JENNA FISHER

>> Craig Gould: Jenna Fisher, thank you so much for being my guest on the podcast today. Jenna, you’re a CEO and CFO leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds, where you lead the firm’s global CFO practice and you’re the author of the best selling book To the Top, which challenges companies to close the gender gap in their C suites and their boards. Jenna, there’s so much, I want to talk to you about, but I like to start these conversations with one common question, and that is what are your recollections of your first job?

>> Jenna Fisher: Oh my gosh, that’s a, that’s a great question. I don’t think anybody has asked me that yet. my first job was working at the Baby Gap at the mall. And, it was the summer before I went off to college. And I mean, I guess my first job was probably being a babysitter, you know, but that, that sort of, you know, the cash business. Right. First job where I got, you know, a formal statement and, you know, had to file tax was Baby Gap at the mall. And I love the customer service aspect of it. I loved talking to customers as they’d come in. I loved helping them. The service element of it, no two days were the same. You constantly have different people coming in, whether it was grandparents buying gifts or parents with crying babies or children. M. The thing I did not love about it was that you had to, Nothing against the Gap. I loved Gap and still do, but you could only wear Gap clothing. And I am a, bit of a, a fashion hound. And so I did feel a little bit constrained that all of my clothing that I had to wear was Gap, but they do give you a nice employee discount. So I loaded up. but it was a fun, it was a fun first job and, you know, definitely humbling to have to be on your feet eight to ten hours a day. but I did enjoy the, the, the diversity of no 2 days being quite alike.

>> Craig Gould: Well, you know, I feel like I hear in there that you really loved the people aspect of it. And I feel like that maybe you can speak to this, but that seems like something that probably still kind of defines what you love about your current job.

>> Jenna Fisher: I think so, yeah. You know, it’s funny, when I, when I was in undergrad, I first thought I was going to go into academia. I love being a student. I love learning. And I thought, okay, I’m going to get my PhD. I’m going to be a professor. And then I realized at least the time and the dynamics may have changed, although, I don’t know. but at the time, you had to kind of be willing to move anywhere to get that tenure track job. And I love California and I knew I wanted to be in the Bay Area, and so I thought, hm, I’m not willing really to move anywhere. So I, I thought, let’s preserve some optionality. And I instead decided to pivot. And I went to law. And after law school, I joined Bain & Company. Was working as a management consultant. Love professional services. but it was there that I learned about the world of search. And I thought, wow, if I could combine my passion for client service with a real passion for people and human capital, wouldn’t that be great? And search really is the marriage or Venn diagram overlap of those two schools. And so I went back to business school to get my MBA. And I’ve been here at Russell Reynolds for almost 22 years. And I have to tell you, there has never been one day I haven’t loved. There has never been one day that has been like another. And yes, we help people, but we also, I think, help make companies better and improve the way the world is led, which is a really, maybe it sounds lofty, but I really do believe in it. And, it’s very rewarding.

>> Craig Gould: You spend, a great deal of your time focused on CFOs. I try to listen to thought leaders, and I keep hearing more and more thought leaders describe the role of a CEO, their job being effectively allocating assets. And that seems to me that that’s really predicated on the work of having a good cfo. Can you kind of talk about just how critical the role of CFO is these days.

>> Jenna Fisher: Absolutely. So I’ve been recruiting CFOs and board members for 20 years now. And I would say the demands placed on CFOs have never been greater. And at the same time, the supply, demand, misalignment in the market has never been more extreme. And what I mean by that is that there is so much demand for great financial acumen and talent. And, many of the CFOs have moved into broader roles, whether that’s COO, president, even CEO. Craig, if we were having this conversation 10 years ago, I would have told you that 11% of CEOs had been a CFO at some point in their past. Today, that stat is about twice that number. 22. One out of five CEOs have been a CFO at some point in their past. And I think that really points to the importance of the role of CFO is not only strategy setter, synthesizer of data, but also external and internal communicator. So CFOs are so often looked toward to be the storyteller to Wall street, to people inside the company, to perspective investors. And CEOs, of course, also have a big role to play in that. but many of them, especially in the world of technology, I sit in Silicon Valley, so a lot of my clients are tech companies. And a lot of those CEOs came up through product, through sales, engineering. And so they really rely on having their sidekick be their cfo, because they have a very compliment background and skill set. And, and so I do think the role of the CFO continues to expand. And interestingly, we’re seeing a diminution in the number of companies that have COO roles formally. But I think that’s largely because the role of the CFO has expanded. Maybe their, their title hasn’t changed, but they’re, they’re overseeing more and more parts of the company.

