Overcoming Trauma and Rising Into Leadership with Victoria Pelletier

In this powerful episode, Dionne Malush sits down with Victoria Pelletier for a raw and inspiring conversation about resilience, leadership, and what it really takes to rise above adversity. From surviving a painful childhood to becoming a CEO, board director, best-selling author, and transformation strategist, Victoria shares how she turned trauma into strength and built a life defined by purpose, grit, and unstoppable determination.

Together, Dionne Malush and Victoria Pelletier explore whole human leadership, strategic intentionality, personal growth, career success, and the mindset shifts needed to keep moving forward when life gets hard. This episode is a must-listen for entrepreneurs, executives, women in leadership, and anyone ready to overcome challenges, lead with courage, and redefine success on their own terms.

Connect with Victoria here:

Website: https://victoria-pelletier.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/victoriapelletier/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Victoria.Pelletier.Unstoppable/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/victoria_pelletier_unstoppable/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Have you ever met someone who leads with strength, thinks like a strategist, and shows up with the kind of resilience most people only talk about? Today's guest is one of those rare leaders. Victoria Pelletier is a CEO, board director, and award-winning executive who has built her career by owning her story, refusing to settle, and leading people with conviction and heart. She's a speaker, a best-selling author, a transformation strategist, and someone who has turned adversity into fuel. She's my kind of girl. If you think your path has been tough, wait till you hear what she pushed through to get where she is today. Let's dive into this conversation because I promise you, Victoria is someone you study, not someone you casually listen to. So, Victoria, welcome. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 0:43

I'm awesome. Thanks for having me here.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Oh, I'm so excited to talk. So I always like to start with this. What is one thing you want people to know about you before they hear anything else today?

SPEAKER_01 0:52

I am unstoppable.

SPEAKER_00 0:54

I love that. That's a great way to just say what makes you unstoppable.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

There is nothing that will prevent me from achieving the goal or objective that I've set for myself. Challenge, adversity, trauma. I will move beyond it, sidestep around it to get my you know, eye on the prize, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

I love that. And so have you been like that your whole life?

SPEAKER_01 1:15

I have. I have.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

I was gonna say there's a you know, a little bit like DNA, you know, when they say nature nurture, I think it's a bit of both for me. I think like the DNA fighter, you know, fighter flight. I'm a fighter. Um so it's there, but it's also there's some muscle I've developed as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Yeah, from working it so much, right? Yeah. So when you were a kid, what did you dream of becoming when you were a little?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

My mom had me watch far too much LA Law as a child. So I wanted to be a lawyer uh from a very early age, which I didn't did not follow that path, but that was the goal.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

So I hear you have a powerful story of overcoming adversity, and that's the reason why I created China on Success. So can you take us back to the beginning and walk us through the early experiences that built that resilience?

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yeah, I um I'm born to a drug-addicted teenage mother who was very abusive to me. I was in and out of the child welfare system. I am fortunate that I was adopted out of that environment, although to a lower socioeconomic uh family. So there wasn't, I never had food or, you know, housing insecurity, but there wasn't much money for anything else. So I started working at age 11. And that's where a lot of my unstoppable nature, the resilience stems from is, you know, that severe abuse and trauma as a young child, some of which can continued. I mean, I was very much seen as, you know, different. I jokingly say, like sometimes I don't know where the smarts came from on the biology side. I, but I was gifted, skipped a couple of grades. I hit my height. I'm five foot eight, but I hit this height by the time I was like 10 or 11 years old. So I was like the outcast all around, developed quickly. I was raped when I was 14 by a much older person, likely as a result of the fact that I looked older. Those are just some of what I dealt with as a child. And that is what I think, you know, pushed me to be as driven as I am. I was determined that I would be better than either my biology or the circumstance in which I was raised.

The Bold Leap Into Executive Life

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Yeah, so we're going through that right now. My husband's brother and his wife were both addicted to drugs and they lost their child a year and a half ago. And his other sister lost her child, gave it to one of her friends to raise, gave him to one of her friends. And it's been hard to watch, you know, and see that in my husband had a transplant 10 months ago. So we were we weren't in a position to do that, you know, to take child. And I never had kids, so it's been really hard to watch. But, you know, he ended up with an amazing family. Jason's cousin took it took him and they're gonna keep him, and hopefully the parents don't get him back. I hope they don't, because it's horrible. So to see what to know to look at you gives me so much hope. And uh it's exciting to hear. I know it wasn't a great time for of your life, but it's really great to know that people can get through that. And I hope for him the same. So tell me about a major challenge in your career that forced you to level up in a way maybe you didn't see coming.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

