Leading Female Insider

Lauren is a serial entrepreneur, International Lawyer, Realtor and Cross-Border Expert. Originally from Toronto and now living and serving clients from her headquarters in South Florida, she is also a best-selling author and sought-after speaker. She launched her podcast, Investing Across Borders in November 2020. Real estate investors and entrepreneurs hire her turnkey team as they believe in overcoming obstacles and navigating business and investment opportunities so clients can invest, live, work and play across borders.

*Moving people and services across state and/or country lines will inevitably involve a variety of legal considerations. Having a legal team in your pocket will help you develop strategies to handle or avoid them wherever possible.

Di Di is the Co-Founder and President of FutureProof Retail, a mobile checkout and order-ahead shopping app. She became an entrepreneur right after finishing her graduate studies at NYU. In this episode she talked about:

- How finding out about the fact that the average GPA of Millionaires is 2.9 motivated her as a top student to become an entrepreneur instead of working in corporate.

- How can anyone become an entrepreneur - even if your GPA is higher than 2.9.

- How listening can set you apart from your competition.

Di Di Chan is is a global entrepreneur that's passionate about education, technology, and sustainability. Her mission is to maximize human potential by removing friction in time, aligning profit with value, and paying it forward. She has an MA in Economics from New York University and a BA in Global Studies from University of California, Los Angeles. 

Susan Adams Loyd - CEO Better Business Bureau for MN and ND is a strategic thinker who has a proven track record of building collaborative teams that deliver stellar results. She has successfully led complex organizations through opportunities and challenges, always developing talented contributors along the way. As well, she has held top-seated positions within industry professional associations and  community non-profits, and is widely regarded as an experienced leader,  media expert, mentor and an accomplished public speaker.

Susan has 3 decades of experience in the Media industry including as the Former VP & General Manager at  CBS, Clear Channel Broadcasting and  Cox Broadcasting. As a lifelong learner, she recently graduated from Harvard University complementing her Graduate Degree from Minnesota  State University and Bachelor Degree from University of Minnesota.

Becoming a CEO - step by step guide

Raise your hands and take on assignments

Stating aspirations

Hire people smarter than you

Skills that can set you apart and how to develop it

Take calculated risks

Susan Adams Loyd - CEO Better Business Bureau for MN and ND is a strategic thinker who has a proven track record of building collaborative teams that deliver stellar results. She has successfully led complex organizations through opportunities and challenges, always developing talented contributors along the way. As well, she has held top-seated positions within industry professional associations and community non-profits, and is widely regarded as an experienced leader, media expert, mentor and an accomplished public speaker. 

Susan has 3 decades of experience in the Media industry including as the Former VP & General Manager at  CBS, Clear Channel Broadcasting and Cox Broadcasting. As a lifelong learner, she recently graduated from Harvard University complementing her Graduate Degree from Minnesota State University and Bachelor Degree from University of Minnesota. 

How to negotiate your salary:

- Importance of preparation

- How to frame negotiations that leaves both parties better off

- How to make it a pleasant experience

Ashley Whillans is the Volpert Family Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School. Professor Whillans earned her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of British Columbia. Her research seeks to understand the associations between time, money, and subjective wellbeing. She is particularly interested in understanding how individual, organizational and societal factors like gender, workplace policies, and income inequality predict how people value and spend time and money, with possible implications for well-being.

Be open to things you might not thought you are capable of doing or wanted to do - with Darcey Matthews former Senior Managing Director New York Stock Exchange Client Service and Business Development. Today she is the Founder & CEO of The Greenhouse Day Spa.

Darcey is an NYU graduate and has a 30 year experience in Finance and Investor Relations including 9 years with the NYSE working in New York, Europe and Houston.

Tune-in to hear about:

- Be open to opportunities

- Handling the Enron Situation

- Who gets to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange

- How to be an advisor to public companies and influence senior management

- Why is it important to be take on assignments no-one wants to sign up for

- How to use knowledge learned in corporate as an entrepreneur (she recently opened a Spa Business)

In this episode I am talking to Amanda Latifi who has done it all. She is the Co-Founder and CEO of Hafta Have which is the only personalized mobile messaging platform that uses offline data to drive conversion for retailers in-store. Her company was selected to be the member of the 2020 cohort of the New York Fashion Tech Lab.

