"I was often the youngest person in the room and the only woman...I'm now really comfortable with it. I didn't used to be when I was younger because I was trying to figure out, do I try to act like them? Now I'm confident, and I just embrace it." What Tara McRae now embraces is her uniqueness, and she wants other women to do the same. Clarks' chief marketing & digital officer advises women to have confidence in being themselves, something she wishes she had been told early on in her career. In this episode of Brand Insider: BTS, Tara …

"I'm Brazilian, as I said, but I'm also lesbian, and I came from a poor family here, so, in my case, my vision [of] innovation is having the courage to, I don't know, not stopping at the first no. So just keep going and keep going and believing in your dreams." Gabriela Rodrigues certainly kept going. Early on in her career she encountered a lot of nos trying to get her first job in advertising, but undeterred, she persisted to become the VP of Impact at Brazilian ad agency SOKO. In this episode of Brand Insider: BTS, Gabriela shares, that …

"It really forced me to grow up quickly, but it was one of the toughest times of my life to ever leave, I never left home before...but it pushed me to grow quickly. It pushed me to become independent quickly. It pushed me to adapt quickly to an entirely new country, an entirely new culture." Sayali Kadam was the first person in her family to leave India, and as scary as that was, she sees it as the defining moment that helped make her who she is today. The director of commercial agility & launch at Merck goes on to …

"My husband is a stay-at-home dad, and, I think, still in 2024, that's not as common as, say, your stay-at-home mom, for instance, so I don't want to say I've ditched the playbook, but I've absolutely ditched that stereotypical family makeup." Ditching the traditional family playbook wasn't initially easy for Stephanie McCarty, but, as it turns out, was the "best decision ever." As chief marketing & communications officer at Taylor Morrison, she believes it's allowed her to be fully present at work when there and fully present at home when with her kids. In this episode of Brand Insider: BTS, …

"Transitioning from that little young girl in Havana, I've always dreamed of having a career and working. I was passionate about it, but...people would laugh at me, laugh it off, saying my best bet was to marry into such aspirations, but I wanted to leave a mark." And Katia Colston certainly has left her mark. On her own at the age of 15, the now vp of ecommerce sales at Central Garden & Pet left Cuba with a dream of building a career in the U.S., something she now describes as an "out-of-body experience." In this episode of Brand Insider: …

"Don't do things that make you unhappy, but do things that are hard because you know hard doesn't always equal unhappy. Hard is good. It's it's good to be uncomfortable, and it's good to push yourself and figure it out." Bridget Sponsky, executive director of brand and sponsorship marketing at Ally, has continued to push herself throughout her career and says competing in sports growing up taught her to be a part of something bigger. In this episode of Brand Insider: BTS, Bridget says she believes sports are important for women's leadership development and shares an interesting statistic with me...94-percent …

"I think people need to know that no matter where you come from and where you grew up and who your family is, it's possible to break through all of that and get somewhere you want to go." Kristi Daraban did just that! Having held senior positions at NBCUniversal, Nestle and Disney, to name a few, she is now the associate vice president of marketing at Nationwide. As a first-generation Hungarian- American, she discovered early on the need to carve out her own path to get where SHE wanted to go. In this episode of Brand Insider: BTS, Kristi tells …