Danielle Dobbs

The best career advice I've received is to hold loosely your plans, but have a vision in mind. What that means is we need goals and some kind of idea to go forward, but not holding it so tight that you cut off your nose to spite your face because things aren't going the way you thought. I hear people say 'that's not my job' often, and while boundaries are really important, I think we have to be very mindful and discern whether the opportunities before us are not about whether it's your job or not, but whether it's an opportunity to help you grow in your role and what could come of it. Some of the best career advice I got was continuing to be willing to learn, even if it's not in my job role, because that opens other opportunities down the road.

Do not hold on to perfectionism. Embrace and adapt. A lot. I think as a young woman who's curious and has the road before her, when you're willing to adopt and continue to change, you can get out of your head and not hold on to everything having to be perfect. I do find that women tend to be more perfectionists sometimes. It's just in our nature, and we take it really hard and to heart when maybe it wasn't exactly what our boss expected, or we needed to approach it in a different manner. Sometimes we can get in our head about that, so that's what I would say. Just be willing to adapt. Sometimes it has nothing to do with you. Sometimes it's just a matter of how things are working out and the circumstances around you, and when we make the focus, take the focus off of us and we make it about how we just continue to help in this situation, or expand our expertise, or learn, it reframes the way we think about things much better than us being perfectionists in what we do.

The biggest challenges and opportunities in my field right now are how rapidly things are changing with the adoption of AI. Obviously, there's a lot of privacy concerns and fear-mongering around how it can be used in the future. There's still a lot to be figured out, and it's impacted marketing from a huge standpoint. It definitely optimizes time, but making sure that you're using it in the best way possible and not losing that authenticity and genuinity behind telling a story or behind the human-to-human interaction is critical. I know it's a big topic and it's making headlines every day, but that I would say is one of the greatest challenges and opportunities to continue to navigate from its rapid impact.

I'm a big, big faith-oriented person, so my values start with just caring and loving the people around us. If you can't slow down, even in a fast, business-paced organization, then trust is going to evade your presence. People will not trust you, and you can't get anything done without trust, but also you just don't build the genuine moments and experiences that we're meant to enjoy that are put right in front of us. So I would say just loving other people. Number two would definitely be trust. Trust is huge. I value trust, people value trust, and to have that trust, you have to know that people care and that people are honest with you. And then third, I would say humbleness. You have to be humble daily. I know that you don't always have the right information or know everything. To be able to share with other people and relate with other people, no matter how much you know and how much of an expert you are. So when people tend to know that you are humble and you're always willing to learn, it comes from a place of, she's human, and she's genuine, and she's just here to help.