow in a very kind of informal, authentic way. So talking about growth, can you share a time when you faced a setback or failure in your pursuit of a leadership role? And how did you use this experience to grow and learn? I'm going to give this first to Nora.

Nora Pykkonnen  
Okay, so my example of this would be the ski area that I bought. So it actually was the biggest financial mistake I ever made in my life. So in four years, lost everything we had, and ended up filing for bankruptcy, and it was at Ground Zero, and basically had to start again from scratch. So and, you know, I talked to Brad about coming to slalom and decided to start a company, and basically how to reinvent myself completely, because when I left slalom slalom was really consulting on ERPs on Salesforce, and I didn't know anything about data science. And, you know, so basically, I was a crash course on data science on, you know, how can we really leverage ml and NLP. And so I took that failure, which definitely was the biggest failure I've ever had personally, and started a company and I can't say Javi was a complete success. Because I did close it. After four years, we had some really successful projects, I had one with 10 Min 10,000,002 way voice calls, and we were able to win a lawsuit that they had previously lost four years before for 250 million, and we are able to sell that product, but still lost a lot of money on hobby. So it was a failure to, you know, as far as financially, you know, I was able to get out of it, and then go work for Amazon. But in every setback in having echo mountain, it was four years of I was working night and day, I absolutely love it. And I would not have changed the experience that I had. Because I loved every day of it. I just hated losing everything I had. So, um, I don't regret it. And I learned a lot from it. And then with hobby, you know, I learned a lot about data science. And, you know, every day I'm learning something new, because I think with every failure, you have to take what, what went wrong, learn something new and move on and be present. So really try to just concentrate on where I'm at in this minute and move forward.

Mallori Steele  
Let me ask you a follow up question to that, because we're in a very interesting time right now with the beginning of spring and everyone going through major tech layoffs and me being one of them. And although it's not a personal failure, right, it still feels like a failure. Right? And so curious if you have for those on the call. It took me a little bit to kind of figure out how to grow past it. I wasn't, I had a slow burn, I wasn't really too affected initially from the layoff. It was more like the month or two later that I'm like man, you know, this is this has been hard to take. When it comes to those types of failures. When it comes to bouncing back. What advice would you have? For anyone if it's a personal failure, or a layoff failure? Where it's not really any fault of your own? It's just business.

Nora Pykkonnen  
Yep. And Mallory definitely feeling that every single day right now and in tech I mean, it's it's heartbreaking to see the layoffs the pressure, but I think what is most important is to focus on what you are passionate about, follow your heart and take care of yourself. So what do you need to do today for you to be okay, and be present today. So I in my my getaway is running in yoga, and if I didn't have that, I think I'd be crazy. So really focusing on how can you be healthy? How can you be happy and not wrapping everything around your job or your company because I if I echo mountain would have put me under if I if my life was based on that and that failure. So I think you have to have other passions, and you have to think of yourself first. So you can then take care of your families and others around you. So and mentally I think that is so important. Because through now and you know, in previous experiences I've had, it's so easy to get in a mental rut and it's so important that we understand how can we build resilience and bounce back I'm so I'm really always looking for how can I bounce back and move forward and what is important right now being present, and mindfulness and yoga have really been important.

Mallori Steele  
Thank you. Of course, Courtney. And Carolyn, if you want to touch on this one, feel free. I'm gonna go to the next one. about learning. And so how important is ongoing learning and development and breaking into and succeeding in leadership roles, professional development, so to speak, and what are some effective strategies for staying current and expanding your skills and knowledge out, throw this one to coordinate?

Courtney Teague  
All right, learning as I shared, this is super important, is super important, because you think about doctors, if you had a doctor that was trained in the 70s 80s, you would not want them to use those same techniques while supporting you. And so therefore, for myself, I start I have an email account that I set up, where I sign up for webinars that I may not attend on that day, but I sign up for them. And I have filters set on my email that I can go back and watch webinars, I also look beyond just learning and development, per se. And I look to other industries, to learn from other industries to see what's happening in their industry that I can possibly take and make my own. And I also want people, especially women to be aware that you don't have to go get a certification or credential or another degree to learn, you can learn by observing like I have this thing why people watch and I tell people, why don't go sit in Starbucks in the morning and his wife and I have learned customer service flows from walk from watching the people inside of Starbucks, I learned how they coach, their their staff by observing and just asking questions in listening, a lot of learning can occur in silence in in by observing.