I've had many. I um I have like a few nicknames in the work workplace, and one of them is as the turnaround queen. Like I am put into very difficult situations to turnaround underperforming business units, have been a part of 40, more than 40 mergers, acquisitions, or related transactions. And so handling the everything from due diligence to integration and the um, you know, and so handling those pieces. So I've time and time been tested. But the one, Deanna, I would say that's probably the most like prevalent for me in terms of that pivot point was actually very early on in my career. So, as I said, I wanted to be a lawyer, but I worked in a bank when I was in university, super flexible. I was in their contact center to work around my school schedule, got promoted through the ranks very quickly into leadership roles, and made a decision to put off law school and got recruited out of banking to my first executive role, which was at age 24. And I was a brand new mother at that point to be the chief operating officer for an out a call center outsourcing company. So I had some expertise, but a stretch role. I gave up security and I'll use air quotes with that, because there's no real job security, but I'd worked for a number of years in a banking environment, you know, decent hours. One of my colleagues at the time, she's like, Great benefits. Why would you leave to go into this like mid-sized private organization? And I was seeking challenge, uh, I was seeking opportunity and advancement. And I made that bold move again, three months as a brand new mother, stepping into an executive role, age 24, stretch role, only female, youngest by a couple of decades. But that is what has set me up for the career success that I've had that has been in the world of B2B professional services ever since.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Wow. So you've had some tough seasons for sure. So, what kept your mindset strong? And like, did you have some kind of internal conversation that moved you forward?

SPEAKER_01 5:50

Yeah, I am going back to again the mindset that nothing's gonna prevent me from achieving the goal or objective I've set for myself. One, two, that still this nature, although I've I love the woman that looks back at me now. I didn't always, right? I was in insecure, you know, that trauma that came from early years. And I defined myself uh very much by you know my my career. I've let a lot of that go. And so, but still there's still this little niggly that, you know, I'm I like, I know I've achieved. I'm better than biology or circumstance. I am, but that's always been the motivator for me. So when further challenge came along, that sort of eye on the prize, the you know, focus on a goal or objective I have of being the best that I can be has always kept me motivated and pushing forward. So can you tell us what you do now? I have a phrase that I I use for many things, and it's about being strategic intentionality. And so for me, I use that when it when as it relates to my career. I spend a significant amount of time, you know, building a strong personal brand. So whether it's that, you know, I coach people and will say, look, you're the CEO of, you know, brand new as it comes to your brand, but also your career. So, you know, for me, I'm always planning ahead. You know, my my it drove my husband insane that when I started the current role that I'm in, and this isn't a surprise if any one of my colleagues will end up listening to it, but I was already planning on what things would look like beyond that. No set time or window to leave, but like it's where do I want to get to? So that's this like the strategic piece of it. And then the intentionality is, you know, being really focused on the steps that I am taking towards achieving that goal in mindset, in action, in performance, and keeping myself relevant and improving my skills for that next step.

Whole Human Leadership Explained

SPEAKER_00 7:40

So you talked earlier about, you know, you're involved in a lot of mergers and acquisitions. So and I've you've led some massive teams, right? So what's the single most important trait you believe executives must develop today?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

My phrase for it is whole human leadership. And that's made up of a number of different things. And we I hear lots of leaders talk about it, but I do not see them practice it consistently or in at large scale and from a leadership perspective. That is about building, you know, real authentic relationships with the teams that we lead, showing commitment to their career success, investing in them, developing them for future. It's around showing up as a whole human ourselves. We don't check our home life at the door. We don't check the lived experience that we've had when we show up. So getting to understand that being vulnerable, showing empathy, recognizing that you can have strong business performance and a strong, healthy culture of engagement and and positivity in a place that we all want to work. So that's where I see many struggling. This command and control that many of us entered into the workforce is not the way it had, it never should have been, but it's certainly not the way of the future now. And there's very different expectations of teams in the terms of how we lead.

