Paula Fontana

I attribute my success to God, number one. And then my mother, who is unfortunately no longer with us, but she always encouraged me to strive for the best, strive for as many degrees as I could get, and be the best at what I do. Between those two things is what sort of pushed me to accomplish what I have.

I don't know if it was advice so much as a pivotal moment. I was in a high-pressure situation and called my boss in the middle of the night because it was, in my opinion, do or die. I'm thinking he's going to tell me what to do, but he basically said, 'Huh, that sounds crazy! Let me know what you decide to do about it.' And he hung up. I was having a moment, like, what in the world is happening? But it wasn't necessarily advice so much as it was trust in me and the job that I was hired to do to be able to figure it out.

I would say you can do it. You are absolutely capable. There's nothing that you can't do, and so I would encourage them to do what I struggle with, and that is get outside their heads. I know as women we have a tendency to suffer from imposter syndrome a lot, so I'd say sort of believing that you can do it. And that second part that has become so critical for me is support other women. Find women who support you. Because together, we can absolutely go further than we could alone.

The biggest challenge right now is that so much is changing. There are resources being taken away from certain organizations, downsizing, all kinds of madness in corporate spaces, but being able to find the funds to continuously invest in people is critical. However, this creates an opportunity for me. I have a keynote message about resilience and investing in that talent, and how important it is, both from the corporate side as well as the employee side. For me, that allows the opportunity to then get on those stages and help bridge that gap for corporations and help them understand that they need to invest in those people. It's created a nice niche or space for me to be able to help other people in that way.

Trust is the biggest one, actually. Trust and support. However, that looks for different people. And I'll say authenticity or individuality. So, meaning that how trust shows up when I'm talking to my husband versus somebody on my team versus my son - it all could look different, but at the end of the day, making sure that we trust each other, but that I'm connecting with you the way that is meaningful to you, and you're doing the same for me.