From the corner office to the pages of a children’s book, learn how to redefine your personal brand and leadership by following your purpose. Host Kate Byrne welcomes Julie Keshmiry, the accomplished author of Princess Shmincess and former Chief of Staff for tech and finance giants like Intel, Visa, and Microsoft. Julie shares her inspiring journey of transitioning from a corporate executive to an author, driven by her passion to help girls and women reimagine their futures and recognize their uniqueness as their greatest superpower. Tune in as she reveals her secrets to operational excellence, leading with influence over authority, and how she navigates a meaningful life by integrating her corporate success, family, and values.
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Princess Shmincess And Your Unique Superpower: Author And Corporate Executive Julie Keshmiry On Rewriting The Corporate Fairy Tale
I love full circle life moments and I sit down with Julie Keshmiry and I enjoy exactly that and you will too for a number of different reasons. Julie and I first met way back when in the agency world in San Francisco, and we went on to break what had long been a historic only male fishing trip up in Alaska. She and two other of her colleagues went and we broke that glass ceiling and we went on to learn a lot about leadership and definitely hydration management. Little pro tip from Julie, don’t drink three cans of Diet Coke before boating the boat with no bathroom.
Since those days, Julie’s career has been a masterclass in evolution. From agency strategist to Senior Executive Chief of Staff focusing on operational excellence for products such as Intel and Visa to board leader, and now she is the author of Princess Shmincess where she rewrites the rules of the fairytale and maybe corporate life too.
In this episode, we talk about the architecture of influence, how uniqueness is your superpower, so don’t worry about being different. Own it. Remember that line from Princess Diaries? Why would you want to fit in when you were born to stand out? Very relevant here. The middle space of leadership and what it really means to hold things together in organizations that are large and layered and endlessly political.
We also dig a bit into the power of saying no, the myth of having it all and why redefining strength might just start with, frankly, a little laughter, because as Julie reminds us, confidence isn’t something you’re handed. It’s built, broken, and rebuilt again through saying yes, failing and finding your way back to yourself and helping others do the same. Don’t forget to stay to the end. I got a lot of KB Takeaways with this one, and let me know what else you’d like to read.
Breaking The Glass Fishing Ceiling: Leadership Lessons From Alaska
Are you in for a treat? We are joined by Julie Keshmiry, who had a corporate life where she was so many things, but primarily, most recently, the Chief of Staff, focusing on operational excellence at such household names as Visa, Microsoft, Intel to name a few, but has just recently authored a book, which I’m super excited to talk about, called Princess Shmincess. Before we get into that, we’re going to dig deep on just how we actually got to where we are. Julie, welcome.
I’m so excited to be here. It’s lovely to see you again.
Yes, me too. The thing that I love about this is Julie and I will share, in full disclosure, we go way back, twenty-plus years. You wouldn’t know it looking at us. We were from way back when you could say glass ceiling breakers, pioneers, all sorts of things. In this case, it brings us back to a bit of a fish story. At the time, I was working with Business Week, and the boys had always, for the longest time, gone up to do a fishing trip up in Alaska. Girls had never been invited. Me being me said, “No, that’s wrong.” I convinced them to allow us and me to bring people up to Alaska. Julie was one of those people. Julie, talk about the trip a little bit.
Yeah, kudos to you, Kate, for breaking the glass fishing ceiling and busting through.
Busted that glass boat floor.
This is where I think where we solidified our friendship. I think about it. We had so much fun, silliness but we actually, there’s some things we learned there. I think about the lessons. We walked in and they gave us our own guide and coach. It was the girls’ boat and the guy’s boat. We didn’t assume that we knew what we were doing. You could say it was a leadership lesson. We walked in going, “We don’t know anything about fishing.” We just listened. We listened to the expert, and he guided us, and we actually did really well. We caught a ton of fish on that trip.