Amanda started to work with brand strategy and consumer behavior with big companies such as McDonalds, SC Johnson, Mars in Chicago and Tech in California before she founded her company.

Tune into this episode to hear about her entrepreneurial journey, a deep dive into how to go from idea to startup, the challenges of starting a company and to be first to market and her take on what it takes to find investors and raise money. You will find this conversation useful regardless the industry you are in, her story is very relatable and her learnings can be applied to other industries as well.

For more inspiration:

In this episode, I have a chat with Beatriz Ayala. She is an award-winning Advertising and Communications executive with over 10 years of experience. She was working for global and local agencies including as a Group Account Director for BBDO Puerto Rico. She worked with brands such as Cover Girl, Pantene, Medalla Light, Bacardi, Snickers, M&M’s, Pedigree, and Hyundai for the US Hispanic market, Central America, the Caribbean, and Puerto Rico.

Today she is leading her tech music startup called Musicasa pioneering the future of live entertainment. Musiscasa is a live music platform discovering and exposing undiscovered musicians and connecting them with music lovers through highly intimate concerts both online and offline.  By focusing on community building, they are sparking joyful human connections through the power of live music and live interactions.

Tune into this episode to hear about her biggest learnings of her many years in advertising summed up in a few minutes, the reason why she left corporate and went on a year-long trip around the world and how all this led her to disrupt the music business. We also uncover the secret behind the success of big brands and how can she use her learnings as an entrepreneur and how to find and bring your purpose to life.

2020 was a very challenging year for all of us. As we come to the year end and also to the 3 months milestone of this podcast, I really came to think about the importance of celebrating your wins. Tune into this episode to hear about why is it important to celebrate wins and a sneak peek into the upcoming episode. 

In this episode I am talking to Sunna Einarsdóttir. She is CFO and Partner at Deloitte Iceland. In addition, she recently got appointed to also lead the Business Process Solutions Business Unit. Sunna joined Deloitte in Copenhagen, Denmark right after finalizing her Master studies at Aarhus University in 2013. Since then she quickly rose through the ranks in Denmark and 5 years after starting her career she was promoted to CFO for Deloitte Iceland.

Tune into this episode to learn about her career journey, how moving abroad developed her as a person and her take on what it takes to become CFO and Partner at Deloitte. Sunna was raised by a single mother in Iceland and she shares her insights on how to succeed on your own merit. We will also cover why is it important to choose a boss rather than a job, how to be productive and think ahead.

In this episode you can hear about how to get hired on Wall Street as well as the current trends on the job market on Wall Street and what to expect in the future. 

Richelle Konian created her company at a very young age on Wall Street. In the previous episode she talked about how she built her company on Wall Street through networking, how to reinvent yourself when times are tough as well as insights on networking. She believes that networking was a huge part of her success and in the previous episode she shared behind-the-scenes examples and best practices in networking also adjusting to virtual events. These  insights are very useful and relatable not only on Wall Street but also in general. She also reveals how she led her company through tough times, providing us with learnings that can be used also if you are an employee navigating through difficult times in your career. 

Richelle is the Founder and CEO of an award winning boutique executive search firm called the Careers On The Move servicing some of the most prestigious employers in the world. Her clients range from Fortune 500 companies to niche service providers as well as rapidly expanding new businesses. She is member of numerous boards and President of the University at Albany Alumni Association Board of Directors. With over 20 years of experience she is an expert in her field. She provided her expertise on major television networks and leading publications, such as CBS Evening News, CNBC’s Squawk Box, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and she was the School of Business Commencement Speaker for 2018 at the University at Albany. Richelle holds a BS in Business Administration from the University at Albany, and was awarded “Most Outstanding Young Alumni of 2008”.

In this episode you can hear about how to build a company on Wall Street through networking, how to reinvent yourself when times are tough as well as insights on networking. 

Richelle Konian created her company at a very young age on Wall Street. She believes that networking was a huge part of her success and she takes us behind-the-scenes and shares examples and best practices in networking also adjusting to virtual events not only on Wall Street but also in general. She tells us how she led her company through tough times, providing us with learnings that can be used also if you are an employee navigating through difficult times in your career. If you are also interested in how to get hired on Wall Street we talk about that in a separate episode just after this one.

