007: Blessed Unlucky: Kirsten Greer on When Control Meets the Uncontrollable

In this episode, Parul Saini speaks with Kirsten Greer, a Managing Director at Accenture whose career has spanned more than two decades inside one of the most demanding consulting environments in the world.

Kirsten reflects on receiving a life-altering diagnosis while pregnant with her first child, and what it took to move through chemotherapy, childbirth, surgery, and a return to work that felt nothing like the person she had been before.

She shares what it cost her to stop performing at full capacity inside a culture that never paused.

Why stepping back was not retreat.

And how nearly eight years in the same role, years the world may have read as stalling, quietly became her foundation for partnership.

Explore the Conversation

00:00 When Ambition, Motherhood, and Survival Collide
03:06 Raised to Believe Effort Shapes Outcome
05:36 What Consulting Actually Teaches You at 21
08:48 Planning Motherhood Like a Project Manager
13:01 The Appointment That Changed Everything
18:04 Chemotherapy While Pregnant
21:12 Faith, Family, and Starting Chemo Within a Week
23:30 The Jarring Contrast of Pregnancy and Cancer
28:41 Childbirth and Returning to Chemo Six Days Later
32:33 Recalibrating Ambition and the "Blessed Unlucky" Mindset
36:13 The Invisible Weight of Anxiety After Remission
39:43 Redefining Career Success as Longevity, Not Speed
41:47 Stopping Bracing for Impact: The Emotional Turning Point
43:42 Closing the Chaos Chapter: From Diagnosis to Managing Director
48:13 The Illusion of Control and Careers as Long Arcs

Explore more:

Connect with Kirsten Greer on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirsten-greer/]     

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Today's guest is someone whose story sits at the intersection of ambition, motherhood, and survival. Kirsten Greer is a partner at Accenture, a role that reflects decades of work inside one of the most demanding professional environments in the world. She has built her career helping organizations navigate complexity, transformation, and change, often while holding immense responsibility herself. But that version of Kirsten, the accomplished leader, is only part of the story. There was a moment earlier in her life when everything she thought she could control began to unravel. As she was preparing to become a mother for the first time, imagining how pregnancy and career might coexist, she received a diagnosis that would fundamentally alter her sense of time, uncertainty and self. Kristen was diagnosed with a stage two triple negative breast cancer while pregnant with her first child. What followed was a period marked by chemotherapy, surgery, childbirth, and recovery, all compressed into a window that allowed very little time for anything but survival. And yet, the most consequential part of her college curve didn't end with remission. It unfolded in the quieter choices that came after. How she returned to work changed, how she allowed herself to step back when the world expected her to push forward, and how she slowly rebuilt a career on different terms. Today, Kristen reflects on what it means to recalibrate ambition after illness, how motherhood reshaped her relationship to work, and why taking a step back did not derail her trajectory, but ultimately strengthened it. This conversation isn't just about resilience in the face of crisis. It's about timing, trust, and long arc of courage, especially when the path forward doesn't look linear. I'm honored to share Christian's story with you. Welcome to the Courage Curve. I'm my life has been shaped by edited inner at the moment where I had to character long before I had a space for that. But together we will uncover the real choice. Let these conversations stay close to you as you move through your own curve with strength, honesty, and companionship. Welcome to the courage curve, Kristen. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Well, thank you for making time. I'm really excited to learn more about you because again, you and I have known each other for what, five years? Yeah, five years. And we've so far interacted in professional settings. So I'm really excited to get to know about your early days, your childhood. So let's let's start there. How did you grow up? Where did you grow up?

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Well, I grew up in a small town outside of San Diego. It's a little town called Hamul. It's on the maps, but very few people have heard of it. And it's really the country. And I grew up in kind of one of those 90s idyllic childhoods, kids in the neighborhood, riding our bikes, lots of dirt roads, no real danger except the occasional rattlesnake, which kept us on our toes. You know, just a really great group of kids and families that I grew up with. In fact, I'm still friends with several of the girls that grew up there together. And we call ourselves the Home Wool Girls. I'm an only child of two professors. So education was always at the forefront, you know, working hard, getting good grades. That was just expected. That was table stakes. And uh, you know, my dad in particular, he really took that publisher parish part of the professor job to heart. And he was always hard at work researching, sitting in his office, writing journal articles. I think to this day, he's one of the more published authors in his field, which is pretty impressive. And then my mom actually pivoted into being a university administrator. So she was a dean of a college and uh also a chair of a department. And uh I really got to see her navigate a complex leadership role while also being a parent, right? Um, both of my parents were really active in my childhood, especially being an only child. I think they took a lot of pride in parenting and spent a lot of time really focusing on, you know, my academics and athletics and my social network and all of that. But layered on top of it, you know, they had this motto that they always told their students, which was do what you love, do it well, and success will find you. And that really shaped my worldview. I believed that effort would be rewarded, that if you prepared enough, you could shape your own trajectory. And for a long time, my life basically aligned to this.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

And I'm so proud of your mom for having this great role model as a woman leader that you could emulate. So, what did you want to be when you grew up?

SPEAKER_00 5:10

I changed ideas multiple times, like many children did. For a long time, I thought about being a lawyer. In fact, my parents thought I was gonna go to law school and I even majored in uh in communication because I thought, well, that'll at least be a good foundation for law because you'll have to talk all the time. So I definitely thought about law. Uh, I always knew I wanted to be a working parent too, because of my mom. I saw how much joy she got from both her career and being a parent, and I thought that's something that's doable and something I should do. And uh, and it wasn't really until in college when I started taking a lot of business classes that I got to hear about a field and consulting and really took an interest in that idea.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Is that when you joined Accenture? Have you been with Accenture since the beginning of your career?