Empathy Versus Steel In Management

SPEAKER_00 8:56

I'd like to think that without knowing you or anything about you, that I lead that way. I think that it's been natural for me to be that way, you know, but I feel like I could use some work because sometimes I think I get too emotional when I shouldn't. And so there's that balance of being, you know, strong and you know, you want everything to be done the right way to the point of you're friendly, not friends. That's what one of my one of my coaches taught me years ago. And and I hold on to that, but it it sucks sometimes. You know, you want to be more than just friendly, not friends, right? But I I try and I try to be such a good, kind leader, but you know, sometimes it kicks me right in the butt. But most times it's really worth it. So, you know, I kind of look at myself and think, boy, am I too soft? You know, should I be more, I don't even know the right word to describe it, but I have been both ways. So I feel better as a person this way. I feel like a better human being this way. But there are some days I come home and I think, you know, they're taking advantage of it, right? They're taking advantage of my goodness. And so, you know, I don't know how do you help someone with that? How do you help with that balance?

SPEAKER_01 10:07

I think there's some of it is practice, some of is situation or scenario based, gonna make different decisions at different times for different reasons, and that's okay. And, you know, so I'll all work. Like there's a you know, woman that I had been coaching, an executive who was, it was her first executive role. And so trying to balance, so it was things like she'd she'd ask me to she she knew she had to put someone someone on a performance improvement plan, you know, just asking me to review it to find what's what's that balance between being fact-based around performance without emotion. Yet there's some empathy that needs to be delivered when you give that performance conversation. And it also takes time. And there's, like I said, it's also scenario-based. I mean, there's times where, you know, I people will say I rule with, you know, a steel fist, velvet glove. You know, I'm really clear on what the expectations are. And I said a very high bar that I hold myself to, but a commitment to my you know, comment earlier around whole human leadership, my commitment to develop and invest in people first before I need to take action. And so I would say to you, like, if you've done me, and maybe it's a different, you've done it, you've been soft, you feel they're taking advantage of it. Well, there's where the seal fist needs to come out a little bit more. And so there's different times and places to bring out one versus the other.

Stop Self Sabotage With Reflection

SPEAKER_00 11:20

There's this funny thing because I live in a in a town in near Pittsburgh. They call it the Mon Valley. So they say that I go from zero to Mon Valley in like 60 seconds. And it's a rough kind of town, you know. But uh honestly, I I've spent years as the owner of this brokerage and we've we're at our eighth-year anniversary. We have about 200 plus people. So I do say, just looking back, I feel better as a leader this way, you know. So, you know, there might be a day or something that seems like they're taking advantage, but I look back and I think this is way better than it was before, and we have a solid base. And I'm, you know, I think they they realize now that I'm I'm a good person. And so that makes a big difference. So thank you for sharing that. I think that's really important for all leaders to hear because you can be both ways. But there's a leader I I remember years ago that when he would walk in the room, like everyone was nervous and scared because they never knew how he was going to react, which person was coming, you know. And I just don't want to be that way. And I know that I can personally affect the entire room. So if I'm having a bad day and I walk in, every they can clearly see it on my face and they can feel the energy, and the whole place gets disrupted right by that. So I think that a lot of people should hear that, you know, know that you can affect more people than you imagine. And we have 200 plus people, you know, it's a lot of people. So I don't want to affect them in a negative way because I spend every day wanting to affect people in a positive way. So, anyways, thanks for sharing that. That was that was great. So, what advice do you give to leaders who want to grow but keep getting in their own way?

Healthy Resilience And Support Systems

SPEAKER_01 12:49

I think it's important to do some self-reflection and potentially, you know, find a coach around you to give some guidance and advice. Potentially, there's some blind spots. You know, for for me, I got in my own way as a young executive who some of it was, again, the stuff that I you don't check, check at the door when you come in. So, I mean, there was imposter syndrome. There was still a level of insecurity that I had in myself for a multitude of reasons, some of which you can guess given my background and my experience. And so I showed up at work, all business, all the time, the whole human leader I am today that shows empathy, that will show vulnerability. Well, I think I always showed empathy, but I never showed vulnerability. I was reticent to show any emotion because I thought as a young female leader, it showed signs of weakness. And so I walked in into a meeting and I like jumped into the business agenda, even on a Monday. I didn't, I didn't spend a significant amount of time talking about weekends, like getting to know people. My nickname I learned in my mid to late 20s was the Iron Maiden. Now, okay, I as I said, steel fist, iron glove. Well, at that point, it was probably a little bit more steel fist. I was making the tough business decisions that we needed to move our business forward, but in the absence of showing any kind of vulnerability or emotion around some of those difficult decisions. And so it took someone making a one learning I had the nickname, two a conversation with a colleague one Monday talking about our weekends. I said I'd gone to a movie and I'd was like bawling. Like I am highly emotional. I always have been. And she's just like, Vic, I thought you'd be the type of person who'd laugh at people who cried at movies. That was a defining moment for me. So I tell your listeners, like, you need to stare back at the person in the mirror, number one. You need to find some trusted people around you who will give you coaching, give you advice, identify some of those blind spots for you. And there's a significant amount of work you can do your yourself, but find a coach if you need to to help you break through some of those patterns, you know, and learn new ways of working and operating to move to the next level.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

So, you know, adversity comes and goes in our lives. It doesn't seem to ever end. But how do you pick up the pieces when you fall? I mean, what what is something that you would do today if need be?

