Shareena Fontaine

I attribute my success to great leaders. I've been lucky enough to have mentors find me, or I've found them, at every organization where I've been. I've had the opportunity and been so fortunate to have leaders who let me in, whether I'm just a fly on the wall and they're like 'come join me and listen in,' whether it's direct feedback (because feedback is such a gift), or whether it's saying my name in rooms I'm not in. As I started managing teams, it became a combination of my leaders as well as my team. Iron sharpens iron, and being able to pull people along with me for the ride, acknowledge them, see them, and hear them has propelled me forward in my career. That human connection is what the core of it is. I work really hard, of course, but it's more than that. It's about when you look back, when you leave an organization, does it still sustain? How many people after you have been promoted that you directly managed? That's what I look at. It's not what did you do, it's what legacy did you leave. Who can say 'Shareena said my name' the same way someone said my name when I was in that position? That's really what I find to be the most fruitful.

The best career advice I ever received came from Mary, my longest mentor who I worked with for years back when I worked in retail. She was so impactful because when I was first very much results-driven and all about the number early on in my career, she reminded me that a business is just comprised of humans. It's the humans that make the business work, that make the brand work. When you're doing branding, you're looking at different personas and archetypes you want to attract, and the same thing is in reverse. The organization is comprised of values, and people make up those values, and they embody and live them, and culture is so important. She taught me to look at an organization as a group of people that are all driving towards one same goal, versus it being a business and all just being about numbers. The numbers are going to be the byproduct of how the organization is run and the people who run it. That was probably the best lesson, and it was a good lesson to learn early on when I was just hungry to impress my boss and hit my numbers and quotas. She showed me that you don't take that approach, you take the people-first approach.

I would say be curious. Ask for feedback. Immerse yourself in whatever you're doing, but leave room to learn something else. Because that something else that has nothing to do with your job will a lot of times end up coming back into the fold. Now, that something else could be a hobby, it could be something completely unrelated, it could be spending time with a completely different department, but there's always connection. We're all connected at a human level and a work level, so it's not always all about just your job and what's on your job description. It's about expanding yourself and looking elsewhere, and 10 out of 10 times, you will end up being glad that you did that. And remember, you are never at a point in your career where you don't need a mentor.

My biggest challenge right now is with AI, from a learner enablement perspective, making sure that we stay in the driver's seat. I think it's a challenge that a lot of different departments are feeling, but from an educational standpoint, everyone's having a different experience with AI. From an enablement perspective, I'm thinking about how do we centralize the information, how do we make sure that everyone's getting the most out of it, and then how are we using it internally and externally with our clients. We need to make sure that it's still viewed as a tool, but not necessarily what's driving the decisions. We make the decisions, and then we leverage AI as a tool to help us move smarter. Sometimes faster, but it's not always better to go faster. We need to be smarter, more efficient, and always keep the end user top of mind.

Integrity, transparency, and love. You have to do it with love. And I know that's not a standard corporate thing, but you've got to do it with love. That is how you show up, how you give feedback, how you interact with your colleagues, how you approach the work. Do it with love. You have to.