She is the Founder and CEO of an award winning boutique executive search firm called the Careers On The Move servicing some of the most prestigious employers in the world. Her clients range from Fortune 500 companies to niche service providers as well as rapidly expanding new businesses. She is member of numerous boards and President of the University at Albany Alumni Association Board of Directors. With over 20 years of experience she is an expert in her field. She provided her expertise on major television networks and leading publications, such as CBS Evening News, CNBC’s Squawk Box, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and she was the School of Business Commencement Speaker for 2018 at the University at Albany. Richelle holds a BS in Business Administration from the University at Albany, and was awarded “Most Outstanding Young Alumni of 2008”.

In the previous episode I had a chat with Nancy J. Di Dia - Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer at Boehringer Ingelheim - a research-driven pharmaceutical company -  about how she got her current role and how to best express empathy.

In this episode she talked about how the future of work may look like and best practices of managing talent. She is an expert on this topic and her efforts earned her company numerous awards including best Places to Work for LGBTQ+ employees, Disabilities Equality Index, National Association of Female Executives Top 60 Companies for Executive Women, and Working Mother’s Top 100 Companies.

For more inspiration:

In this episode I had a chat with Nancy J. Di Dia - Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer at Boehringer Ingelheim, a research-driven pharmaceutical company.

Her overall goal is to make a difference in the world and create a sense of belonging for all people. Her efforts earned her company national recognition as a premier industry leader in diversity and inclusion with numerous awards including the HRC Corporate Equality Index for the Best Places to Work for LGBTQ+ employees, Disabilities Equality Index (DEI), National Association of Female Executives Top 60 Companies for Executive Women, and Working Mother’s Top 100 Companies.

We talked about how she became Chief Diversity officer, how to best express empathy as well as how a very personal experience made her the person she is today. Her honesty and eagerness to help others makes her a true inspiration for all of us.

For more inspiration: 

This episode is about passion. Passion that prompted Jody Ordioni, author of The Talent Brand to leave her remarkable corporate career within well-established advertising agencies such as J. Walter Thompson and Omnicom in New York and create a successful branding agency called Brandemix as well as an employee engagement community called Achieve Engagement, with more than 100,000 members.

In this episode, I am talking to Mar Diteos CEO Chilli Beans USA - the most popular sunglasses and watches retailer in Brazil and Latin America. 

Mar started her career in Mexico at Banco Santander while pursuing her Master's Degree. During her 9 years with the company she rose through the ranks and went from Planning and Management Control Analyst to Director of Product Marketing. She relocated to Chile for the last 4 years with the company. After 9 years with Banco Santanger in LATAM, Mar moved to the United States and completed a Master's degree in Management at Harvard University before she secured her CEO job in Los Angeles.

We talked about how she progressed at Banco Santander and how to became a CEO in the United States after having built a career in Latin America. We unpacked the different steps she took, decisions she made and skills she needed. 

We also talked about the importance of having multiple income streams and how to manage a side business while having a demanding job and how to balance it all.  

In this episode, I am talking to Mar Diteos CEO Chilli Beans USA - the most popular sunglasses and watches retailer in Brazil and Latin America.

Mar started her career in Mexico at Banco Santander while pursuing her Master's Degree. During her 9 years with the company she rose through the ranks and went from Planning and Management Control Analyst to Director of Product Marketing. She relocated to Chile for the last 4 years with the company. After 9 years with Banco Santanger in LATAM, Mar moved to the United States and completed a Master's degree in Management at Harvard University before she secured her CEO job in Los Angeles.

In this episode, we talked about how she is leading the way through the changing retail landscape and impacting lives. 

In a separate episode (just after this one) we also talked about how she progressed at Banco Santander and how to became a CEO in the United States after having built a career in Latin America. We unpacked the different steps she took, decisions she made and skills she needed.

We also covered the importance of having multiple income streams and how to manage a side business while having a demanding job and how to balance it all.

We are currently experiencing an economic downturn, which is why so many millions of people have lost work recently or seen their incomes cut. The reality is that job prospects are scarce. There are a lot of job openings that are on hold or disappeared but this doesn’t mean there aren’t jobs out there. There are still companies and industries that are hiring.

In today’s episode we are going to talk about how to brand yourself in 6 steps to find a job during a recession. We also talked about how she turned her corporate career into a consultancy.

My guest Marylou Ponzi Kay is Personal Branding expert, she is the founder of MPK Associates - a human resources consultancy she launched after an extensive career in HR in New York with companies such as American Express, Benetton, Canon and JP Morgan.