Taleah Donahue

I contribute my success to honestly my personal drive, just always wanting, my questioning of like why and what else is out there. That has always been one of my passions. And obviously my family too. I feel like a lot of people always say that, but truthfully, my parents and then my grandmother making sacrifices, seeing people like that in my family kind of do those things really just makes me push myself even more every day, because they did so much, why stop there? It's kind of how I always see things. I'm trying to build a legacy too within my family.

The best career advice I’ve ever received is to lead with empathy, because understanding people—clients, colleagues, and audiences—is key to building meaningful connections and driving real impact.

Definitely volunteering, getting hands-on, trying to find a mentor in the career path that you want to go into, and actually taking the 5 hours every month to try to meet up with them and doing check-ins. Reading, reading books is the most important thing too. I mean, you can get so much from YouTube and all that, but there's so much lost in the text, and there's so many great books out there. Design Your Life is a book that we're reading in my undergrad program right now, and it's really honestly a great book. I really feel like everybody should read it. Five Habits by Mel Robbins is a great writer too. Even volunteering if you're not old enough, so you can kind of get those soft skills. Just reaching out to organizations, even emailing them saying I really love what you do, how can I be involved? That simple email after meeting somebody, showing gratitude, or thank you for taking time out of your day to talk to me. You never know as a young female getting into these careers how far a thank you or just a follow-up will take you, because that opens so many doors. That's how I personally got into the career path that I fell into, was just sending Megan a message saying I really like what you're doing and thank you for the opportunity to work with your company. That turned into an internship, which turned into a job.

A lot of the big challenges are honestly just the use of social media and kind of this whole TikTok academy that a lot of people go to. You're sort of almost losing out on soft skills and actual in-person networking skills that you need. Mannerisms, manners in general too, proper etiquette. A lot of people are missing that these days, and the personal connections. Going to in-person communities, conferences, seminars, those types of things. People are just getting so caught up in the social media digital space that they are forgetting about the in-person interaction.

Definitely having that drive and empathy. Always trying to be empathetic. Having awareness of what's going on, and what are you doing as an employee, what are you giving the company, what is the company giving you. Trying to always make sense of what you are doing and how is that being impactful to where you want to go in your career. Respect goes a long, long, long way because you never know who's watching and who can be what one day, especially in smaller fields that you're in. You never know when you're going to keep talking to people. You never know who you're talking to or what connections that they have, so it's always mindful to treat everybody how you would want to be treated.