>> Craig Gould: How do you Advise boards and CEOs on grooming the right CFO talent?

>> Jenna Fisher: It’s a great question. And it’s one that’s become a little bit, I would say, trickier over the course of time, for a few reasons. One is there’s been a real, a very strong movement toward expertise. So if we think back 15 years ago, there were companies like GE that were famous for their financial management training program and other companies, too. Honeywell had it, Ford had it. I mean, lots of these, These big Fortune 100 kinds of companies were training grounds for finance talent. And finance was sort of the wheel that made the engine turn in the company. And a lot of those people were ultimately looked for to become the GMs, the CEOs of the future. That has been a less popular path in recent years. And instead, what I’ve seen a lot and what my colleagues have seen a lot, particularly at larger public companies, is the CFO saying, I want to have the best head of IR possible, I want to have the best treasurer possible, I want to have the best head of FP and a possible. Which is all great, it makes a lot of sense. And sure, why wouldn’t you want the best functional expert? But that does come at a cost. And the cost is that we used to see finance talent get groomed by moving around to different parts of the finance organization. So 10 years ago it could have been the case that you had an excellent divisional CFO or head of FP&A and you knew this person was destined to become a public company cfo. You’d say, oh, you know what? I’ve got an opening for the head of my investor relations role. I’m going to put that individual into that role as a growth opportunity, as a rotation for them to round themselves out. We’re seeing less and less of that now. At the same time, the big four accounting firms, which used to be huge feeders into CFOs, have also become less impactful in terms of the numbers of CFOs, of course. Still, sure, lots of CFOs have CPAs, but it’s only about 30% and we’re not seeing that clear path that we used to see a decade or two ago. And so I do think it becomes increasingly important for executive teams, CFOs, CEOs, heads of HR and sometimes even boards get involved in this, which is succession planning, thinking many years in advance. We used to do this and of course boards have done this for years for the CEO role. That’s part of their mandate, their charge to think about succession planning for the CEO role. But we’re seeing that trickle down into the CFO role as well to say, okay, who do we have? Let’s assess who we have inside the company. Who’s on the bench? How can we give them other exposure? What are their areas that might be gaps, what are their strengths? How do we round them out? And at the same time, who don’t we have? Who might we want to hire to bring into the organization to substantiate and buttress who we have? And ultimately who’s on our short list? If the CFO decides to, you Know, I would say win the lottery. I don’t think many CFOs actually play the lottery because they’re too good at math. But, you know, the proverbial bus hitting. I never like that analogy. It sounds too violent and terrible. But, you know, if the cfo, for whatever reason, decides to exit stage left, who’s ready now to take over for that person who might be ready six months from now, 12 months from now, if you were to have a very orderly and planful transition? And so we’re seeing more and more companies get really smart and thoughtful and planful around succession planning as a result of the culmination of all of these demographic and other factors.

>> Craig Gould: There’s been a book published in the last couple of weeks by Jake Tapper talking about the final days of the Biden presidency. And really, you know, one of the glaring things there is just how politically charged that secession plan, or lack thereof, was. I’ve heard some people talk about how in some companies, the CEO may want to try to maintain control longer than maybe people were planning, and it appears that they’re putting a secession plan in place, but maybe that CEO is kind of relegating the best candidates to lesser positions to kind of carve out more time. Not that you’ve seen that specifically, but can you kind of talk about how politically charged secession planning can be? M. Because maybe, maybe there are conflicting interests at play.

