Toni:

If you’ve ever wondered whether having an unconventional background makes you less qualified to lead in tech, or you felt the weight of being the only one in the room, this episode is going to speak directly to you. Today I’m joined by Lisa Ferrant-Walsh. She is an SVP of engineering at Native Instruments, and someone who has navigated massive pivots, male-dominated rooms, high-stakes mergers, senior-level leisure transitions, and all of that with a level of clarity, humility, and courage that I know is going to inspire you today you want to know what’s coming up, here’s why you should tune in. 

This is about an episode that tells you why leading isn’t always about taking the obvious path. It’s about building confidence even when you’re the least traditional person in the room. And it’s about developing the clarity and conviction to make big decisions and big leaps in your career. Lisa is going to help us break down how to leave behind a nonlinear background, in her case music to engineering to executive leadership, but why unconventional paths become powerful differentiators.

She’s going to talk about the moment that she had to shift from being an IC to leading people, including the mindset, the delegation, the trust issues that come with that leap, and what she learned leading multiple mergers and acquisitions, not the financial or operational side, but the human side, the culture, the relationships, the communication and guiding teams through uncertainty. And of course, we’re going to talk about her experience of stepping into an acting CTO role, what she would do differently, how decision-making changes at that executive level.

And of course, we’re talk about her acting as a CTO, what she would do differently if she did that again, what she learned along the way, and the decision-making changes that she needed to make to operate at that level. One of my favourite threads throughout this whole conversation was her perspective on confidence, courage, trust issues, even when her path was unconventional. Lisa’s environment has and is intimidating, and the stakes are incredibly high and yet she is focused on confidence, courage and trust. So if you’re navigating a leadership leap, managing technical teams, guiding an organization through change or simply craving more clarity and confidence in your career, you will get so much out of this. So let’s dive on in

Welcome to the show Lisa, thank you for joining us today.

Lisa:

Thank you for having me, Toni

Why Unconventional Career Paths Are an Asset in Tech Leadership

Toni:

Well, let’s start where I love to start with everybody. I want to hear about your journey. In particular, you started out studying music, which while it’s one of my passions, it’s not an obvious route for most of us into engineering. You now lead engineering at Native Instruments. So walk us through, how did you transfer over? How did you make that transition into engineering? And what’s the edge that maybe being a music major has given you?

Lisa:

Yeah. So first of all, I love that you’re also a musician. We have that in common and as a core passion. When I was a kid, music was a part of my life from when I was literally five years old. So pretty much my entire life. Although I’ve also been a STEM kid and my dad’s a physicist and a mathematician. And so it was kind of part of our upbringing. And I decided to study music in college and with the backing of my parents and it’s uncommon for parents to actually support you to pursue an arts degree. So I was very fortunate that way. I was a piano performer major and it was a very focused program where I literally sat in front of a piano four hours a day practicing in addition to kind of taking all my courses.

I kind of missed exercising that other side of my brain. So on the side, I decided to start taking some other classes and I took a few math classes and I took my first programming class. And when I took that class, something clicked for me because it was literally just, you know, very, very compatible with the way that my brain worked. So I took another class and I took another class. And even though I graduated with a music degree, I did end up with a, you know, kind of close to a minor in computer science. You know, this was many, many years ago now. And a lot of my friends were music education majors and were going to, you know, launch into their careers as music educators. And that wasn’t really for me. It just wasn’t the path that I had chosen. I, junior year in college, I said, what am I going to do with this degree? I considered things like arts management.

And then I said, you know what, let me lean into this computer science thing. And just on a whim, I applied to a few schools. I ended up getting into a school. it was, it happened to be a very theoretical department, computer science department, and I was lucky to get in. But I found that I wasn’t the only student with my background. And so I think there was kind of an interest in this department to kind of find people with music backgrounds like mine and kind of find that association between music and computer science and math, et cetera. And it was quite a test for me. I know we all put ourselves in these situations throughout our lives where we want to see what we’re capable of. So this probably to this day was still one of the hardest things I’ve done.