Mallori Steele  
Thank you, Carolyn, how about you?

Caroline Dumont  
Definitely. In it, I'm in the middle of a doctorate right now as well. And really, I took that on, not because I felt like it even needed it for my job, I was just really interested in the topics is learning leadership and organization. So I want to learn more about you know, the formal theory of leadership, organizational development and data science, which is brought me to my knees at certain points in this program. But all of those things. And even even when you were talking about networking before, I was like, I didn't enter that thinking about my network. But I've developed a great one from it so that there's another 70 People that now I know that I can reach out to that have, you know, have done some of the same experiences. So that's that's another part of kind of like learning as well. It's they're all kind of intertwined. And just in terms of what Courtney said, she's right, right. You don't need to wouldn't want your doctor that that's studying the 70s and hasn't refreshed and same thing for us. Even what is AI going to mean for l&d? Like all of those things right now I'm thinking about all right, how do I go educate myself? How do I get hands on? For me, the big part is hands on. So yes, there's formal learning programs, which are great. Obviously, you can, you know, you can pursue some of those. But I think the real magic is in the stuff that you see, and that you're surrounded by, you see colleagues. And, you know, I've spent I don't know how much time at Chad GPT trying to figure this thing out and starting to kind of go start to go to conferences to learn more about this. So like, there's all these other things that we have to refresh ourselves on and be clear about the skills that we fit that we want to develop in ourselves as well. The problem is also that there's so much choice, like you could literally throw yourself in so many different directions. And that might not also be, you know, the right thing to do. So I'm also trying to be mindful about here, which are those five or 10 skills that I think I need to develop now for this new l&d space that's coming our way and trying to spend some time on that.

Mallori Steele  
That's the advice I recently got as well. Identifying my three to five topic areas, right, because there's so much to learn. And there's so there's so many areas, directions you can go into, especially when you're not even sure you want to stay in l&d. Right, right, where can I go, taking the tip from you, Courtney about having a separate email just for kind of learning and training and going back for webinars? I avoid signing up for things like that, because I'm like, Oh, I know, I can't attend that day. And I don't like to have a crazy inbox. But that's a great tip to just let it sit there and go back when you may have the time. I have another question. That's more about reflections when you bring it up. What advice would you give to your younger self or someone just starting on their journey toward a leadership role? And what insights or lessons have you learned that you wish you had known earlier in your career? I know this is always a tricky one because it should have could have, right we are who we are, because of the experiences we've had in life. But if you could pick, you know a few, what advice would you give to your younger self or someone just starting out? Starting out? And I'll have no you start first.

Nora Pykkonnen  
So definitely follow your heart. So I started and I got an accounting degree because I always felt like I would have a good job. And I was a horrible accountant. And my first job I went in and said, Hey, I should not be an auditor, I am not a good accountant. And I need a different role. I need to be in special projects. So I in the times I have, I've had major setbacks is when I am overthinking and trying to do the right thing, like be an accountant. And just some other situations I had, and I wasn't following my heart when I followed my heart, even though like eco Mountain was a major disaster. I loved every minute of it. So definitely, I think it's really important that you don't try to spend a lot of time on what is going to get you a higher salary, you have to really follow on what do you what do you love and why I think slalom was so successful from day one is I loved helping people get jobs and I loved recruiting. And I was good at it, even though I didn't have the experience. And so this is where I was able to I followed my heart with with slalom and, you know many other things. So I think that, you know, I honestly never used my accounting degree, because I am a horrible accountant. And I'm not detail oriented. So I've always leveraged other people.

Mallori Steele  
Thank you for that. How about you? Carolyn, what are you? If you look back? Would you give yourself any advice?