>> Jenna Fisher: Yeah, absolutely. I see this a lot again in the valley with founder CEOs, right? Because that’s the classic example of where the CEO, the company truly is their baby, their brainchild. It takes up so much of their emotional and physical and psychic energy. and often those folks may have pretty compelling, equity positions, in the stock, and so they therefore yield a lot of power. But again, you know, good, good governance would dictate that this is where a board really has its charge to represent the shareholders well, in thinking about what is the best current path for the company and the future go forward path, because as we see in all kinds of companies throughout their life cycle, sometimes who’s gotten you here won’t get you there. And that’s why we often see a demand for people who come from larger companies who might be able to arguably see around corners more readily than somebody who’s grown up with the business. and so I do think a lot of this comes to boards and having a great lead director, chairperson of the board, if that’s not the CEO, to really make sure they’re being very thoughtful years in advance. And one of the things that we look to, we do quite a bit of executive assessment work, on teams and management teams, and also prospective candidates, that we hire for companies. And one of the key things that we have found to be quite dispositive in success in the CEO role is something we call learning agility. And so when companies are thinking about who the right person is to lead the organization go forward, it’s this idea of how can you slot somebody into a situation that they really could not have prepared for before. I mean, Covid was, was a great example of that. Right? It tested lots of CEOs and other executives because it was kind of that black swan event that none of us had really prepared for. but we have lots of ways of testing that, both through referencing and also they’re putting them through some exercises to see. But I would argue the best way to do it if you have people in the organization is to give them additional roles and responsibilities. there are lots of great publicly available cases out there for where companies put different executives who reported into the CEO into roles they’d never held before. So perhaps it’s having the CFO run strategy, perhaps it’s, it’s swapping people’s roles entirely. and you know, obviously there, there’s risk in doing that. so you need to have a fulsome enough team around the C suite to really, you know, guard against downside. but it’s through that that you really can sort of test somebody’s mettle in terms of their learning agility to see who might really be best functioning as our next CEO. But certainly there’s a lot of political, charge that comes with that. But ultimately you have to, as the board members, think about what is best for the shareholders in the business.

>> Craig Gould: From the professional’s perspective. If I were a VP or an SVP of finance who wants to position themselves for a CFO role in say, 12, 24 months, 36 months, what should I be doing? How can I, set myself apart and make myself a viable candidate for a CFO role?

>> Jenna Fisher: Sure. three things come to mind. So one is that if you just look statistically, when we are recruiting a CFO into their first CFO role, which by the way, is the majority of CFOs. Now if you look at newly minted CFOs in the last 12 months, 72% of them in public companies are first timers. Some of them were internal promotes, but some of them were taken from the outside. So I guess the first thing to know is you’ve got a good shot. So if that’s a positive, the number one role that we take from is a divisional CFO role where you had P and L ownership. So about 2/3 of CFOs have been in that position or in that position today. So you know, that’s probably arguably the most attractive role. not to say it’s the only way up. the second most popular is head of FP and A. So thinking about functionally, where do you want to position yourself? That’s important. Two is exposure to IR. More and more of our clients are asking for CFOs who have exposure to the buy side, the sell side investors. It’s a test of not only, network, but it’s also a test of ability to communicate succinctly, persuasively, compellingly. and so having those skills I think are really important. If you can’t for whatever reason in your organization run ir, don’t despair. That doesn’t mean you can’t be the next CFO there. But I would say, make sure you’ve had great communications training, make sure you’re strong on those abilities and skills. And third, make sure you have the right connectivity to the board. Ultimately the board will get involved in the CEO decision. Boards are at their heart, risk mitigating entities and all things being equal, most of the time boards will say to me, we want somebody who’s done this before. And that makes perfect sense. All things being equal, things ever are truly, equal. and again, going back to the market realities we already discussed, there are a lot of reasons why that’s just not even going to be a possibility. And you know, I would argue that a first time CFO could have other advantages like that fire in the belly and the real willingness to, you know, have this be the make it or break it moment for his or her career. And so, and culturally that really aligns with some organizations. I will certainly have some organizations that will say to me, we’d love to have our first time cfo because that really fits with who we are as a company and an organization. But if you don’t know the board well, you haven’t presented to them a number of times, sometimes it’s going to be harder for you to get their seal of approval. So make sure working through your current cfo, working with your CEO, you’ve been indoctrinated a bit and given those opportunities, that will be imperative.

>> Craig Gould: You mentioned earlier Covid as the classic black Swan event. And I feel like Covid kind of kicks off the dialogue around your book to the top. Can you kind of talk about COVID as an inflection point for women in their pursuit for the C suite?

>> Jenna Fisher: Well, it was an inflation point for me to write the book because all of a sudden I had two hours in my day that I wasn’t commuting. So that, that was very nice to have the time to write the book in the first place. But Covid gave us many things, you know, and we keep learning in retrospect, I think, as we continue to reflect as a society on that time period. But certainly it was a moment in which what we thought made for great leaders really came into question in a. In a pretty public, way. I think historically, we often had an ideal as a society. You look at movies or books or television. What is a great leader? It’s somebody who’s to take the charge, who’s heroic, who’s bold, who’s really, you know, rallying the troops. It’s almost more of like a military militaristic kind of leader. And I also think we probably thought it’s, man, he’s tall. He’s, salt and pepper hair.