And I’d like to say I was a minority in three dimensions in this department. So first of all, clearly I didn’t have a technical or an engineering undergraduate degree. Second of all, I was a woman in a male dominated department. And then third of all, the school that I went to happened to attract a lot of students from India and China. I was an American, so I was actually also a minority in my own department and was competing against some pretty top-notch students that came from these other countries. And it was not easy. The other thing that I found was, you know, after studying music, where a lot of it has to do with your learning music, your memorizing, and your learning about music history, and you’re kind of working on those types of skills, it’s very different. It’s a different way of thinking, but also studying. And I had to kind of retrain my brain about how I learned concepts and how I was going to master this. And I was always a very, very good student. And the first semester of my first year in graduate school, I was failing all my classes. I had never been in this situation before. And that was the wake-up call for me to really work hard. So I persevered, I finished my degree and effectively I kind of turned it upside down where music was the primary thing and then the math and the computer science was the hobby.

I flipped it around and music became the, you know, kind of a hobby. you know, coincidentally, that’s also when I started singing. So I was always an instrumentalist up to that point. And I joined the choir again as a way to kind of keep music in my schedule and in my life when I was studying computer science. And I’ve been singing ever since, you know, decades, decades later. And it’s a very big part of my social life as well as my kind of musical life that I kind of keep alive. So that’s how I ended up here.

So at this point in my career, I probably should keep track of this, but I probably have over 35 years of experience working in technology. I’ve worked for a whole variety of different types of industries. I started out more as an individual contributor, so I was a developer, but I found that I kind of kept gravitating towards roles that were around technical leadership where I were leading other people not just the people leadership, but also the technical leadership and kind of making the decisions and the architectural decisions. so, as I was working through my career, I decided to also, as you can tell, I don’t go deep. Some people go deep, they get the PhD and they specialize in something. I tend to go broad. So now I have computer science degree. I’m working in a variety of different domains and I decided to get an MBA also to graduate school again and I got an MBA. I debated, I focus on more of a technical MBA or again a general MBA? And I decided to again go broad because who knows? It’s all about kind of opening up other opportunities and other possibilities for yourself. And I even considered entrepreneurship and a few different things. So by the time I finished the MBA that coincidentally was around the time that an opportunity opened up at one of the companies I was working for at the time and I transitioned over into management. And I’ve been in management ever since. was a line manager and kind of a release manager to get products out the door. And then eventually now I’ve kind of worked my way up to being a VP. Where I’m working right now, I think if I look back on my favorite work experiences, they were when I worked for companies that were in creative spaces. So specifically where we kind of helped, we were building products to help people make art effectively. And the first one was Avid Technology where they’re very much was, were in the film industry and make video editing equipment and as well as audio and broadcast news and products for those domains. And I really loved working for that company. Like I could point at a film and say, oh, people used software that I wrote to, you know, do post-production.

Toni:

Do you think that the music background has given you an edge here in working with creative customers of the products you work on?

Lisa:

Yeah, so Native Instruments, for those of your listeners who don’t know, is squarely in the music industry right now. And we make a variety of products for music creators, including kind of the early part of the stage, as well as the mixing and the mastering, which is more the audio production part of the stage. And it’s the type of company that attracts people.

