um, thank you. Thank you so much for having me a swell I'm I'm so grateful to be able Thio share my path so that, um it may inspire onboard support the confidence of students, um, to just kind of step into the unknown and trust their instincts. Um, and I say that because when I when I began my career, um, I had initially been a luxury fashion buyer and the women's space and been working with a really prestigious store and help build a multimillion dollar business. Um, I was really just desire ing so much too. Do something much more strategic in the design space. And that's all. I had a sense off, and I was very, very lucky in that my high school had a fashion marketing class, and I had come across Parsons School of Design, which is a very respected design school and in the world, with offices all over the place, mainly and based in based in New York City s Oh, by the age of 15 I was very clear where I wanted to go to school, and I knew I wanted to study design and management, design and strategic management was the It was actually a business program at the school. So it was a very interesting perspective. Um, so I attended on guy Got my bachelor's in business. Um, most of my professors were Harvard MBAs working and having businesses, not full time professors. So it's really very entrepreneurial. Very creative. Half of my classes. Warren Warren, design. I focused my, um my my career Maurin communication design because I love that you can use design to solve challenges. I thought that was just, like, tremendous. Coupled with my passion for business strategy. I was like, Okay, there's got to be something here that I can do that I'm gonna love. So I I realized I think the best place for me to start my career would be at a huge agency. Um, advertising agency. So I started working at Ogilvy and Mather, and I was very tenacious because they wouldn't speak to me. Um, and I was still in, and I was still in college, so I knocked on the door, send emails and faxes, told everybody I knew I wanted to work there, and I was very lucky because I had a ah, professor. After I had been kind of hitting a wall. Um, for 10 months, and at the time I was working at Prada, the Italian fashion house, and I was working in their sales and marketing department, and I was like, This is not going to be for me. Um, it was a very, you know, in fashion in general, Um, because I still have friends from from that experience who I deeply love and admire. It was just like, you know, I need to be in a place with people that really enjoy what they're doing and that they're happy. And I found that working with designers, um, they're definitely workaholics, though, eh? So I started. I had a professor. Help me, um, realized that the board of directors, um, two of those people that were on the board of Parsons actually worked at Ogilvy. And so we got we got an invitation to come and listen to them speak and introduce the advertising agency to us. And through that, I got an internship right away, which turned into a paying job where I want, I think, twice a week. And I had an office in a phone and I started working on Levi's the rebranding of Ogilvy itself, Um, and Motorola and just kind of Levi's. Barbie is just like all these incredible legacy American brands to some degree. And I was just like, Wow, okay, I am. And I worked there for about three years, and I worked on a lot of large large companies helping to build brands for American Express. Um, rebranding Goldman Sachs internally, which was a fascinating project, Um, and Coca Cola. And my favorite was Dove because I was part of the small team that rebranded Dove to champion riel Beauty. So we we recommended the strategy of, you know, no longer using models, but of using riel women. And we also created programs, um, for for young girls to support their confidence and and, you know, feeling wonderful and appreciating themselves for for just incredible how they are, how beautiful they are, and so that you know that work has just really done a lot to change the beauty industry. And I'm so grateful I was a part of that movement. Andi, That project in particular lead me to really understand that we could shape culture through Brands Week because instead of using this work of strategic planning, which is what I do to manipulate in a negative way. We could actually create positivity and support all sorts of psychological goodness instead of, you know, making people more attracted to something unhealthy in terms of food and things like this. It took me a few years to really realize, um, that I didn't have to work for just anybody. And that's when we also with the practice of yoga over the last 25 years, um, and meditation. It's been so supportive because, you know, it's like what I do, you know, it's it's to really support the happiness and freedom off of all beings. And how can I work with businesses and nonprofits and government agencies where I can be a part of this and be supporting this kind of cause? I mean, I would say my my purpose within that is to really support brands to build brands that are also really shifting. We have a big issue in America, in particular with, um, with loan, the loneliness epidemic. Over half of our population is suffering from loneliness. Um, and that's really like the sense of connective it Ian community like That's my real passion toe help. Other brands, you know, really put some light on that so that they can do good work there to support people in coming back together. And I know it's a very strange time, but even through this we could do this like why I'm here right now. It's It's wonderful. So, um so these experience really shaped things? I would say the biggest thing that really shaped everything, however, was the economic crash in 2000 and eight. That's when I was practicing yoga, probably once or twice a day. Um, Meditation, XI Gong, um, prayer and most of other things. And I realized I could really just put, like a big stake in the ground on do conscious branding. And this was not a time Thio really do anything quite quite like that because it's It was a very I Lost had lost pretty much all of my work at the time. And, you know, it was amazing because within a few months the first call I got was from Alicia Keys, people from my partner, and then we re branded Alicia and I built her holding company with my partner, Um, and we worked with her for about three years, and she still follows the strategy that we all created together. Eso you know, I'll just say that that's a really important thing when you're when you're building a brand to really have the CEO or the face really be so interconnected with that process because you're essentially like my job is to see inside and pull out that essence and be able to, like, verbalize it and to guide design teams and PR to really support what that vision is and then to just have that consistently shared over time. So that was really like a big turning point. And since then I worked with a lot of startups. Um, and I do work with some, you know, medium sized businesses. But I really focused on on startups for the most part and mainly women, I would say, 90% of the time

Wow, this was about probably 17 years ago. Eso It's quite a long time ago. Um but I would say, you know, it comes down to something very simple and its discipline and having structure. And I think because of my spiritual practice, I was able to create a very strong sense of discipline. Um, and, you know, I'm gonna add one other thing here a big, big insight. If if I could just support everyone that that that will be watching and listening is that need to set up a few times a week And in the beginning, maybe five days a week, The first hour that you sit down at the computer. You don't do email necessarily. But you do it in a very focused way. You focus on new business, you focus on revenue generation like riel. This is this is time when you are really focused on just bringing in revenue. And that means what does that mean? You're in business, so you're creating connections. You're reaching out to people you're connecting. Maybe with new people. You're doing cold calls, cold emails, or you're picking up the phone and talking like really talking to people that you know, that could maybe connect you with other people and setting up those those times and blocking them out on the calendar. It is a game changer because there's a real formula to create success in a business, and it's really by setting up these times and having them on the calendar on Bequia. Klay you'll start to see, you know business is going to be coming in and you need to do this consistently so you can, you know, do it two or three days a week. But in the beginning, I recommend five you know, five days a week if you have a project, great. But set aside an hour every every day to be reaching out to people and make a spreadsheet, or use some sort of service where you're able to have, you know, a sense of one you connected with that person or that company who was with what did you talk about? And you can really go back to that. And I think, you know, I had to learn all these things over the years, and this was the biggest challenge was how are people going to find out about me? Because I don't advertise. It's pure word of mouth in my business, and I, you know, in my own way of doing new businesses. I'm just, you know, I love what I do and that passion comes through when I talk to people. It's very simple.

I mean, I'm going to say this. This particular question doesn't suit so much to me because it xyz this right here, and and it's my heart. I am very creative. So I you know, I do use some software programs, but, um, you know, I'm also a designer, so I use in design Photoshop illustrator. Um and, um, you know, I kind of like to be and I don't like to use templates system so much so I like to be able to, you know, design the way that I'm thinking my own way through. Like, I use illustrator, um, after I've sketched out the concept. But those air primarily the tools that I use because, you know, it's really what's inside. And it's my creativity and my way of kind of, you know, having things work through me as I am connecting with a business and really understand that essence. Um, so, yeah, it's very straightforward