Angela Sedlacek

I would attribute my success to learning how to define it for yourself and not what others' definition of success is. It's very easy to get lost in how your neighbor, how your best friend, how your aunt or parents define success and get lost in the terms, and the labels, and the feelings and the history. But if you can find a way to define your own success as doing no harm to others and thriving, then I think you'll be good. Leave everything better than when you arrived. As Mother Teresa said, some people come into your life as blessings, some people come into your life as lessons. Be both. Be a blessing, and sometimes be a lesson if you need to be.

The best career advice I've ever received is: don't think about the next job you're gonna get, think about the next 3 jobs you're gonna get, then make a choice. Don't worry about just the next job, think about where you'll be after that.

I would give three pieces of advice. First, define who your authentic professional persona is - and this is very specific: Authentic Professional Persona. Your authentic self, your 100% unvarnished authentic self is only for the very highly trusted, beloved people in your circle, and that's not always the people at work. So you have to find your authentic professional self, and that includes how you want to develop your brand, which will change over time. Second, hone your skills, whatever the skills are. In tech, your skill is not knowing the technology, your skill is knowing what you're solving for, because the technology will change and change and change. But your ability to identify the problem, your ability to structure an argument, your ability to evaluate and communicate that evaluation - nothing can replace that. Build your irreplaceable skills. And then the third one is: close your eyes and imagine how you were when you were a 5, 6-year-old girl. Remember that person who had no fear, no discomfort, no uncertainty about how they existed, and leverage that feeling of security and peace in your person to build the first two.

I think the biggest challenge is PR - public relations and communication. Because everything is being created, deployed, and publicized at such a fast pace, it's hard to know where to focus your attention on any given day. The technology announcements that come out are overwhelming. When I talk to my peers and friends, everybody's like, what AI thing am I supposed to have learned yesterday, today? Managing the communication around this and being able to have the discernment to choose the right places to spend our time professionally is more challenging now. Then once you've chosen where and how to spend your time based on what gives you the most value, communicating that out is the PR part. Being able to chain those things together continuously to your internal and external networks is hard because it needs to land, people need to read it, you need to make sure that you're recognized for it, it needs to provide value or service to someone, and it has to be relevant. The speed of creation right now is so overwhelming because things can only be relevant for such a short period of time. My personal focus is more shredded every day just because of how many tools and things I have to learn and know and be ready to discuss or decide on.

The values most important to me are honor, integrity, and drive. In the professional world, plagiarism is fine, but honoring your work is important to me. Integrity matters. Drive is similar to ambition, but not the same thing, because ambition has a connotation that you're just going to run over somebody - hence honor. But drive means that you don't just give up, you keep moving forward. And then, of course, love. Because love is not limited to the people that you spend your personal time with. Love can be shown in your kindness and in your actions of care and respect to your colleague.