Stephanie Aure

I would attribute my success to being very mindful about aligning who I am with what people see - making sure what you put out and what you are have to be aligned. As an African American woman, I was taught from a very early age to be conscious of this alignment. If I had to use quick words, I would say strength, resilience, and longevity. I also believe in the power of reinventing yourself. I know this might sound silly, but I think Madonna is one of the smartest examples of this - she's reinvented herself countless times and was still performing at Coachella in her 60s. The people who have staying power are the ones who reinvent themselves, and right now, I'm just in a reinventing mood myself.

The best career advice I've received is to try everything and always apply for the position that is above the position that you are at. It's like dressing for the position you want - if you want to be a CEO one day, then you need to act the part and have those conversations of being a CEO. You need to be very logical about it and think about how things are going to affect the bottom dollar. This applies to life in general too - if you want to be a wife and you're single and looking, then act the part of how you want to see yourself as a wife.

The biggest value that fits both my personal and business life is the golden rule - treat everybody the way that you would want to be treated. A lot of people say it, but they don't actually live it, and that's sad to me. People can say about me that Stephanie's gonna treat me like how she wants to be treated. Now, I'm not gonna always be perfect about it, and sometimes I'll give you things back how you give it to me, but I really try hard to live that way. The other important value is to be as truthful as you possibly can. In HR, I feel like too many professionals try to fluff the stuff instead of being very logical and logistic. If you're not gonna hire somebody, you need to say, 'Hey, I don't think that there is a position here for you. However, I want to give you some other opportunities outside of what I can provide you, and hey, just so you know, feedback, here's what I saw.' I can guarantee you that other people are going to see that too, so you might want to change that. I don't know how many times I've had people kind of get a little irritated with some of the things that I say, and then they come back and go, 'You know what, you're kind of actually right. It was on me, I just was defensive, and I just couldn't... I wasn't ready to hear that.'