>> Craig Gould: You have an example in the book where you looked at a, former executive search respected leader, or you were pointed in the direction, hey, he writes great candidate letters. You should go research his candidate letters. And he talks about this tall, striking, salt and pepper haired, being a CEO right out of central casting. Right. 20 years later or whatever. It just smacks of unconscious bias.

>> Jenna Fisher: Absolutely. And we all have unconscious bias, and I think we need to be honest about that. I think I wrote about this in the book as well. During my writing of the book, I was getting on an airplane, to fly to see a client, and I was greeted at the aircraft door by a woman. I assumed that she was the flight attendant, and I sat down in my seat. And then, much to my surprise, she went into the cockpit and came on the PA system and she was the pilot. And I thought, oh, my goodness, here I am writing a book on gender inequality, and I am assuming that the woman’s a flight attendant and not the pilot. Right. So shame on me. I will never make that m mistake again. But it just goes to show that. Not to say I’m perfect, certainly, but, everybody has these biases. But I think what Covid did was it really demonstrated that whether it was on national levels with politics or other business leaders, that there was a way of leading that was necessitated in that moment, that was different. There was a way of leading that was more connected, it was quieter, it was sort of less from the front, more from the middle. And what we’ve come to see in our research that we’ve conducted here at Russell Reynolds and is that actually the real markers of a great leader are the ability to span and to be different, to show up differently depending upon the circumstance and nuance. It’s not just being didactic or binary in one way, but rather being able to have a fluidity to your leadership style. So it’s, yes, sometimes you do need to be sort of take the charge, take the hill. and other times you need to be more acquiescent to other people. sometimes you need to be more galvanizing, and sometimes you need to be more individualistic. and all of these things can be true within one person. But I think Covid really showed us in spades how women in particular, I think, really leaned into that quieter, softer, dare I say, form of leadership in a way that, frankly, we’ve had a lot of men who, subsequent to that, have said, help teach me how I can be that kind of leader. I want to learn those skills too. And obviously neither one is in any way biologically wired or correlated to DNA. These are all things that come from socialization. and in fact, if you look at. We have thousands and thousands of data points from our assessment data, and there actually are no statistically significant ways in which men and women differ, but we are certainly acculturated differently. There’s no doubt about that. and so I think we all need to lean into all the different ways and capacities we have for being great leaders, whether that’s. You’re a, woman or a man.

>> Craig Gould: Well, in the book, you emphasize the power of owning your personal narrative. Right. So what are the most common ways you’ve seen executive women undersell their stories, and how do you help them shift that perspective?

>> Jenna Fisher: You know, I think that for a long time, and this is understandable, women felt like they almost had to be like men to be successful because of this construct that we were just referring to. I, think we could all imagine women dressed in the 80s with that sort of tie and, you know, power suit on, their hair pulled back, because that was what they needed to do to fit in, because they were the only woman who ever was around the, the boardroom table. but I think that what we’ve come to see over the course of time is that people actually admire and relate much more to Authenticity. And one of the stories I shared in my book is a woman who I admire very much, Dame Vivian Hunt, who, at the time when I interviewed her, she was the vice chair of McKinsey in London. She’s now the chief innovation officer at UnitedHealthcare. And, she’s an amazing woman. Even the queen, of course, loved her. She’s a dame.

>> Craig Gould: I didn’t know that an American could earn a Dame title. I, And so it impresses me even more. I didn’t know that was even a possibility.