Influences That Shaped Her Life

SPEAKER_01 15:02

I I've continued to suffer adversity. As you said, it like it it can continue and you know comes around. And for me, I've built a muscle, as I said, you know, nature nurture. So I think there's DNA in you know in me that's you know quite tough and quite naturally resilient, but I've learned how to build the muscle, what I refer to also as healthy resilience. And so for me, when something happens, it's around anchoring myself back on, okay, so I stumbled, I fell, or this challenge or adversity came my way. What is my end goal? What is my objective, whether it's career, professional, it's relationship, whatever. Like so I'm always really clear and anchoring back to that. And then I said strategic intentionality. That means I'm gonna take the actions, I'm gonna have a mindset, I'm gonna speak to the things that move me forward. And I also still surround myself, even though I'm incredibly resilient and confident on my own, I choose not to be. I surround myself with people. My poor husband is, you know, my person. So he has to, he's not in this corp in the corporate world I'm in, but he has to hear about it because that helps me. Just sometimes it's like, I don't want any advice. I just want to be heard. I, you know, I will be seen. And so those are things that I do, you know, to help me, you know, when I'm I'm facing challenge.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

So who's been the most influential person in your life?

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Oh, that that that's um top for me, kid. It's hard for me because I haven't really had a mentor from a work perspective. I've had some a couple of good leaders that I've learned from. I I've tended to learn more from the horrible leaders I've worked with or for around examples of what I don't want to do or become. I am thankful, I would say there's three people I would like give great thanks to helping me. One is my mom, and my mom is the woman that raised me, my adoptive mother, for taking the tough kid that I was and getting me to sit down and reflect and understand feelings and emotion and process things. So I'll thank her for that. Sadly, she she died about 20, you know 20 plus years ago, um, far too young. And then the other is my ex-wife. So I'm openly bisexual. I was married to a woman, I'm now married to my husband. She was out of, you know, there for me and supported my, you know, career. I was 22 when I met her. She was 35. And although we divorced, and unfortunately, she passed away from cancer 12 years ago, she supported a lot and allowed me to flourish to the point that we we grew apart because again, I was 22 when I met her. And then the other is my husband today. We've been together for for 12 years and supporting me. I mean, he gave up a career and retired because I'm I've been relocated multiple times for my work. And so to make things possible, to bring me tea, to when I get off a call and I'm like, oh, for blank's sake, because it was a rough call to like go, can I bring you something? Is it time to line? Like that kind of thing. So those are people I'm I'm very grateful for. I love that. Thank you for sharing.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

So did you ever read the book Thinking Grow Rich?

SPEAKER_01 17:48

No, I see it in your background though. I was looking at it.

Elite Habits And Redefining Success

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Yeah. So I can ask I can send you an ebook copy of it. It is amazing. It's really helped me in my business growth. Plus, it helps with my personal life too, because there's so many cool principles. He actually studied 500 of the top business leaders in the early 1900s and found out what made them successful. So that he always says in the book, there's something in that book that'll help you be even more successful. So I love to share it because it's just such a great message. And it literally came from the Bible, most of it. They just rewarded it, had a sexy name like Think and Grow Rich, like you wouldn't want to buy that, right? So, because of that, I wanted to ask you, do you have any daily habits that keep you operating at an elite level?

SPEAKER_01 18:25

I do. So I'm a I have always been really a fitness fanatic. I protect my mornings. I work out six days a week. And that is not just good for me physically. That's actually for me an amazing time mentally. I spend time thinking about the day ahead of me. I listen to podcasts or audiobooks, I should say, and or music. Depends on my mood. That time is sacred for me in setting up the day. So I block my calendar, doesn't mean I'm in a global role. So many times I have to be in calls at weird hours of the day, but it needs to be booked by exception to get me early in the morning before I've worked out and had a shower and I'm sitting down at my desk.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

I love that. So over time, and I don't know how old you are, you seem pretty young to me, but I don't have any idea. But how has your definition of success evolved over time?

