Career Girls

Remember Who You Are. My mom used to say this to me all the time growing up. However, I didn't interpret that phrase the way that she meant it. She meant it the same way her dad did when he would say it to her. "Remember who you are" meaning, remember to make our family proud in whatever you do. Think about what you say and what you do to put your best foot forward always. That's not how I understood it. At first, when my mom would tell me this, I didn't know what it meant and I took it literally. I was too young to know who I was! I chalked it up to something silly my mom would say. She'd say this as I'd be leaving out the door and I'd just wave. But as I got older and finished high school and was going through college, I started to think about this more. "Remember Who You Are." I thought about that phrase my mom still said but now I did kind of know what it really meant to me. I knew what I liked and knew what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I wanted to graduate college, have a career in advertising and wanted to move to downtown Chicago. No one else in my family graduated college and there wasn't a lot of emphasis placed on doing that. This phrase, I heard my whole life took on a different meaning for me. It was my mantra to accomplish those three goals I previously listed. It meant to me: Remember that I like who I am. Remember that I have a future, goals and ain't nobody stopping me! Remember that I'm going to feel so good when I finish this - don't let anything distract me. Remember that I'm strong, smart, creative and confident. I accomplished my first goals. I graduated from college, grew from a college intern to a supervisor at an ad agency in downtown Chicago and moved downtown with my friend. I was 25 years old. I never forgot "who I was" but once again, the meaning of that phrase took on yet another meaning. I learned that I needed to form a point-of-view (POV) on things that were important to me. Having a solid, confident, well thought out POV is at the core of "remembering who you are". I discovered that career women who didn't, didn't make much of an impact. Having a POV in your career will take you to higher places. I started this by learning from the best around me, asking questions, reading like crazy and formulating my POV on breaking out of the clutter of ads that are on TV. Once I had a POV on that, I changed my career from focusing on traditional advertising to social media. I knew that today's consumer was consuming media differently and communicating differently and as an ad agency trying to talk to that consumer, we needed to shift too. That POV launched me from being a Regional Director to VP of Social Media and started a whole new division for our agency. Now, at 44, when I think of the phrase "Remember Who You Are" I smile thinking where that phrase has taken me over the years.