There’s a lesson to take as the value of coming into new situations when you’re not an expert and listening. The other thing we learned is, I will never forget, we were in this little boat and we asked our guide and we were like, “Where do we go to the bathroom?” He was like, “Bathroom? You just hang over the side there.” The lesson there was when he says, “Would you like another drink?” The right answer is, “No, we would not.”
Sometimes the greatest value in a new situation comes from not being the expert, but being willing to listen. Share on X“No, we would not. Thank you very much.” It’s so true. The truth of the matter is that we were the first ones to catch the large salmon limit. We caught the largest fish. What would happen was I could tell that our guide first felt, “I got the short straw. I got the chick boat.” Soon, he came to realize, “No, I think I got the winning boat.” We would stop. We would cheer each other on. It was such an example of just communal excitement about each other doing well. Whereas everybody else on the other boy boats were busy toiling away, competing higher, forcing, driving, pushing. We just had an amazing time as a result. Thank you very much. We left victorious.
It turns out pulling in a 40-pound fish is hard. You do need someone cheering for you when you’re going.
The Big Shift: Influencing In Agency Vs. Fortune 100 Corporate Culture
Yeah, you do. Just because they turn get theirs first doesn’t mean yours isn’t next is the other thing. From there, my friend, you do have a varied experience. You’ve navigated the agency world then gone corporate client side, as we in the advertising business say, going inside Intel and Visa. What surprised you about that difference between the agency worlds and the Fortune 100 worlds and influencing those two bodies?
The agency world, there’s a distinct difference that I noticed. In the agency world, you’re working with your clients, and in this case, mine was media. We were planning and buying media. We were working with clients who were very specific in media. Planning and buying. You might go up the marketing chain and up to the CMO, but you had a very vertical stack that you were influencing and you were a step removed.
There’s benefit in that because you see things and you have different perspective that you bring to the table, but you’re not involved in their politics and the some of the operational things that they have going on. You then go client side and your sphere of influence becomes, instead of a vertical stack, it becomes far more horizontal.
I was in marketing, but any job mostly in big companies, you’re working with so many departments, we’re working with the product team, the legal team, the sourcing team, all sorts of the teams within marketing. Each of those come to the table with their own, hopefully generally aligned, but maybe slightly different objectives, legit objectives and vision that they have. The influence is far more horizontal. I think it just requires a lot more skills around understanding the culture and understanding what they want as compared to what you want and how to find common ground.
It goes back to listening, first and foremost. Of all the agency skills that you had, what do you think was the most transferable? That’s the thing. There’s so many of these skills and people think, “If I go into this industry versus this industry, I don’t know how to do that.” I always feel like, yeah, you actually do. To your point, there are skills and they just are called different things. Would you agree?
I would. One of the skills in marketing is understanding your audience understand. There’s a variety of ways to do that. Part of learning from research and listening and those are whether you’re a marketer or you’re a salesperson and your audience is who you’re selling to, that is very much a real skill across any type of industry.
Influence is different from decision-making. Share on XYou make the transfer, you make the shift, the transition from the vertical to the breadth, from the depth of the breadth. Is that squishy? Is there a weird floaty middle space? If so, I know people have often as well as you said yourself, you have described yourself as a connector. Not necessarily always the top decision maker, but the one that really holds the space and holds things together. How do you lead or what are the things that you lean the most upon to be effective in that in-between space? Especially when people are not necessarily telling you, “Great job.”
When you say in-between space, that is the space, what you’re talking about, that chief of staff roles live in. Meaning our influence is not because it’s who reports to us and who do we manage. In fact, chief of staff, sometimes they don’t have any reports or small teams, if at all. You have to lead in a different way. It is the chief of staff influence comes from the fact that you understand your principles, in my case, most recently, Visa, the principal’s CMO. I’m working for the CMO.
