Gigi Dowden

I didn't set out to be influential, I set out to be useful. I knew if someone could give me a project and trust that it's not going to be just done, it will be done well into completion. That's a skill set that I think gets recognized. Just showing up and knowing that you can finish a project to completion puts you in a spot where that's what gets recognized, especially in the beginning of your career. That skill spans any industry and any role. I also learned early on to trust myself, trust my team, and trust what we know. When I first took over communications, executives would ask me to show them where it's worked, show them the ROI, and I was honest at the time: I don't have that, because we've never done this. There was a lot of trust that had to happen there, and it worked out. That taught me to trust myself and trust my knowledge. I'm always a big advocate for yourself, because nobody else will be a bigger advocate for you than you.

Set out to be useful. I didn't set out to be influential, I set out to be useful. If someone could give me a project and know that it's not going to be just done, it will be done well into completion, that's a skill set that I think gets recognized. Just showing up and then knowing that you can finish a project to completion puts you in a spot where that's what gets recognized, especially in the beginning of your career. That skill can span any industry and any role. And always be the big advocate for yourself, because nobody else will. Nobody else will be a bigger advocate for you than you.

The biggest challenge is how the world communicates with each other just changes, and it changes so quickly. Seven years ago, a lot of what we saw was on the phone, it was face-to-face, and then COVID hit, and suddenly that threw a wrench in every type of communication out there. We learned how to do this online with Teams and Microsoft, and all those things kind of rolled out. Now we're seeing a swing back to where people don't want the computer version anymore, they want the face-to-face. Every time we think we have it figured out, the world sometimes throws a new wrench in things. Or you have a new generation that's coming up that communicates much differently than its previous ones. It's this constant juggling of, okay, we think we have it, and then it changes, and then we think we have it, and then it changes. I enjoy that because it's never boring, it's never predictable. I enjoy change and I enjoy the challenge of it, but it does present to be challenging sometimes. In our business particularly, we're pretty remote with people everywhere, so how I have to communicate with our lab techs in our lab in Canada who don't sit at a computer every day is very different than maybe an executive team down in Chile. Everyone's a challenge to try and communicate effectively to, and it's a challenge I enjoy.