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Oh, it's changed dramatically. And I don't have a problem saying it. I will turn 50 later this year.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

I'm 57. I'm gonna be 58 this year.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

So my definition of success has changed. So when I was young, again, coming from not nothing, but I mean nothing with my biological mother, but with my adoptive family, little money, you know, no vacations. There were times I couldn't go on school field field trips if it cost money. So for me, my definition of success, my mom told me, I think I was 10 or 11 years old. She said, Tori, you need to do better than us. My dad was a janitor, my mom a secretary. And she didn't have to say that because I was determined to be better than biology or circumstance. But success for me was going to be around having a very different um vocation than either of my parents, getting a post-secondary education. And it was also with that would come money, uh, materials, et cetera. My mom used to say, money doesn't buy happiness, but it makes one hell of a down payment. Yeah. And so for me, my my early definition of success was rising up the professional corporate ladder, not just to have some kind of an achievement professionally, but I also defined that based upon material possessions. So I I remember going to bigger and bigger homes and more things. And that shifted. Um, although I was divorced from my ex-wife when she her cancer came back and she passed away. The viewing what was important was around that time that I thought, you know, your health is your wealth. And what's really important to me, you know, I made a decision, I left a job I loved because I needed to not be traveling 90% of the time as a single parent after, you know, she passed away. And so for me, it wasn't about material possessions. And then also it became much more around satisfaction. You talked about like you want to be a good person. You choose to lead in a certain way. Same thing for me. So success for me is knowing that the people around that I engage with, whether it's in a workplace, the community, the world at large, I want to be spoken about that I've left it in a better place when I leave those places than when I came into them. And so being a good human, in my case, raising two amazing human beings in my, you know, my children, those are ways in which I look and define success now versus the old way of how much money and how many things do I have.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

That makes a lot of sense. I always tell my husband, I hope when I died, my funeral procession is so long that people are talking about it for years. Because I've affected that many people. That's that's definitely my goal. So I appreciate you having kind of the same goal, you know, it's just how you leave people when you walk away. So if there's someone listening right now and they're fighting their own battles privately and they need a reason to keep going, what would you say?

SPEAKER_01 21:45

I'd say there is to think about the people, there's someone who loves you. There's someone who needs you in the darkest moments, like to hold on to that and to ask for help. I think many are afraid to do that. I I was a bit like that at some point. You know, a bit of a loner. So just think about those who will miss you, those who need you, those who care about you, and ask for some support.

What’s Next And Final Challenge

SPEAKER_00 22:08

That's awesome. So what's next for you, personally or professionally, or both?

SPEAKER_01 22:11

So my professional goal, I said I came into the role I had now, was to go back to being a C-suite executive. I'm an executive at a large publicly traded company, but to go back to being a CEO or at an organization where I control the full destiny of the organization is the professional goal, as well as you know, find another board for me to sit on. Personally, although I am too young, but I do want to be a grandmother, I told both of my sons, I said, I was a young mother by choice. Don't make me a young grandmother by accident.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

However, I am very much looking forward to the day that um I can be called grandma.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

So where can people find you, follow you, or work with you?

SPEAKER_01 22:50

The easiest place is find me on my website, which is victoria-pelltier.com where they can see all the articles, the speaking, the books, all the stuff that I do there, but also there's links to connect directly, whether it's LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram from there.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

So is there anything I didn't cover today that you'd like to leave the audience with?

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Yeah, my favorite quote. It's uh my from Georgia Dare. It says, Everything you've ever wanted lives on the other side of fear. I love I love that. Like I constantly am telling people, like, I think growth and opportunity comes in the zone of discomfort. So get incredibly comfortable with being uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

I always have a friend who said every time he went through something very difficult, he would be excited about it because he knew what was on the other side was gonna be amazing. And it's the same idea, right? There's light in the darkness and what you just said. So I appreciate you so much, and thank you for bringing your wisdom, your fire, of course. You can see it in you, it's just amazing. And your story to this conversation. Your proof that resilience isn't a buzzword, it's a choice and it's a lifestyle. So thank you so much. And yeah, I hope that our listeners, if you could subscribe, like, or share this, that would be great. And reach out. She's got a lot to share, and uh it's amazing because she proves that you can go through a lot in your life and still come out and be successful in your terms. So thank you very much, Victoria. It was a pleasure.