>> Jenna Fisher: I know she’s remarkable on many levels. She has an incredible backstory. and she’s brilliant and accomplished and wonderful human in every aspect of her life, professionally and personally. and she shared a story with me that when she was pretty young in her career, maybe 25, 26 at McKinsey, she. She, too, like many women, felt like, I have to show up a certain way. I’ve got to, you know, be very almost robotic and. And just do my job and do it well. And she did. And there came a point where she was getting some 360 feedback from her team. And when she went to read it, I mean, of course, it was filled with lots of accolades in terms of her technical prowess and the way in which she. She showed up and did her client work. But where she really paused and was taken aback was that she didn’t recognize at all how they described her interpersonally, because she realized that she had been putting on sort of a mask for her clients and colleagues because she didn’t really show them who she was. And she said, oh, my gosh. Like, they don’t really know anything about my life. They don’t know that I’m funny. They don’t know that I love sports. They don’t know that I was raised in this really interesting family where I believe her, her father was a minister. and she decided in that moment, I’m gonna let down my mask. I’m not gonna just be who I think people want me to be. I’m gonna be who I am. And if they don’t like it, then I think I’m good enough that I can go get a job somewhere else. but let’s see how it goes. And she just instantaneously started showing more and more of herself. And. And she really credits that moment with the inflection point as being when her career really took off. Because all of a sudden, people not only wanted to work with her because she was smart and capable, but they also wanted to work with her because she was a real human. And I think that’s what women, and frankly, men, because men have been the victims of the patriarchy as well in terms of not being able to be their full selves. but I think women in particular, have suffered from that because there’s just a lot more, a lot more criticisms that are, that women face in terms of how they have to show up, how they not have to show up. you know, people feel like it’s free reign to comment on, you know, what women wear or don’t wear or whatever. So, I would just remind women, and men to be your authentic self. I mean, obviously, within the bounds of propriety and, and what’s professional, of course. but I think, you know, when you, you can share a little bit of yourself and your life with people, people really will galvanize around you and really appreciate and respect you even more for the full complement of what you bring to the table.

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>> Craig Gould: Do you think that diversity in the C suite is a reflection of diversity in the boardroom? And how has the conversation around board diversity evolved?

>> Jenna Fisher: So, I think for many years there has been a lot of data that has proven that diverse boards and also diverse management teams yield better financial results for companies. And there are lots of reasons for that. I think a couple are one. Women, for example, for a lot of companies constitute two thirds of the consumers. So having the consumers of your product or service reflected in your employee base, your executive base, your board composition can be meaningful. I also think thinking more broadly about diversity, not just from a gender or even race perspective, but having differing points of view, will yield better outcomes. There was a great study done By a professor at Stanford a few years ago where she took two groups of students. One was a completely homogenous group of male. They were all the same race, I forget which race, but all the same engineers. And they had to solve a puzzle. It was a puzzle that didn’t actually have a discrete end, so they didn’t know whether they had actually solved it. But they came out of the hour together. They were asked two questions. How did you do? And how did it feel? And they said, we crushed it. And it was so fun. We had the best time. Same group added in a woman with a different racial profile, and she was an English major, not an engineer. Analogous puzzle. Hour later, they come out, ask the same two questions. They were like, I don’t think we did that well. And yet it actually wasn’t really that fun. We kind of argued, and it wasn’t the best time. It turns out that the heterogeneous group exceeded the puzzle’s expectations and the other group’s performance by over 50%. So again, it didn’t feel as good and warm and fuzzy because there was discord. But ultimately, having even just one voice that was a different perspective yielded a better outcome. And I think that that’s emblematic of what we’ve seen many research reports, show us. I think another really important reason that diversity matters in companies, and one of the reasons I wrote my book is that there is a little bit of see it to be it. And I think the younger generation cares deeply about that. And if you want, as a company to capture the best and the brightest, you need to have representation at the top. Because otherwise people will think, well, gosh, is it even possible for me to aspire to this year? Or maybe this company really doesn’t support, whether that’s women or parents or, you know, whatever the group is, you take your pick. and I think ultimately that does not inure to the success of the business financially. And so make no mistake about it, I, I, I am a capitalist. I like making money. I want companies to make money. I want the stock market to perform well. And I do not believe companies will do this out of some benevolency of purpose or goodness of their hearts. nor should they have to. They should make these decisions because it will inure to the long term and even sometimes short term benefit of the bottom line. And that’s the hard and fast reason why companies should do it.

>> Craig Gould: Your book is full of. I, mean, I feel like every couple of pages you’re giving us another Great example of a female leader that we can look to, and her story of how she’s had to make this climb fight for ground. But I think you’re right in terms of just professionally in the media, especially in that, fictional Hollywood media, how the head of corporations are portrayed. I feel like we never really see that strong female corporate leader. Right. Because, again, that’s not exactly what central casting has in mind. I’m pretty sure you mentioned Robin Washington in the book. And, you know, here’s somebody who was CFO of Gilead, been boards of Alphabet, Salesforce, Honeywell, co founder of Black Women on Boards. And just in the last three or four weeks, it was announced she is now the president of Salesforce, which. This is somebody you can point to, in terms of claiming new ground, right?