You understand their vision, you understand what they’re trying to accomplish. You’re putting operational structure in place to deliver on that. You’re removing friction on the teams that might hurt those things. People are coming to you not because you manage a certain function or a certain division. They’re coming to you because if you know the business and you know what they care about really well, you can help them and you can support them and you can help them navigate through things.
To me, that’s the definition of leadership, though. I remember having this conversation with my daughter. Leadership is as if you have influence because many young people think, “I’m not the team captain.” I remember when my daughter wrote her college essay, she’s in college now, and she wasn’t the team captain. She didn’t found the club. What she did, though, was she was the one that the team came to when they had relationship things that they needed to resolve. She was the mediator. She had a leadership type of role that she didn’t recognize until we sat down and talked about it and said, “No, you are playing a role here. It’s not formal, but it exists.”
That’s a really great example. Wouldn’t you also say that now that we have so many more team hives, I guess I would say, that things are so much more project based, there’s more room for all of those influencers that then really results in many leaders of influence on a team?
Yeah. Influence is obviously different than decision making. Decision making, you want someone who can be that one to whether they’re an authoritative, like this is the way we’re going to do it because I have a vision, or whether they’re consensus building. Decision making is one thing, but influence is something that many people should understand the value you have and the expertise you bring. Usually that comes with influence.
Building Professional Credibility: Trust And Personal Brand Integrity
You find yourself working with these brands that every time you mention, “Yeah, I work at Intel, I work at Visa, I work at Microsoft.” Everyone knows those brands. To a degree, in their respective industries and sectors, they’ve shaped the way we think about technology and trust, and we can count on them. How did working inside those cultures actually change the way you view your own personal brand and professional credibility? Did it have an impact?
Yeah, there was a link, and you’re right, trust is really important for these companies. When you think about Intel, Intel invented the whole Intel Inside program. What that meant was, as a consumer, when you bought a laptop, if you saw a little sticker on there, you could have confidence that this technology was going to be fast, it was going to be reliable, it would work.
On the Visa side, trust is super important because we don’t even think about the fact that you use your Visa card and it’s going to work. They’re the railways for the transactions, trillions of transactions. Visa has this thing where they focus on five nines. The failure rate of a Visa transaction is they want it to be within the range of 0.99999. That is how reliable that network is.
Trust from a marketer’s perspective, we know trust plays a role in the outcomes you want. What do marketers want? They want things like, “I want you to prefer my brand. I want you to sometimes love my brand,” and ultimately leading to sales. Those are the things that marketers want. Trust is a component of that. I think if you transfer that over to your personal brand, your personal brand is not just what you say on linkedin. It’s not just how you talk about yourself.
It is also the trust you built. What do people say about you when you’re not in the room? What they say about you, you’ve built that up through your reputation, through earning their trust, through demonstrating your excellence. That part of your brand is just as important as what you say about yourself.
The Core 3: Integrity, Collaboration, And Transformation
I think that’s the part so many people oddly forget about, or you can get a little bit lazy about it, especially if you’re burnt out or you’re tired or you’re frustrated, or there are shifts that take place. What are some things that people could do or pay attention to or is there like a self-brand and audit that you would suggest people take a look at or even think about? To you, what are the 2 or 3 most important things when you’re thinking of up your personal brand?
I encourage people to think about the values that they hold as a leader in our broader definition of a leader. I have come up with mine. I read your episode with Suzy, and she was talking about her approach to find the things that you’re really good about and the things that you value. There’s a lot of resources out there to be able to find these things.
Integrity is important to me. I think that helps to build trust. That comes from like the first boss I had who showed up every day consistently. He did what he said he was going to do. That meant a lot to me just as my first job in the corporate world. Integrity is important. Collaboration is important. I just am a believer of that. For a lot of people, “Collaboration is a good thing. Everyone loves collaboration.” If you truly believe in that, you have to devote the time that it takes to actually collaborate. I think you will get to better outcomes with collaboration. I care a lot about transformation. That’s the thing that gets me excited.
