Rachel Whittemore

I think the most important thing that I personally bring to the table is my ability to work with a lot of different types of people. I think at the end of the day, when you're talking about the actual tasks, like, in the day-to-day of any job, you can teach that to somebody. This is something that I look for when I'm interviewing people, is that I can teach you Excel, I can teach you how to think through a problem, I can teach you how to strategize, but I can't teach you to be kind, and I can't teach you to be able to effectively problem solve with other human beings. I think it's so important to be able to effectively work with a lot of different types of people, because you're going to encounter so many different types of people throughout your career. I think my ability to do that has really helped me succeed, especially in a leadership position.

The best career advice I ever received was when I was 16. My mom works at Pepsi, and she set me up with an informational interview with a VP at Pepsi, and she told me that the most important thing I could do is make the uncomfortable comfortable. I will never forget that, and I apply it in both my career and also my personal life.

I would advise women coming into this field to trust your gut and do the scary thing. I think in a lot of spaces, it's hard to speak up because you're afraid to be wrong, and something that held me back in the beginning of my career was I was afraid to get it wrong, but the truth is, is that the best way to learn is to speak up, get it wrong, and learn from it. So don't be afraid to get it wrong.

I think it's the same answer for both. I think for my field specifically, we're having a lot of conversations around AI and machine learning and how the space is evolving so quickly, and I think that's very, very challenging for a lot of clients who have been doing things the same way for a long time. But I also think, on the flip side of the coin, it is their biggest opportunity, because it's where the future is going, and I know that's also scary for some people, and I think that if we figure out a way to harness the technology and own it and use it properly, it's not on track to take over anything or replace anything, but we can use it as an add-on, something to enhance what we're already doing. So, I would say that's both the challenge and the opportunity currently top of mind in my field.

I think authenticity is important in both. I am a very straight shooter at work and in my personal life. I always just prefer people to be their authentic selves and tell the truth, versus finding out at work that something was messed up later, because I think at the end of the day, I value my work, and I value what the team has to put out there and produce, but if something goes wrong, it's advertising, and we can figure it out, and it's so much easier to figure out if we're all being authentic and open and honest in the beginning versus finding out later. I think that applies to my personal relationships, too, because those are all the things that help you build trust, both at work and in your personal life. At the end of the day, you're doing your job for more than half of your life with these people, so you have to be able to build trust in a similar way that you would build trust with people in your personal life. And it might not be as intimate, but you're talking to these people for 9 hours a day, so you need to be able to trust them.