Caroline Dumont  
That's a great question. I think I'd say just relax. And by that I mean, you know? Well, a few things. So I think there's this idea that it's a certain path, right, that you're just gonna keep going up and up and up and up. And there's gonna be a few setbacks along the way. But it's gonna, it doesn't work that way. And there's, there's no, that's okay. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. But there's a lot of learnings and value. And sometimes some of the things that happen along the way, right? Sometimes you Hey, I'm going to do this thing. And this thing is what I'm going to do until I retire. And then you get another another opportunity. And I've seen too many people pass up those and I've done one of those before I at one point I had somebody said, Hey, do you want to run a p&l? Do you want to do something totally different? And I said, No. And then sometimes I'm like, should I have looked at that? Right? I was so like, l&d is my path. And that's what I'm going to do. So I would say, be open. And then don't think that, you know, when I was younger, I just had this vision of what things were going to look like. And if you're too caught up in that, when it doesn't look like that it can really send you into a tailspin, right, where you feel like you failed this, you know what's going on. And I remember I had one of those moments. At one point, probably I'm in my mid career, and I was working with somebody with a woman who I saw as sort of the pinnacle of success, right? CTO, one of very few women at the top. And I reached out to her and she just she laughed at me in a very endearing way. And she's like, you know, Carolyn, I've been, I've been thrown down so many times, she's like, you just see me here, but you don't see the journey that I went to. And she's like, what I can tell you every time something happened, I learned something from it, I got stronger, I developed the skill set that made me that much better when I when I got to the next level. So she's like, you just have to see it that way. You can't see every setback as a failure, see it as what can I learn so that you can be that much better when you when you get that opportunity again. And the last thing I would say really quickly because I think this is an important one is people who want to and I have these conversations all the time with people who want to move into leadership, just be really clear about why you want to do that. A lot of people want to become leaders because they perceive that that's how you get a promotion and make more money. That's the only path that there is. And that's not the case. There's a lot of paths now to take. And leadership. You know, it's been a great journey for me. But I also know that it's not for everybody. Or sometimes it's for for some folks for a period of time and then they want to go do something else. So just be super clear if that's your next path on why you want that. Because I've seen some people get to it, get it and then they're like, this is not at all what I wanted. I didn't I didn't realize it.

Mallori Steele  
Yeah. I think that's an important point is like you think you want it but do you do you want it? Or is it what you think it's even going to be? Hi, Courtney, how about you looking like

Courtney Teague  
you both said, amazing, like you added amazing value, I would tell my younger self to walk in your purpose, don't worry about money, worry about operating in your purpose. Because when you operate in your purpose, whatever resources you may need, they will become available to you. And we don't walk in your purpose you have be get, you began to have multiple invisible spots that you can't see, because you're not doing what you have the skill are naturally gifted to do another things, talk to a therapist. And it sounds strange that I'm saying it, but get a therapist and have a therapist that you can talk through and have those conversations, those healthy conversations around. And always look for the lesson, we may say as a failure is only a failure when you don't learn from it, or share your learnings with others and you have failed to honor your purpose.

Mallori Steele  
It's only a failure if you haven't learned from it. How many? How many learning experience has have we had between the four of us? Right? Thank you guys so much. This was a wealth of information. I do appreciate you guys being just so vulnerable. I saw that in the chat, like the gratefulness of vulnerability and openness, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Yeah, I see you guys in the chat. Thank you so much. Any final thoughts, any final words that you know that we didn't touch on and you may want to share before we go?

Courtney Teague  
It is over 100 Something of us in this call. We should all be connected after this call, and make each of us a part of your network?

Mallori Steele  
Absolutely. I don't know if everybody updated. If you didn't just take a screenshot. Grab everyone's names, you can always connect on LinkedIn. Or you can click I believe on our profiles, and it'll it'll pop up. If you find me, you'll find everyone else. Because I'm connected. So that's a that's a great way as well. And I agree it's so important to network. I think LinkedIn is such a powerful tool, and it's you know, underused. And so thank you. How about Nora, you came off mute, you have some thoughts.

Nora Pykkonnen  
But I completely agree with Courtney. So I do believe power and the numbers. And please connect and hope we have more conversations going forward.

Mallori Steele  
Absolutely. Thank you to T TDLC. In the weeks who kind of allowed us to have this space. And to do a panel. This has been awesome. Give us some emojis on how you feel about the end of this panel. Did you get something from as you take away, I will get to download the chat later. So if you could please just share a takeaway in the chat. And I'll pull that later. But again, thank you so much to our panelists. And and thank you, Alison, for keeping us on time. I know we're five minutes over. But stay around for the next. Who's next. Alison, please come on stage. There you are.

Alison Sollars  
Yeah, it takes a minute. I'm not sure if you can, yeah, you can hear me now. The next one should be on knowing your worth. But instead of dollars and cents kind of getting into the psychological elements of that I believe. And we've got a Cassie Laborie I hope I'm saying her name right. Talking with Betty Dannewitz. About that.

Mallori Steele  
Awesome. So stick around if you can. Thank you guys so much for joining. And we'll see you next time. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much. Bye

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