>> Jenna Fisher: Absolutely. Yes. And I. I have known Robin for, gosh, two decades. I recruited at a Gilead, and. And I think you’re absolutely right. All too often when we do see a woman leader projected, it’s, you know, it’s. It’s sort of a Devil Wears Prada kind of woman, as opposed to somebody who’s, much more inclusive. but Robyn is a wonderful, mentor and sponsor to so many. And I think one of the big takeaways that I had from my book is the importance of, yes, we need to have amazing women leaders like Robin and more of them, but there’s also a huge part that men have to play in this as well. And I think one of the really heartening things for me in writing the book and the feedback I’ve received is that so many men have come to me saying, hey, I want to help. I have a daughter, I have women on my team, I have a wife whose career I support. what can I do? And it’s actually incredibly important for men to serve as sponsors to women. And I don’t think there was one woman in my book who didn’t have a man who had been a sponsor to her along the way. lots of women will look for other women to be mentors and sponsors, and that’s great. I take nothing. I mean, that’s wonderful. but I do want to delineate between the two for a moment, if I may, which is a mentor, somebody who you admire, who you want to be like you see yourself as. And that’s great. I think everybody should have mentors. they’re aspirational, they’re role models. But actually, what’s much more impactful from a business professional perspective is having a sponsor and a Sponsor can be a man or a woman. but it’s somebody who’s going to be talking you up when you are not in the room. It’s somebody who’s going to say, hey, you know what? We have this, this challenge. I think that, that Mary would be a great person for us to ask to, to take on this as a, as a challenge. I think she’s ready for that promotion because of xyz and without those sponsors it’s really hard for anybody to succeed, especially women because women often fall into the trap of especially once they have children. They think, okay, and this, this makes sense. I’m going to focus on the two most important things in my life. I’m going to focus on my family and my job. And so I’m going to kick butt and work so hard in the office and then I’m going to rush home and I’m going to be the best parent I can be. And that seems to make sense. What falls by the wayside when, when women do that is all of the other conversations and the networking and the power of an extended network beyond the Four Walls company. And when women get to a certain point and they realize, I haven’t gotten asked to be on a board or I haven’t gotten as many calls from recruiters or gosh, I don’t really have much of a network beyond the people I work with. That’s why. And so one of the women I interviewed in my book, Jennifer Goldfarb, who is the founder of this, an online multi billion dollar beauty, ah, business called ipsy, which has been hugely successful, she instituted for herself what she called the once a month rule, which once a month she did something purely for her professional betterment. Whether that having lunch with a sponsor or going to an industry conference or going to an alumni event, doing something outside of her work, outside of her family that you know, yeah, maybe it meant she didn’t get to put her kids to bed that night or maybe it meant she had to get on a plane to go to a meeting. But she did something that extended her network and she has found that longitudinally over the course of time that has made a huge difference in her career.

>> Craig Gould: You know, I recently had a podcast. Tracey Newell, who had been CEO of Informatica, she recently wrote a book called hers for the Taking which covers a lot of the same ground. And one of the things that she suggested, was coming up with your own personal advisory board. And I know in your book you basically suggest the same thing, a personal board of directors. I guess my question is, how should somebody strategically go about curating these people for your personal board? And how formal does it need to be?