These are my leadership principles and I use the integrity filter for a lot of decisions, like what’s right for the business, but what’s right for the people too. I would encourage people to find. There are so many great resources and tools out there. If you don’t know what to talk about for your values, use those resources. Suzy Welch is one, but there’s lots of other ones too.
You will not have risk-taking that can lead to innovation without psychological safety. Share on XYeah, that’s such a great point because I think so often, we kick that one can down. We think, “Eventually, I’ll get around to that,” or, “I’ll deal with that when I’m ready to make a make a shift in my career.” Whereas if you get it at the gate, it also really impacts trust, feelings of safety, which then, to your point with transformation, those two things are really imperative for innovation.
Yes, the secret.
There is no wrong. There is no fear. It’s just fun and play. I’m not going to say play, but it’s fun because you just feel, “I’m going to give this a try. I’m going to test this out. I’m going to see what ends up happening and I know that if it happens, yay. If it doesn’t, yay. All those are good learnings to have and worthwhile for everybody.
You will not have risk taking that can lead to innovation without psychological safety.
The ‘Princess’ Book: Finding Your Superpower In Uniqueness
Speaking of safety, courage and bravery, let’s look at our new type of heroin. That would be Princess Shmincess. Julie, talk a little bit about this. I love the whole premise. I know you were previously on the boards of Girls Leadership. Tell me the story of Princess Shmincess because I love that you went on to write this book. It launched. Readers, be sure to go and get it. It’s a fabulous holiday gift. I’m just saying it’s an any day gift, but talk a little bit about that. What inspired you to write it?
Yes. I actually wrote it many years ago, and it was at a time, my daughter was six. We were reading a lot of bedtime stories together, and there was a lot of stories about the damsel in distress. There was a lot of what I would say is traditional princess stories. I was like, “It is okay. If you are a girly girl and you love the pink poofy dress, that is awesome, but where are the stories for the girls who maybe that’s not their thing?” At the time, I couldn’t find it anywhere. I thought I’ll write the story that I wanted to read to my daughter.
The story is about, and the reason you can tell with a name like Princess Shmincess, Princess Alexandria von Shmincess, but she really wants to go by Alex and she’s just not your typical character. She snorts when she laughs and she wants to play drums in a rock and roll band. She doesn’t want to practice proper posture. It is a traditional story that there’s a dragon involved. She meets and they learn together that happiness is about following your heart, just not following others’ expectations.
Princess Shmincess
You can get it on Amazon, so go check it out. What do you hope parents and kids actually take away from the book?
It’s the stories that we tell kids matter, whether it’s the stories they’re seeing in the media, film and social media. To me, books are stories we tell kids and there’s always values and lessons that are embedded in there. For kids, what I hope is that they think what makes me different? It’s not just okay, but it actually can be magical. It could be a superpower. For parents and adults, I hope they think, “I want to encourage these differences in my kids.” It’s really for anyone who just believes happiness is following your heart and not others’ expectations.
I think for so many women also, it’s remembering that very thing, that your uniqueness is your superpower. Speak up. That’s why we are trying so hard to get so many more folks comfortable in standing up or sharing their differing point of view, not apologizing for it. It doesn’t mean you have to be belligerent about it.
Seriously, I don’t know about you, but I found so often, if I ask the question or I point out something that feels off to me that doesn’t fit, someone else will say, “I’m so glad you asked that.” It just takes one of us and we all have that ability to be that person in the room to raise the question and get the conversation started and then eventually shift it for generations to come.
I think as a society, a lot of things, whether it’s your race or your sexual orientation, that, at one time, you maybe thought wasn’t valued and wasn’t a superpower, and you realize, “Actually, it is a big part of who I am and what I offer.”
Advice For Aspiring Authors: The Side Passion Project & Self-Publishing
I know that there are a few folks who are thinking about, “I’ve long had a passion for writing a book.” What was the biggest lesson you learned during the publishing process? Do you have any advice for professionals who want to take on this as a side passion project?