I would say maybe, I’m guessing, 80 % of the people that work at Native Instruments are musicians. They use our products. They either are singer-songwriters or they’re DJs or they kind of do freelance audio production on the side. So there’s kind of a community aspect of it and a cultural aspect of it. So me being a musician has definitely kind of made me feel like I kind of relate more to the community as well as to be able to serve our customers thinking back a little bit on this question and I think there’s so many skills that you learn when you’re a musician. First of all, know, it’s a very, it’s obviously a creative domain, so the way you make decisions and problem solve, you know, it’s you kind of build up the skills to really kind of, instead of constraining your thinking, to really broaden your thinking and come up with creative ideas. When you perform, you’re putting yourself out there, you know, and you’re making yourself vulnerable, you’re taking risks, if you’re learning a piece of music, you know, this is probably, I think, one of the strongest things, which is you have a goal and it takes quite a while to really master a piece of music. having a goal that’s a little bit beyond your reach and, you know, having to work kind of incrementally towards that goal where you’re the one that’s really accountable for achieving that goal and then ultimately doing the performance. And then the last thing I thought of was, know, typically as a musician, very rarely do you perform on your own. You’re always performing with others, whether you’re in a band, whether you’re in an orchestra or choir. And so there’s definitely kind of the collaborative aspect of together, you’re making music and producing something. And, you know, again, you have kind of a common outcome that you’re going towards. So, so I think there were a lot of just general skills. Yeah.

The Mindset Shift from IC to Engineering Leader

Toni:

Do you think, yeah, do think that specific thing has made you a stronger leader? Because I mean, my work as an executive coach is often taking somebody who’s more often not already a leader, but they’ve come to me because they’re struggling and often, and if you’re listening to this, maybe this resonates with you, often you’re still operating as an IC, but suddenly you’re people leading and you think you’re good at it, but there’s something not quite right. And I think often it’s that shift from IC to people and some people do it better than others, it’s why you have technical leaders as well as people leaders and I do think the company needs both. Do you think that collaborative nurturing earlier in your life has helped you be an intrinsically better people leader or was it just who you are or?

Lisa:

I think definitely. mean, the idea of so one thing I always say to people who want to go on that path from an IC to being a manager or even going up the manager chain or being a technical leader, like you said, is that you have to do a mindset shift. So you go from being accountable and responsible for your own work to being accountable and responsible for also for the work of others and for the output of a team that has to work together.

It’s very uncomfortable for some people to go through that transition because you lose control effectively and you have to trust others. And also, you you have to let people fail. You can’t go in and rescue them and catch all the balls that are dropping and do something for them in order. Your job is to help those people develop their skills. And so you have to they’re going to do things different than you would have done them. You have to let them, you know, do things differently. And, you know, where you’re like,

I see the clear path, I see the clear path and you’re like, okay, I’ll let you go down and then maybe I’ll kind of like you said, coach you or I think I use the word shepherd a lot. You’re kind of shepherding people, right? So I think as a musician, know, kind of being part of a bigger, you know, a bigger outcome that you’re all trying to achieve together, you have to be playing off of each other and, you know, something goes wrong, you all have to you know, kind of reorient yourselves like as a musician in real time right there, you know, if you’re performing. So, yeah.

Toni:

Leading Through Mergers and Acquisitions — The Human Side of M&A

There’s that collaborative moment of realignment is such a skill. You think about an orchestra realigning, and I think actually that is such a great analogy for how we can be a nimble team, but we don’t think of it that way. On that note, let’s shift gears. I really want to talk to you about mergers and acquisitions. It’s one of the reasons I really wanted you on the show, because you’ve led multiple mergers and acquisitions. Tell me a little bit about what have you learned navigating them?

Preparation, for example, do you make so that you can shift the culture as it is, the merger and acquisition goes along? We talk a lot about the preparation, the due diligence, all that kind of I don’t think people talk enough about what happens with the people during an M&A. So let’s talk about that. What do you do? What have you learned over the years during these moments?

Lisa:

Yeah. Yeah. So so just to be clear. I have some experience with the pre-merger experience, but not as much, much more the post-merger experience. So this is a very, I think, relevant question. So, you know, first of all, there’s different types of ways that companies come together. You know, one, and, you know, over the course of my career and even just at my time between iZotope and Native Instruments over the last 10 years, I’ve done all three of these things. So one is you acquire a small company you’re really acquiring the IP. We had a case where we acquired a company called Exponential Audio.