>> Jenna Fisher: Yeah, I think it doesn’t need to be super formal. In fact, I think, especially if you’re asking people who are pretty busy and oversubscribed, if you’re overly formal, that could be even awkward. and, you know, a lot of the luminary people are already besieged with opportunities to do that. So I would say, first of all, think about people who are maybe three to five years ahead of you. It doesn’t need to be your CEO. It maybe shouldn’t be your CEO. It could be somebody who is just a click above where you are in your career, and you want to learn about that, how to get to that next inflection point. when I do board search, one of the first things that we do here at Russell Reynolds is we do a board composition matrix, and we think about all the different ways in which board members can bring differing perspectives. So whether that’s somebody who’s run a P and L, somebody who understands digital disruption, somebody understands growth, somebody who understands different types of international dynamism. Think about what’s important to your career over the next, you know, whether that’s three, five, 10 years, what are the skills that you hope to achieve, what are the ways in which you hope to grow, and then look for people that you think exemplify one or two of those elements. Nobody’s going to be a hundred percent, and that’s okay. You can. It’s just like you have friends right over, you have a friend you go like to play tennis with, and you have a friend you like to go have dinner with, right? They don’t have to be the same person. And so that’s the advantage of having a board. So think about different people who have different kinds of experiences. You can draw upon different ages and stages and don’t feel like you need to convene them, as a formal board. Just think about once a month, I want to have a lunch with one of them and pick their brain on a topic that is germane to something that they’ve experienced, where they can maybe lend a hand to you, but also know that there should be reciprocity in that. What can you do to help inform their careers? What can you do to help them? Even though you may be more junior to them? Are there ways in which you can also help them develop as leaders? through introducing them to people in your network, through helping them think about, you know, Maybe they’ve had less exposure to AI or more nascent forms of technology that you may be more on the bleeding edge of. So think about ways to pay it back as you’re helping to pay it forward.

>> Craig Gould: Well, Jen, I have, I have one last question. Is there one story from to the top that you think about frequently in your own life and why does it stay with you? You.

>> Jenna Fisher: Gosh, you know, the one that, that comes to mind when you ask the question is, When I was early in my career, I was given the advice by a very well intentioned dear senior partner at the firm who said, gosh, you know, you’re, you’re crushing it. I was the top associate at the firm that year. And he said, can I give you a piece of advice? I said, please. You know, I, I love feedback. It’s a gift. And, and he said, you know, I love the color pink. If, ah, you were to come in my office, you would see I have pink everywhere. I like to wear pink. I have pink nails. I, it just makes me happy. And I think it’s cheerful and fun and whimsical. And and he said, you know, I would just tone down the pink a little bit. You know, we, we in client service, service, all kinds of people, and we need to appeal, we need to be a bit of a chameleon. So, you know, I just say wear more navy, more, more white, more black, you know, just be a little bit more neutral. And you know, I really, I. Somebody I respect and still respect a great, great deal. And I really ruminated on it and thought about it and I said, you know, I really appreciate that, but I don’t think I’m going to take that advice. And here’s why. Pink brings me joy. It is part of who I am. And if I have to spend even 2% of my mental energy trying to be somebody I’m not, then this probably isn’t the right place for me and I should go figure out where it is because I want to use 100% of my energy to do the best job I can for our clients and to be the best colleague I can. And so I didn’t take his advice. If anything, I ratcheted up the pig. and then several years later, I had been one of the top performing partners in our firm and he came back to my office and he congratulated me. And he said, you know, he said, I think I owe you an apology. And I said, why is that? And he said, I think I was wrong about the pink, it seems like it’s working just fine for you. And we, you know, we had a good laugh about it. and you know, pink happens to be my thing. You know, everybody can have his or her own thing, but for me it just stands for authenticity and for being who you are. If you are, you know, a 12 year old boy and you want to wear pink and be a kindergarten teacher and that’s your calling in life, then do that. You know, each of us has one life to live. And you know, I think what every parent wants for their child is for them to achieve, and exceed what their God given potential is in the world. And I think we all need to give that grace and power to ourselves to sort of say what’s part of our special sauce. How can we bring that to the world in, in an authentic, kind way? And, and so that is something that, you know, if I’m, if I’m ever at a crossroads of what should I do, how should I think about it? I do listen to my gut. I think most of us who have been successful have listened to our gut and it usually doesn’t steer you wrong, does not to say you don’t want to, you know, get other people’s opinions. Of course you do, because we’re not right about 100% of the things. But when something really resonates and feels right, I think you’ve got to listen to that inner voice.

>> Craig Gould: Jenna, this has been a real joy and I want to make sure that if people want to follow you, how’s the best way to keep track? I mean, is it LinkedIn, is it Instagram? Obviously they need to go to Amazon and buy it to the top today. Right. But how could somebody keep track and engage with you?

>> Jenna Fisher: oh, thanks so much, Craig. The best way is to follow me on LinkedIn. I do a weekly post about some sort of musing. Usually it’s related to, to the top, or some sort of career advice that I’ve, I’ve heard or, thought about. and so I’m happy to engage with folks there and just really appreciate you inviting me to be a part of your podcast. Thank you so much.

>> Craig Gould: My pleasure and my honor. Thank you so much.