Yeah, I do. I wrote it when my daughter was six. She’s 21 now. What happened? Fifteen years of life, career, I set it aside. The publishing industry was really different fifteen years ago. At that time, if you were writing a children’s book, you would submit your manuscript to the big publishing houses and hope and wait.
What’s changed now is, in this case, time was on my side a little bit because now I think 60% 70% of books published are self-published. That’s the model that I went. I self-published with support, meaning I founded a group that offered some cohort support and some guidance around editing and things like that, but it was still published and I still own the creative control of this.
The model changed and so did media and marketing, because I did a lot of marketing in social media. The social media existed, but not to the same degree that I could do that. Those things were to my advantage for the waiting. I also would say if you’ve got a side passion project, you can’t wait forever. It can be done. Part of the way that I did this was you’ve got to think about like doing it with integrity and making sure using your company, you got that main job, not using your company’s time, your company’s resources. You want to preserve your own integrity and keep your company’s trust.
Happiness is about following your heart, not following others’ expectations. Share on XYou’re doing this on nights or weekends. The way I did it was, it was like Sundays for me. Sundays, I’m going to devote some time consistently to be able to do this. That’s how it was like. How do you navigate that, still having the family and the career, but make some progress on something you love and something you’re passionate about. That was just methodically how I approached it.
Through that though, the support group, were they the ones who helped you, for instance, find an illustrator?
It was still a lot of self-driven activity, but just a little bit of resources around, “These are some websites where we have some trusted illustrators and here’s a legal contract.” At the time, that was great. By the way, things have even changed dramatically because if you asked me a year ago, I’d be like, “That is so amazing, thank you.” Now I’d probably like, “I might be able to just use some AI and figure out the ways.” It’s changed versus a year ago. I think I would now be much more comfortable doing a lot of things with AI partners that I use.
The Three T’s: What Women Need To Know Before Joining A Board
I still think there are ways that AI can be used for good and this would be one of them. I’m a little broken, a beating drum on that front. One area that I want to talk a bit about and touch upon with you is boards, because I know a lot of Women Advancing readers are either on boards or trying to be on boards. Talk a little bit about that because they can be both powerful and great. They can also be political. What do you wish more women knew about before stepping into those rooms?
The first thing is, I wish more women went for the opportunity and were given the opportunity because if I round numbers, I think 30% of women are on US public boards. It gets a little higher when you go nonprofit, then you go from the 30% to in the 40%. You can debate about is a nonprofit a good way to segue into a public board. I think it is. I’m the camp that I do believe it is. I have spent my six years on a nonprofit board. Beyond the just go for it, there are some things to know, specifically, that’s the experience I can speak to, on the nonprofit board. Some of this is not so much different than just entering a team.
The first thing of showing up and having confidence. You’re there for a reason. You’ve been selected for a reason. You should contribute. You can contribute and feel comfortable contributing on day one based on what you bring to the table. It’s no different. Whether that’s a new role, a new meeting you’ve been in, or whether it’s a board, but there’s some specifics with nonprofits.
Showing up with confidence matters — you're there for a reason, you were chosen for a reason, so contribute. Share on XIt’s understanding the team dynamics and understanding, again, any new team. Understanding the dynamics around you. Nonprofits often have founders who are super passionate about this space and knowing what that means. There’s sometimes a blurry line between a small nonprofit staff and the board in what they do. That line is very clear on public boards, but it can get a little blurry in a nonprofit board. It’s understanding that dynamics to help to navigate those types of things.
The last thing is that sometimes with a nonprofit, they’re smaller and they’re strapped research. They’re looking for what we say is the three t’s. They’re looking for your time volunteering, they’re looking for your treasure. It is about donations or driving donations and connecting, and they’re looking for your talent. Those are all the areas that they’re looking for.