And the owner and the founder of the company, Michael Karnes, he’s like a legendary figure in reverb, in the reverb kind of audio world. And he wanted to find somebody, a company that would really take his technology and his products and take care of them and kind of take them into their next chapter. And he was going to step away and retire. So that’s one very specific type of acquisition where. We had to build enough trust with him and pick his brain and then be able to kind of transition so we could carry on his legacy for him. And that was all about really getting to know him, spending a lot of time with him, designating people on my team who could deeply learn this technology and then kind of carry it forward. Another type of might be where you’re acquiring a company and maybe they still want to stay somewhat detached. So you have to find the right ways for the people to kind of attached to the mothership where it makes sense, where they may benefit from that, but then still give them their space where it makes sense because we don’t want to slow them down. They know what they’re doing. in that case, there’s a lot of judgment in there about really understanding kind of what their path is into the future and how they operate, and then understanding where we can add benefit or not and where we should attach the teams. And then the third is more the deep integration. And this is what we’re going through right now, especially, I had mentioned I started at isotope 10 years ago and about four and a half years ago now we were Isotope as well as Native Instruments, which is in Berlin, Germany, were acquired by a private equity firm. So we’ve merged together very, very tightly. And this was very different for a whole variety of reasons. we had to figure out, first of all, what was that investment thesis, right? So why did our parent company buy both of us? Why do we complement each other? Are we going to enhance each other in some ways?

to work together to build the next big thing. So first, you really want to make sure that you kind of understand what that investment thesis was, you know, as you’re going into that. Yeah.

Toni:

I love that, yeah. Just to interrupt you there, I don’t think most people take the time to understand that. And ultimately, if you’re going to be a great leader, you have to understand the business case for whatever’s happening. If you can slow down and properly understand the business case for, in this case, acquiring two companies and making it into one, rather than just a typical &A activity, it is different you will do a better job of delivering on what is needed. But slow down, is my advice to people in this situation, listening, yeah.

Lisa:

Well, you want to look for those little hanging fruits so you can kind of jump on those quickly. I mean, this also speaks back to just my kind of style of leadership, which is, you know. It’s not just about respecting people, but it’s about treating everybody like they’re a stakeholder in the company, right? And I know how I would want to be treated. And so I try to treat other people this way. And that is, you you want to set up the condition so everybody understands the why. You know, why are you doing this and can relate to that? And they’re a stakeholder of the company that really is trying to help us move forward. So they want to feel attached to the vision of the company. And so they need to understand it.

it needs to be clear, which is part of the role of the leaders and the executive team. And then, you know, we have to set up the conditions so they, you know, they can kind of help realize the vision. So, so that’s, you know, that’s part of it is that’s maybe where to start is making sure everybody kind of understands this, this context of why we came together. In the case of Native Instruments, think part of the investment thesis was when you think of the whole music production workflow from creation all the way through to kind of, you know, finally mastering and then distributing your music, it seemed like the products that were now in this combined portfolio were complementing each other. And so we were filling in as much of that music production workflow as possible. So that was the first thing. But there’s also a lot of technology that each of the companies had that could be shared and repurposed in other products. So you want to look again as a leader of a technology team or an engineering team, you want to look for those opportunities of like what’s our core competence and what is our kind of inventory of pieces of technology that can be repurposed across which has efficiencies but also kind of just you know kind of up levels that all the products across the board.

Toni:

And also, yeah, I I love the way you’re talking about opportunities here because I do think one of the things that we as individuals need to leverage better during an M &A, and I say this because a conversation I was having this morning with a client who’s currently going through an acquisition, about to be acquired, and she’s like, I’m going to not be very visible. There’s a real concern in her mind about visibility after the acquisition. And so we’re talking about opportunities for the business that she can anticipate, she can create, she can interact with because if you can see opportunities and make them happen, you immediately increase your visibility and your worth, your worthiness, worthiness is not the right word, the right word, but how useful you are to the company post acquisition. Would you agree with that? Is that part of your operating procedure in these situations?

