Nicole MacLean

I definitely attribute my success to people and the community. I'm based in Indianapolis, Indiana, and the community here is just incredible. I was very fortunate early on to get plugged in and learn from a lot of other people. The more that you network and talk to people and hear their stories, I think it allowed me to be able to face situations that maybe I haven't faced personally, but through conversations and networking with other people, I remembered their stories or how they handled it or how they wish they handled it, and then could apply those lessons. I was also very fortunate to have some great professional development opportunities throughout my career, like the Orr Fellowship and EDGE Mentoring, and working with professional development coaches and leadership coaches has been very helpful along the way. I've also had some really great leaders who saw potential and were willing to give me opportunities. I grew up in tech and definitely experienced what it felt like to not be in rooms or maybe not feel like my ideas were being heard because I was a woman. But at Composely, our former CEO Mike Leonard never made me fight to be in a room or feel like I had to fight to be heard. When that's no longer on the table, you're able to just show up as your authentic self and do really great work, so those really good allies along the way have been very helpful.

The best career advice I've ever received is to make sure that you are bringing a clear perspective and a recommendation. Whether you're presenting in a meeting or asking to try something, having a clear point of view, especially when talking to leadership, is one of the things that people miss the most because they're afraid of getting it wrong. But if you're not telling leadership what you think, then they don't necessarily always know exactly what you're looking for. It's okay to be wrong, and that's when I've gotten some coaching, but I noticed when I started making recommendations with a clear recommendation, like 'hey, I did this research, we could do X, Y, or Z, I think we should do X,' it just really changes how people view you. Bringing a clear perspective is something I share with a lot of people on my team too.

My advice to young women entering the marketing field is to learn the business. Understand the basic P&L, balance sheets, and really understand what the CFO and the CEO would care about, and apply that knowledge. I think the more you can understand how the business is run, the better you're able to make strategic decisions in the seat you sit in. But also, really try to network and get to know other people. Ask for the coffee chat, because relationships truly is the only reason I am where I am, and I firmly believe that building a great network and trying to give more than you take ultimately just works out better in the end. So learn the business and have a really great network.

I think marketing and creative professionals are facing one of the most disruptive periods because of AI tools and technology. There are a lot of people and leaders who are just saying 'use AI,' but I think the businesses that win are not going to be the ones that adopt it the fastest or use it the most, but the ones who really discern how to use it to create efficiency and let their people be more human. Understanding that challenge is really hard. The second big challenge I feel so passionately about is helping the other parts of the business respect and understand what the role of marketing is. There's still this stigma of marketing as arts and crafts, and it's so much more than that. I'm really trying to help marketers have a strategic seat at the table and empower them to be more business-minded. Right now everyone's saying 'we don't need marketers, we'll just have AI do it,' so being able to defend and explain the work of marketing and the impact to the business and to the client experience is critical. People who understand how to do that will still have jobs and will still be very successful.

Definitely my faith is a key pillar for me, and I actually think I've been more successful professionally as I've deepened my own faith. Just having something that's bigger than the job is really important, and being able to separate your own personal worth and your job has unlocked a lot of things for me. I also believe strongly in people-first leadership, which some people call servant leadership. Stepping into any sort of leadership, I've always taken the value that my people come first. If they're successful, I'm successful. Maybe to a fault sometimes, but the value of putting the people who I've been entrusted with and making sure that their growth shines through is definitely a core value. And I try to leave people, things, whatever I'm in, better than how I entered. Whether it's a meeting, if I'm going to be on a meeting, if I could help a client or a person even just get an idea or leave a little bit better, I think that's important.