One of the things in your talent is you are often the ones are saying, , asking some of the hard questions. This is what the role of a public or a nonprofit board is. Is your plan operationally sound? Let’s take a look at the financial, the P&L and what’s projected.” You’ve got to go in and you got to be asking the tough questions. Those are just things I learned along the way that I didn’t necessarily know going into it.
For those who are on the receiving end of the board’s advice and suggestions, just remember, because having been on a few myself, is that when the board members are actually giving direct and strong recommendations with insights, it’s with good intent. It’s with a positive outcome in mind. They’re not trying to be overly controlling. There are some who may, but for the most part, I’ve witnessed a few folks who end up getting quite defensive or seeing it as, “You’re criticizing me. You don’t think you’re going to be looking to replace me as ED.” That’s not that’s not often the case. In some case, it might be, but really what it is, is you brought them on. I would urge everyone to listen to them.
Yeah, it’s a good counterbalance to the comments that I just made.
Defining ‘Enough’: Finding Integration Between Career And Family
Yeah, absolutely. All right. You have done so much and you’ve done it all, super duper. How do you define enough? This culture that always says, “More,” how do you know and how are you confident in saying, “In my mind, karmic contract complete. I’m going to go do this now, I don’t need to climb and scale another building?” I’ll leave it at that.
I think I’m still figuring that out. It’s a balance. I know what my definition is. This is not everyone’s definition because earlier in my career, I was going for the more. What’s the next title? What’s the next salary bump? There is nothing wrong with the hustle and going for the more. As life progressed, and particularly after the pandemic, to me, what is enough? Enough is when, yes, I can contribute some transformation in a Fortune 100 company, but can I also change the narrative of girls and women out there? Can I hold that day job down and also be emotionally present for my family? For me, enough is about the integration of all those things so that I’m not compromising my values.
I do not personally want to be the person who is so successful in one area, that it’s at the expense of the other things. That is important for me, the integration. For other,s it might be like, “I got this track.” Those are the ones that really change the world. I support that as a route too. For me, it’s about making sure that my life feels integrated in the things that I want to do. It’s not compromising the values I hold, whether it’s about my wellness or my family, or the things that I care about, in addition to a corporate job that I have.
Gen Z, Confidence, And The Unexpected Value Of Failure
That leads into this next piece that I want to talk a little bit about. It’s something that I find that I am coming face to face with as my daughters are now in the workforce and they’re actually stepping into the next phase of work. They’ve done one, great. Now they’re ready to go to this next level. They will come to me for advice, which I’m very honored. I’m realizing things have changed a bit since early days when I was their age, to your point, wanting to go up. What should we be telling and sharing with girls and their parents to know a little bit more about just confidence corporate life and what it is now? We learned the hard way. Is there any way other than that? I’d like to say no, it’s all going to be easy peasy, but it isn’t always.
First of all, I do want to say kudos to Gen Z coming in. I love the values they’re coming in with and how they think about work and balance and mental health. I am super happy.
Weddings. My daughter got married. It’s so true. It never dawned on me. Liza’s like, “Yeah, mom, your crew, your group, you never questioned.” I thought, “I’m a huge questioner,” but she was right. I did it on some of these things.
I think they got a lot of things right. To your specific confidence question for me, I was like, “I think I know the formula. I’ve cracked the code for me.” It’s a joke that it is a formula, but for me it’s experience and failure. That’s what’s given me confidence over time. The failure part was really unexpected. The experience part is like saying yes, trying more things. The more experience I found I had, the more I felt confident to speak up and talk about that.
I remember one time in my career, I was working, doing domestic media planning and buying at an agency for Microsoft. My peer did worked with all the 40 countries in our network that did it. I wanted to learn international and he wanted to learn domestic. We had not done that. We architected a job swap, and somehow we got our boss to say yes to it, so we did that. That was an amazing experience, to be able to learn to build round out skills there.