Lisa:

Yeah, especially I assume she’s a more senior leader and you know, some people say that if you’re doing your job right, you’re obsolete, right? Because you’re enabling the people under you, especially to do the operational stuff. So the other advantage of that is that it frees up your time so you can be doing more of the strategic thinking, right? And, you know, where do we go? Where do we go in the future? And then taking account of everything that we have available now that we’re this combined company and then helping to the path into the future. think that’s theThat’s the way I look at it anyway, if that answers the question.

Confidence, Visibility, and Trust for Women in Senior Tech Roles

Toni:

Yeah, that comment you made about a lot of people view. If you’re doing your job right, you become obsolete. I would, I can see where it’s coming from. I’d add a caveat onto that, which is it’s not that you’re obsolete, it’s that you can operate the next level. You should always be aiming to get your team to do the job that you are doing so that you can operate that next level because that’s when you can deliver more. Ultimately, CEOs aren’t obsolete, they’re still needed. But what you’re always aiming for is that and that ties into this situation. I think as women in tech, it’s sometimes hard for us to maintain our visibility. We’re more likely to be the quiet one in the room, the more likely to be the one second guessing ourselves rather than raising our hand and saying, have we thought about X? More likely to be overworking and over delivering and not getting recognized for it. So how can we position ourselves to make sure that during these transitions, which are moments of huge opportunity, huge risk, how can we as women make sure that we, one, deliver for ourselves and two, deliver for the company?

Lisa:

Yeah. yeah. That’s, that’s, you know, it’s such a nuanced question. Yeah, right. I think, you know, I think back of myself and the, know, even some of the research that’s been done, you know, they talk about women that apply for jobs, right? And women make sure that they’ve checked up every single thing, otherwise they’re not going to apply. Where men are like, oh yeah, I have 50 % of the things I’m going to apply anyway, right? And so this kind of speaks back to this idea of I think in general, we’re more comfortable shining the light on the team and saying, and it’s the team that did it and not really advocating for ourselves. And it just feels uncomfortable. And that’s just kind of the way, I think, maybe the way we’re built. And again, I hate to generalize like that because I know clearly there are men who are just saying, right, of course, always.

Toni:

There’s exceptions to every rule. But equally, what I want people to hear is if this resonates with you, maybe pay attention to it and go, am I holding myself up because I tend to focus on the team too much. It’s even simple things like saying I a little bit more as you get, we’re taught when we first become a leader, say we, we, we, we, we this, we that, we the other. There comes a point where you have to start saying I And it’s the collective I, you’re a team, didn’t it? But you were the one that was held accountable and responsible and therefore you also get some kudos. And I think it’s really uncomfortable for so many, it was myself included by the way. Did you experience that? Have you gone through it? I don’t think it’s a…

Lisa:

It’s very uncomfortable. Yes. I still do. I still do. I mean, the other thing, I’m much more comfortable shining the light on other people than I am shining the light on myself. It’s because you feel like you’re going into sales mode and that’s just not a natural thing for me right now, right? And the other thing is obviously if there are other women that are kind of in your same circle to support each other that way. So, you know, to shine the light on that person and then, you know, they can do it in return to you. So if you’re not comfortable doing it yourself, you can do it for the other women and then just kind of build, you know, build that capability.

Toni:

I love that, shining lights on each other. I mean, I think that is a huge success metric. I do think, I used to disagree with this and I now don’t. I think we do all need to learn how to shine the light for ourselves a little bit because ultimately, if you’ve reached that upper level as an executive, your peers might be women, but they don’t know what you know and therefore you have to say I because you are the only one at that table who knows what you know by definition as an executive And so we do all have to learn that skill at some point. But it’s something I’m just very passionate about. 

Acting CTO Lessons — Executive Decision-Making at a New Level

But talking of executives, I have one final question before we move on to the quick fire run. Let’s talk about your time as acting CTO. You let me know this. You told me you were aware of an acting CTO. You didn’t continue. Tell me a little bit about what went on there. What would you do differently if you stepped into that role again? What did you learn about yourself? What surprised you?

