Ekaterina Konovalova

I attribute my success to grit and ambition, because there were so many difficult seasons in life where I had to persevere a lot. For example, my last year of high school was very challenging in Russia where I only had one shot at getting into university. I had to rely only on my brain since my family was not in a position to give bribes like others were doing. I studied day and night with regular school, after-school studies, and a tutor on Sundays for a month, and I was able to get into the college I really wanted. Since then, it was a lot of hard work and studying English. I didn't get a lot of support, only faith and belief in myself that I can make it and I deserve a better life. The same qualities that allow you to succeed - discipline, grit, perseverance - can also play a joke on you later when you don't know how to relax. So now I'm in the phase of allowing myself to relax and don't feel guilty about it. I even had to schedule rest and literally put it on the calendar so I don't feel guilty about it.

The best career advice I've ever received came from my aunt, who was my mentor and showed me the ropes on how to come to the United States, get education, and always believe in yourself. I also remember reading Salvador Dali's book, The Diary of a Genius, where he said if you believe you're a genius, you'll become one. So basically, believe in yourself. And if you have ambition, go after that ambition. I've been told in Kansas and the Midwest there's a saying about the tallest poppies get chopped, meaning do not stick out, don't toot your own horn, and that's bad advice. If you want to get ahead in life, you need to believe in yourself and promote yourself. Be your own advocate and champion.

My advice to young women entering the marketing industry today is to focus on in-person networking and basically connecting with people and building relationships, not just virtually, but either jumping on a call, meeting them in person, some kind of relationship building. Don't be shy, don't hide behind the screens. Try to meet people and build those real connections. I think network is your biggest value.

A challenge and an opportunity is AI in marketing in general. You can see how copywriters or designers are impacted, where copy can be written quickly, or design can be generated, or programming, but at the same time, it still needs a lot of human oversight and knowledge, deep knowledge. For example, if you generate text, it sounds smart, but you don't know the depth of it, it can actually miss very important points. So I would say the disruption with AI is the biggest challenge and opportunity in marketing.

The values most important to me in my work and personal life are fairness, loyalty, honesty, and basically trustworthiness - that I can trust other people and they can trust me.