That was on the experience part. That unexpected side was the value of failure because at the start of my career, I was like, “Everything must be perfect. My T’s must be crossed. I cannot fail.” You then learn some of the biggest lessons in life and work are the things that didn’t go right or the things that failed. The value of that also gives you confidence.
Some of the biggest lessons in life and work come from what doesn’t go right — those failures hold value and can build confidence. Share on XAs we talked about, the value of that as a manager to allow your team to fail so that they have psychological safety, they can therefore also be in an environment comfortable to take risks. I never really thought about that as something that is could have positive parts and to not worry about, to to take more risks and know that sometimes it’s not going to work out.
No, it’s so true. For me, early day career on the revenue side in sales, I can remember thinking, “I’ve got to hit my number. If I don’t hit my number, I’m going to get fired.” That resulted where I flubbed a little bit on a projection on a forecast. You get to a point where you can’t do that anymore. I caught up and I said, “I’m going to be off by $1 million.” It was like, “What?” I still got to keep my job. I’ll tell you what, I never did that again. I was always number one scoring it ahead. It’s really true learning that you can stumble and you’ll pick yourself back up.
The Through-Line: Operational Transformation & Advocacy For Women/Children
Life goes on. Guess what? People still love you and you’re still you at the end of the day because you’re more than that. Connector, I love thinking through lines. You’ve got agency, you’ve got your tech giant, you’ve got your author board. What’s the through line? What’s the one thing for all of those different chapters that is just you?
I think about almost two through lines. I think about from a job perspective, no matter what role I’ve had and what I’ve done, when you think about your capabilities and what gives you energy, my through line has always been operational transformation in marketing. No matter what I’ve had, it’s all in that category. It took me a little bit to understand.
That’s your thing. That’s your jam.
Outside of work also, I’ve done a variety of things. Yes, I’ve been on a board and my husband and I taught, we are adoptive parents and we taught international adoption to prospective parents. All of the things that we’ve done, the through line is advocacy for a world of greater opportunity and equity for women and children. I noticed afterwards, the thread.
What is interesting for me is those things have been outside my job and I wonder in my life, can I bring those lines together? What about the world where actually that is part of the company I work at or the job that I have? That’s still an opportunity for me. We’ll see if maybe that can happen one day. If not, I’m totally fine with the balance and having them both there, but maybe one day, the job that I have will be in the passion area that I care about.
I’ve got to tell you, I think that the way the world is right now needs those two things to collide, the sooner the better. I think it’s on its way. The beautiful thing is now you’ve got space that’ll allow this vacuum to be filled by that just in terms of positivity and all of these other things. That’ll be magnetic. I have no doubt in my mind that there’ll be more than a few opportunities coming your way and you’ll have your pick. The other beauty is now that you are where you are both as a professional, but also really just as a person, comprehensive, amazing person, is that I bet you’ll have the bravery to go, “I get to pick who I want to work with right now.”
That was something that shifted with me. I know not everybody has that. Here’s what you do have. To Julie’s point, if your values are integrity, then you get to pick, “I want to work with somebody who has integrity.” There are a lot of people. For every person that doesn’t have it, there are people that do it may require a little bit of longer wait, but just everyone deserves the right to be choosy. The world is much more benefited by you being that way too.
Thank you, Kate. I appreciate what you say and I appreciate what you’re doing. You’re not just breaking glass fishing ceilings, you’re breaking other glass ceilings and you’re bringing people along with you and supporting women and how they advance. Thank you for all the work you’re doing.
It’s my pleasure. I love every minute of it. There are so many amazing people doing amazing things. The truth is, we all have uniqueness. In Princess Shmincess, Alex would say that is all of our superpower. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your younger self?
