Elyse Nadler

I attribute my success to the fact that I moved around to different areas of the company throughout my career. Because I bounced around from customer service, to launching new cards, to technologies, to marketing, and all these different areas, I had knowledge that nobody else had. When I moved to marketing, they had a tech problem that nobody knew how to solve or even who to go to, but I just happened to be visiting headquarters in New York. They pulled me out of a meeting, and I fixed it in 5 minutes. They asked how come nobody else could do it, and I told them it was only because I have knowledge in all these different areas. I could put the knowledge from tech, customer service, and marketing together to come up with an answer, versus somebody that just has one or two of those areas. My advice would be to become more well-rounded and don't stay focused on one area - move around more. When they're doing layoffs, they think, well, we don't want to let her go because not only does she know this job, but she knows these other jobs too, and we might need her for that.

My biggest advice would be that while your coworkers may become your friends, you need to separate work from personal life, and not all your coworkers are your friends. Everybody has their own agenda, and that's fine, but a lot of women tend to think people are looking out for you when really a lot of people just have their own agenda. You really just need to look out for yourself in this dog-eat-dog world. I've seen people leave and it's like people don't call - you thought they were your friend. You have your work friends and they can be acquaintances, and there are some that are more, but overall, don't blur the lines. Keep your personal life private as much as you can and don't tell your coworkers everything about your life. I learned that the hard way because I'm too much of an open book, but I've been burned and I've learned. We as women tend to over-explain when we can't do something, which is not good, and we give more details. I'm working on just remembering that no is a complete sentence. I would also tell my younger self to take more risks earlier in my career and not be so scared. A lot of the areas I was interested in were all men, and when I would talk to leaders about wanting to move to the tech side, they would try to discourage me. If that's what you want to do, don't listen to people who try to discourage you and take the risks. We're so scared to fail when we're young, but sometimes those failures lead to your best successes. You can't have success if you don't fail. As long as it's not life or death, take the risk.