Her Story
About Marie
I'm the founder of Mae Media, which represents my initials Marie Amelia Eastman. It's a consulting entity that has evolved over the years with some interruption in activities, and I'm just getting it started up again after my recent move from New Hampshire to West Virginia. Under Mae Media, I run M.A. Eastman Business Services, which offers bookkeeping and what they call fractional CFO services, though I think that's kind of an encompassing description - it's really just interpreting the financial statements. My clients are real small, mostly people who have not yet engaged a bookkeeper and a lot of them need cleanup on their books. But I intend for that piece to be a real small bit of the business activity. The main thrust will eventually be consulting for change management, specifically around AI adoption. What has happened in the last few years since the arrival of ChatGPT is that a lot of companies made some assumptions about what AI was going to offer them and jumped in with two feet without any reflection at all, thinking it was going to mean they could cut staff. Without any strategy around it, they've discovered that it's not giving them the results they need. Many companies need to step back and look at how their organization is adopting AI, because there's a lot of fear around it at the top of the organization. Expertise used to put you at a higher level in the organization, but now expertise is a commodity because of AI - it's at the fingertips of the greenest employee. But AI will not cut jobs, it will foster jobs and new roles. The step-in for me is engaging with companies, small and mid-sized companies, to help them understand how their people are using AI, but also helping them decide intentionally how they want to engage it and helping them become more comfortable with leading from behind instead of being at the top of the organization as the expert one. They're going to get more out of people and better results for the company if they encourage people to engage the technologies and give them some more free reign instead of making rules around them. I'm also a retired chaplain and a lifetime member of the Association of Professional Chaplains, and I serve as an endorser for professional chaplains who need endorsement for their board certification.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Marie
01What do you attribute your success to?
My father told my mother before I was born, we're going to have a girl and we're going to call her Marie Amelia, and so he thought me into an existence. When I was born, an identical twin, he still always said, Marie's got the world by the ass on a downhill pole. I never believed it, but it is in fact true. My success comes first from the belief of what's possible and holding my intention and not succumbing to disbelief, and realizing that it's going to take what it's going to take. But honestly, at this point, it's very selfish. It's extremely selfish because my time is so valuable and precious. At the moment, I can't afford to work for an employer because I want to call the shots, I want to make the decisions, I want to take time off when I want to take time off, and I want that flexible time. I don't want to have to drive all over hell or get on a plane every other week anymore. So it's really more about me honoring my own boundary, and it's not about anybody else's measure of success. It's about my quality of life. That's what I learned as a chaplain - seeing people whose lives were upended by some unforeseen circumstance that changed their life in a hurry. And now, I just don't put my life on hold anymore.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I still think they need to learn humility and not to make any assumptions about what they know. Some young people think they get to a certain milestone and then they're there. They haven't yet looked and learned that they're going to have to keep learning and learning and learning. Learning to listen, learning to ask for help when you need it, and keeping a humble stance to everything. I don't know how to teach that, either. You can't teach humility. People learn through mistakes and hard learning. That's my bit of advice, but I honestly don't know how to convey that to others.
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