I think the advice I would give my younger self is that confidence advice. It took some time. To understand what you bring to the table, that you speak up in those meetings, I had the same feeling you had, which is, “I have that question, but no, everybody must know the answer.” No, you have that question. There are so many other people who don’t. Having the confidence to say yes to experiences. Your failures are not going to define you. You’ll grow from them. Speak up. It’s that. That took just a little bit of time and I do think this younger generation has a lot of that.
Your failures are not going to define you; you'll grow from them. Share on XI do too, especially how they’re choosing either to stay or leave jobs. I think some generations or folks in certain generations that take that as they’re lazy, they’re spoiled, they’re this, they’re that. It’s like, are they, or are they just realizing, “This is not values aligned,” or, “It’s not a fit for me. I’m not a fit for it. Let’s end it now so that both of us can go on to a world where we’re better fits for each other.” Julie, thank you. Thank you so much for just your many pearls. I’m going to say seriously, readers, don’t walk, run. Seriously, check out Princess Shmincess. It’s really a great story and it’s a great reminder not only for our daughters, but for ourselves and for those of us who have moms, it’s never too late. I’m just saying for grandma and great grandma too.
Thank you, Kate. I appreciate it so much.
Thanks. Until next time.
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Key Takeaways & Final Thoughts: Uniqueness Is Your Superpower
Julie is honestly one of my favorites I knew you when stories. The thing that I love about Julie is she is really true to living those values and she just embodies them. It’s one of those things where don’t you love reconnecting with someone. It could be 20 years, 10 years, 5 years, and it feels like just yesterday? That’s who she is. That’s because she’s so undeniably her, which makes sense to me that one of my key takeaways is your uniqueness is your superpower.
Don’t try to blend in. Own it. Own that, which then means owning your voice, owning that seat at the table. Contribute from day one, whether it’s inside a boardroom, whether it’s in a new job, you were there for a reason, you take it and make sure that you share your wisdom because there’s a reason why you’re there and not doing so, everybody loses on that. Yes, sure, you, but so does the company that you keep.
I love the notion that leadership is, it’s about influence and sure we know that. Which is different from decision making and we all have different spheres of influence. That means oftentimes, knowing when to listen and knowing when to hand the mic to those around us and help bring them up and therefore be a mentor or a sponsor speaking for folks when they’re no longer in the room.
Know your personal brand inside out. Live those values. There’s no getting away from that. Finally, I love Julie’s recipe, shall you say, or formula, in her words, for confidence, which is experience in saying yes, plus failing and learning from that equals confidence. Bring it, baby. I fear nothing. As such, I become this magnet and also, just an incredibly person who brings about transformation wherever I go. Innovation because I stand to lose nothing because I always know I’m going to learn from whatever happens and I’m not afraid. With that, I look forward to our next conversation. Do run out to Amazon or a bookstore and look for Princess Shmincess. You won’t regret it. Until next time.
Important Links
- Julie Keshmiry
- Princess Shmincess
- Reinvention At Any Age: 3X NYT Best Selling Award Winning Author And NYU Stern Professor And Initiative Director, Suzy Welch On Becoming You
About Julie Keshmiry
After coming to the realization that her first career choice, Monkey Trainer, had limited opportunities, Julie set her course on a career in marketing. Julie has spent 20+ years as a marketing executive driving transformation and overseeing global marketing programs for brands such as Visa, Intel, Microsoft, Schwab and Oracle.
She’s been awarded a Cannes Gold Media Lion and named “Internationalist of the Year” for reshaping the future of marketing.
She recently became a bestselling author with her children’s book, Princess Shmincess. Born from bedtime story fatigue with traditional, damsel-in-distress princess tales, she created Alex—a drum-playing, adventure-seeking princess who follows her heart rather than royal rules.
Julie has championed opportunity and equality for women and children as Board Chair for Girls Leadership, teaching International Adoption classes, and serving as an Evangelist for Free the Children.
Julie lives in Redwood City with her husband. They love cheering for their son in football and track & field, visiting their daughter at college, cooking for friends, and traveling. And she still loves monkeys.