Amanda Purdin

I attribute my success mostly to seeing how my work affects other people. I've seen so many different teams, especially when it comes to corporate speaking, be able to communicate better. I've seen different people from different backgrounds understand what other people are going through and how it's different than them. I've seen a lot of people kind of understand the other side of things, which is great, and learn to communicate a little bit differently, learn to communicate better, learn to speak up and react in real time. I think we have kind of lost our ability to react and support other people and react in the moment, whether that's in the workforce or in our personal lives, or maybe to prevent something from escalating. The best thing for me is seeing people think of things a little differently than they have before and being able to put some real action into better communication and supporting each other and the safety side of things, and prevent some real civil disasters just by being able to communicate better.

The best career advice I've ever received is probably that some days you are just doing an amazing job, and other days you're just kind of putting one foot in front of the other, and the most important thing is to keep doing that. Some days you just feel like you're doing amazing and you're doing wonderful things, and then other days are just harder, and on those hard days, those are what really challenge us. It's important to, even if some days you just feel like you're putting one foot in front of the other, it's still important to show up and keep doing that, because you're eventually going to come out the other end, and the good days are gonna come back.

I definitely think that sometimes you need some tough skin, and being comfortable having uncomfortable conversations is really important. Just keep showing up. Keep reminding yourself some days of how you're helping other people and how important it is. I've coached kids when it comes to jiu-jitsu for years too, and taught young girls that have been through some pretty traumatic stuff, and no matter how hard it is, no matter how tough the conversations are, you see other people, how well they improve, and how much better you can make them feel, and how much more confident you can make them feel, and that's worth it. Some days you just gotta keep doing it, but it's all such worth it, and I think that when things get hard, those are the things you need to remember.

I think the biggest challenge is people not understanding how other people go through life, like men not understanding necessarily the challenges that women face that are different from theirs. I honestly do believe that there's a lot of men out there that do want to help women. They have daughters, they have mothers, they want to understand and support the education side of things, so I think that's great, but there's also a lot out there that don't. There are a lot of uncomfortable conversations about rape prevention and assault and response to sexual violence and those types of things, especially when it comes to the workforce. The other part is that a lot of people live in the movies. They've seen too many movies or too many shows where reality of some tough situations and tough conversations is much different than what you see in the movies. People think they can fight for 10 minutes, or they think that certain tough conversations can go a certain way, but the movies don't always articulate those things the way that reality does, and I think a lot of people don't understand that.

I definitely feel like honesty is one thing that's really important to me, just being honest, even though no matter how hard it is sometimes to just be honest. Showing up for people, being there for people is important. I think that so often anymore we tend to kind of hide behind ourselves a little bit, or our own mental health, or our own self-help stuff, and I think that often we use that as an excuse to not show up for other people. I think that having integrity and being honest, even when it's tough conversations, and just showing up for people, showing up for other people, is important. If we can't impact and empower and help other people, there's not a lot that we're going to leave behind in this world when we're not there anymore.