Lisa:

So this the situation was that We were in between, you know, CEOs, our current one had left and we were looking for a new one. And so they asked me to step in on an intern basis. And this was one of those opportunities that you just don’t turn down, right? And it put me in a little bit of a risk because if it didn’t work out, then what do I do? Right? I have to kind of find my place again. I was very lucky. And this is maybe kind of one piece of advice because I had a senior manager under me who she was my success.

And I had already had, you she was already in that position and, you know, we had kind of developed her together to be in that position. So I could immediately hand over my old job to her and then take this opportunity. So that was the first thing. I entered it not even thinking, do I want this job permanently? Because I’ve, you know, I’ve been kind of thinking maybe that’s longer term in my career path. But I just said, why would I pass this up? Because I have an opportunity to do the role, but not commit to doing the role. So I get to wear the hat without committing to do it. So it was me trying it out as well as them trying me out, but they were also actively interviewing other people. And ultimately, so just first of all, to tell the end of the story first, I didn’t get chosen, which was fine. You know, I was actually kind of okay with that.

they ended up hiring somebody. And I think the main reason was because they had somebody who had a little bit more experience dealing with boards and dealing with private equity and stuff that, and I was just kind of developing that. But in looking back, there were definitely a couple key learnings and a lot of things kind of in retrospect, know, hindsight, as they say, is 2020 that I would do differently. One is the communication thing. And I’m sure this is, I’m not saying something that people haven’t heard before, you really, the people at the executive team are working on a completely different flight level. And the level of detail, the level of information, they don’t need that. They want you to kind of get to the point, give them data-driven, but just enough information.

And with the confidence that you have the conviction behind decisions and you’ve evaluated options and things like that. So that’s one thing. It’s the tune into your audience. Know who you’re talking to and then what they need and then make sure that you’re satisfying what they need. And then the second learning, which is probably the biggest learning for me was around decision making. There was one thing in particular, it was a pretty big decision that was handed to me to make. That was an impactful thing to the company. And I’m kind of an analytical person and I like to evaluate different options. And I took too long to make the decision. so it was, you so you have to be very, very comfortable with making fast decisions with incomplete information, relying on your judgment and the people around you that you trust, and then you have to have conviction and hold on to that, you know, about that decision, even if it’s wrong. So you have to take ownership of it and be accountable for the decision. So hopefully it goes well. If it doesn’t, you also have to be accountable and own up for that. And again, that’s an uncomfortable thing. For me, it’s just uncomfortable to, you know, making small decisions. do that every day. You know, I’m always kind of helping people and making decisions, but really, really impactful decisions at that flight level. takes a little time to, and that was probably my biggest learning is that’s a skill I would hone in on. As far as the communication and the kind of the other smaller learnings, I would say I probably would have invested in one-on-one getting to know every single person on the team. I knew a few people, but like literally personally and understanding where they were coming from. And then finding one or two of them that could be sounding boards. And I could use to kind of test some of these skills that I knew I was working on before presenting in front of the broader group. But, you know, just in general relationship building is not just to be on an executive team. mean, back to the topic of merging. That’s the first thing I did, right? Was I reached out as many of the other leaders at my level at the other companies and get to know them and understand what they did and what their styles were and what their challenges were, and then build those relationships. And then you have this network of people that you can kind of rely on through the company as you’re trying to guide your team through the change.

