Rebekah Paules

I attribute my success to two things my dad taught me: being a problem solver and being a relationship builder. My dad was a lifelong salesman who showed me that if you build relationships, everything else comes easy. But if you approach things transactionally, everyone's like, well, what are you gonna give me, and what do you want from me, and it's just weird. My dad taught me to be a problem solver and to build relationships, and if I had to say two things that made me really successful in everything that I've done, it's those two things. I've applied this approach throughout my entire career, whether I was in outdoor recreation, museums, or now in sales and branded merchandise. It's about understanding people, solving their problems, and building genuine connections with them.

The best career advice I ever received was from Robin Hetrick at the Autry Museum. She told me to identify what I'm great at and what I love to do, and make that a list. She said any other task or project that gets given to you that doesn't fall on this list, hire someone else to do it. She explained that I would waste time and energy trying to do something that maybe doesn't come naturally to me, and my actual talents would suffer. She showed me her own list on a sticky note at the bottom of her computer and then gave me a spreadsheet she had created for budgeting, saying I should keep it because math probably wasn't on my list. The second piece of advice she gave me was that when I've created something that is of value for someone else, share it freely, because you never know their situation. I've carried both of these lessons throughout my career, focusing on my superpowers and sharing my tools and knowledge generously with others.

The entire workforce has been built out of patriarchy and is still socially designed to keep women down. You have to navigate up, around, under, or through toxic masculinity, and you shouldn't have to in 2026. My advice is that you are allowed to reframe when someone tells you something that you are not. For instance, when someone calls you bossy, you can say, I'm not being bossy, what I am doing is exhibiting leadership skills because I'm the manager of this project and it's my responsibility. Or when someone calls you aggressive, you can say I'm not being aggressive, however, I am being confident and passionate because I highly recommend this moving forward. You can say that with a full closed mouth smile, and it's going to make people uncomfortable because they're not used to women reframing. They say those things to make you shrink, to make you stop talking, to make you stop sharing. You don't have to make yourself smaller. You're allowed to walk into a room with your sparkle and take up space kindly. You don't have to accept the version that they want to reflect back at you to keep you small.

My daughter actually reflected my values back to me today. She said we are always generous, we are always accountable, we have high integrity, and we separate generosity and service because those are two separate things to me. I am generous with what we have, with the people we love, and we always will try to find opportunities for service. And then my one that I always add is whimsy. I always try to make things whimsical and magical, because life is really hard. So my core values are generosity, accountability, integrity, service, and whimsy or magic.