Alana Bagby Leonard

I attribute my success to probably a delusional belief that if I want to do it, I can do it, I can achieve it. I think that gets rooted from being an athlete my whole life and feeling like it's just, I'm only really ever competing against myself. So if I want to do something better, I don't really have to consider competition, I just kind of look at what I'm doing, and I know that the best version of what I'm doing and the best version of me usually can outwork other people's best versions of themselves.

The best career advice I ever received was probably that it's never too late to become who you want to be. That was actually from my dad. He would always say that, because my dad also played sports and did things like that, but he was the master of kind of reinventing himself and starting different careers and entrepreneurship. He used to always say, like, it's never too late to be who you want to be, and so when you decide that the road that you're on isn't working and isn't serving you, like, don't be afraid to just leave it and start completely over. I think that's been the best advice that I've gotten, because I think naturally we kind of limit ourselves to say, like, if we haven't done it by this age, then we probably won't be able to do it, or if I've already put in so many years doing this specific thing, I can't shift. And so kind of having that as my North Star, saying, like, if this isn't who I think that I'm supposed to be, I think there's still time to do that, and the world feels very open and really magical when you think about it that way.

I would say visualize who you want to be at the end of the day, like at the end of your career, and then work backwards. I think that sometimes young women always think about, like, I do this, and then I do this, and I do this, and they just kind of hope they find their path, versus really thinking about being very visionary about who do I want to be, what do I want to look like, who do I want to be, what do I want my day to feel like? I'm a big visualization person, and so creating, being able to have a life that you can feel, that you can smell, and that you can taste, and then working backwards from that is super helpful. And do the things that you're good at, not only your passions. Those two things don't always align. The biggest lie that people say is, like, do the things that are in your passion, but sometimes what you're passionate about, you're not good at, so do the things that you're good at and that you enjoy, and then you'll find a really fulfilled life in that way.

Right now, I work a lot with Black and Brown founders, and being able to get funded is always an issue. Being able to have the resources, being able to speak the language of venture capitalist firms and investors is a challenge. Helping those founders be able to speak the language and be able to be ahead of the ball before things are catastrophic for their business is important. I think also just the amount of opportunities that are coming, and people being able to leverage AI in a way that is helpful for them, outside of it just being kind of an assistant, and really trying to figure out how to harness it to have, to make their life better, and to make products better and see products that we've never even thought of before. I think there's definitely almost a gold rush of trying to figure out what is the right idea in how to use AI. That's probably one of the biggest struggles, is people haven't really quite figured out how to monetize it yet. And we all are kind of using it the same right now, which is a little early in the game to be so complacent.

Probably integrity and emotional intelligence, like EQ. I think that being able to show up authentically yourself is really important. I think with authenticity also comes the sub kind of cultures of that, it's having boundaries, of knowing who you are, but then I think it's also important to have EQ to be able to meet people where they are. Because without those two things, things can get very muddy really easily.