Toni:

Yeah, I mean, those are such great points. think relationships, and I say this as a complete introvert, relationships still are everything, right? They are what opens doors, they are what makes success. As you say, it’s understanding where they’re coming from, what makes them tick. Ultimately, I don’t think there are that many people, there are some, there aren’t that many people who are out there to be nasty. I think a lot of what we review as poor behaviour is misunderstandings. If you can take the time to understand the other people in the room. you will go further faster. You might be the only one doing that and that’s very frustrating. But ultimately you will do more with more ease because you took the time to understand them. So I love that. We do need to move on to the quick fly around. Are you ready for this? Okay, my favourite question. Every time I do a guest interview, I love this question. What is the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Lisa:

Yeah. So I was thinking about this and where I landed was stay in your lane. So that was the piece of advice, which was in this. Yeah. And it was it was the a very specific case where for a couple of years at one of the companies I worked for, I tried being a program manager and I was a program manager. that had experience being an engineer as well as an engineering manager. And I thought that was an asset that I was bringing this to my role as a program manager. And instead, I kind of got sideways glances, like, why are you asking these questions and staying in lane? so I could have stayed in my lane and stopped asking those questions. But instead, what I ended up doing was realizing that this wasn’t the right company or the right culture for me. I left. And I did something different.

Toni:

I’m glad you did. I’m glad you lived. is, the staying in your lane thing is so toxic. mean, there are, it tells you something interesting, which is, you know, maybe relationships, but it just, it’s the wrong way of saying, hey, we don’t agree with the way you’re going here. To counter that, what is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Lisa:

So again, in this case, there’s a lot because I have a lot of people that I’ve learned from. And I think maybe the one that bubbled to the top was don’t take yourself too seriously.

So this helps to knock you, sometimes people need to get knocked down off their pedestal. But also just a reminder to not just check in with yourself, but with the perspective. And when people ask questions like, what’s the worst that can happen? Or that’s kind of another version of that, which is, hey, keep it into context and make sure your perspective is realistic and balanced and grounded.

Toni:

Well, this has been an amazing interview, so where can we connect with you, find out more about you, stalk you basically online, where can we find you online, Lisa?

Lisa:

I think that probably the most accurate place is very boring, which is just LinkedIn for now. it was it was really delightful. I love this podcast and I love that you’re doing this. Thank you for having me. Yeah.

Toni:

thank you, thank you. I will make sure that Lisa’s details are in the show notes. So if you want to connect with Lisa on LinkedIn, go to the show notes. If you want to find out more about Native Instruments, go to the show notes, go and find out what they’re doing. It’s very cool that this is a music technology company. I think you’re the first person from a music tech company that I’ve interviewed, despite my love of music, which is kind of like, how’s that happened? Have we got to this point? Any final thoughts you want to leave with us with today, Lisa?

Lisa:

I guess, you know, thinking of myself as a woman in senior leadership, just be authentic and be yourself, trust your instincts. You know, it’s kind of, it’s a tough world out there in general and especially kind of in this domain and Just trust yourself and build your support system and your network and support people and lean on people to support you.

Toni:

What a beautiful way to wrap this up, trust yourself. I we all need to trust ourselves a lot more than we do. I talked a lot about trusting others, but it’s a good reminder to trust ourselves. It builds beautifully on also don’t take yourself too seriously. I think there is an element of those two things go hand in hand. So I really want to just take a moment here to remind everybody who’s been listening that it’s okay to shine a light on yourself as much as with others. But also one of the key things I’m taking away from this conversation is If you are going all the way up, those relationships are everything, getting to know everybody in the room. It isn’t just how you communicate, although as we’ve highlighted, that is important, the confidence, the conviction. It is knowing what to say to those people because you know them. It’s focusing on that right level of detail, which Lisa, it sounds like she learned the hard way. And by the way, I think that’s a very common thing. I think all of us make that mistake the first time we’re in that senior room. We give too much detail, so.

Learn from what Lisa’s shared with you today. And I look forward to hearing from some of you about your &A experiences. This is a topic that I know is incredibly important right now. I feel like the world is just like one big &A at the moment. And so if any of you are listening and thinking, gosh, I’d love to share my experience. I’d love for you to reach out. I’d love for you to let me know what topics do you want us to be talking about in this podcast. If we can help you all do this better, we are going to leave the world a better place. So thank you, Lisa, for joining us today. Thank you for sharing your weather wisdom.

and I look forward to hearing from all of you about where you are all going next. Bye for now.