SPEAKER_00 5:49

Believe it or not, yes. I was recruited on campus. It started with a booth there on the on-campus. I don't even know if they do that anymore on campus. It's probably all online now. But back in the dark ages, we had the booths on campus and you talked to various companies, and I saw the Accenture booth, and I put my name down on the list and turned in my resume. They called me. I went through the campus interviewing process and actually got a job offer before I graduated, which was a which was a great relief. And also because I was an ambitious little sprite, I graduated college in three and a half years. So I actually was leaving my apartment and and starting at Accenture where my friends were still going to all the senior parties and everything. I was 21 years old, ready to take on the big world of consulting.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

My goodness, high achiever. Yes, always was moving at a clip. That was a theme for a long time. Okay, so you were very focused. Wow, you graduated in three and a half years. You took that job in consulting. And what were the initial years like? Did you want to become a partner right away? What did you think about your career then?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

For the record, I don't think anyone who starts as an analyst at Accenture imagines they'll be a partner. I think a lot of us, myself included, saw it as this great launch pad, right? I wanted that exposure to cutting-edge industries, to new technologies. You know, we were so focused, still are focused on technology, but such a strong emphasis on the technology part of our business. I wanted to work with intelligent people, cool clients. And I thought this is basically a graduate degree that someone's gonna pay for you to do. In fact, my parents, being PhDs, they always said, Oh, you should go get more education. And I said, Hey, I'm getting that at Accenture, right? I can build these skills, spend a couple of years, and then maybe I'll pivot back and I'll do an MBA or a PhD. But, you know, I got to Accenture, 21 years old, ready to conquer consulting, and I got my butt kicked a little bit. Like it, you know, I'd always been a high achiever, but there's nothing like coming into a client meeting as a 21-year-old with your color-coded binder and just realizing that you're in way past your depth. It was definitely the first couple of years a little bit to navigate, but I loved that no one lowered the bar. The expectation was always so clear. Our motto at the time was high performance delivered. And everybody held people to that standard. And uh, and I got to learn from some incredible people, even as, like I said, kind of had to navigate not being the best and brightest in the room all the time. But I didn't ever consider failure an endpoint. I figured if I stumbled, I can recalibrate, I can learn more, I can grow and take on the challenge. And and I found my footing. And what I ended up loving is Accenture was and is a meritocracy. If you deliver, you progress. The great thing about consulting is you have these non-pyramid in the career path. So you can move it, move up and move into different roles at a at a pretty fast clip if you're excelling.

SPEAKER_02 8:25

I agree. I worked at PWC for a while, and I would say in my entire career, the most humbling experience for me was consulting. Because you think you know something, and then you get in a situation where you're like, okay, I am not prepared for this.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Absolutely. I still feel that way. 21 years into this, and I still sometimes feel that way. So keeps you humble for sure.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Yes, I believe you. Okay, so then you joined Accenture and you were doing really well at your job. How did you meet your husband?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

We met in college. We were uh juniors in college and at a back to school party, and he saw me and got my number, waited three days to call me, called me up, and the rest is basically history. You know, we dated in the college, and then in graduating, I thought we'd get married right after school. In fact, I wanted to. And he said, Oh no, let's take a little bit of time and maybe find our footing as adults. And and so we got married a couple of years after college, but uh he's been that that constant in my life since even before Accenture. So we've had that that shared history together.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

It's incredible. And you know, I'm gonna ask you this question because I get this question a lot. And you know that I chose not to have kids. And so I also get this question a lot when young women are deciding whether or not they should have kids. Were you very clear that after a few years into getting married, that you would choose to have a family? How did you think about motherhood?

SPEAKER_00 9:46

It was always important to me because I didn't want to wait too long and miss that opportunity to be a mom. So I think I told him early on that I wanted to have kids. And it's actually interesting, he grew up with a stay-at-home mom. So he didn't have the same mental model of the working mom and the career. And I don't think he could quite wrap his mind around how it would work. He kind of thought, well, that's going to be challenging to have an ambitious career, to be a present parent. And I'd had that model from my mom. So we had a lot, a little bit of creative discussion around how will this work, but I genuinely approached it like I did a lot of things in my work life. I figured if it needs more organization, I'll be more organized. If I need to make more money, we'll figure out how to make more money. You know, if I need to just be more efficient, I never saw it as like something you couldn't do. It was just it was a matter of the trade-offs and the and the logistical challenges.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

That is amazing. And do you touch upon something very important, which is the power of thinking through the solution as opposed to the problem? So if you think something's possible and you figure out a way to make it happen, and it doesn't, it doesn't seem like a burden. You know, it can kind of work out and uh work itself out. Okay. So then you decided to have a kid. How old were you when you got pregnant?

SPEAKER_00 10:58

I was 29 years old. And I knew that I wanted to enter motherhood from a position of career strength. So at that point, I was a manager at Accenture. So there's analyst, consultant, manager. And I was actually up for senior manager when I found out I was pregnant. So I knew I was in that promotion life cycle. So I kept it quiet for quite some time. In fact, as long as I could, I'm wearing baggy shirts and things like that. Not that I thought, oh, people won't give me a promotion, but I didn't want anything to stand in the way, right? I wanted to get that senior manager promotion and uh and then make the motherhood announcement. So it was actually just a few weeks before I officially got the promotion announcement. It got too far along that it was starting to be noticeable. So I did tell my colleagues and so forth. I, in fact, I even had clients down the road be like, oh, is she pregnant, right? Because it was getting kind of obvious. But you know, I revealed that to everyone. And then the great news is I did get that senior manager promotion, which was super important just from a career trajectory standpoint. Our senior manager path is definitely more senior, the pay is a bit higher, a bit more responsibility. And then some people can be senior managers for several years, which we'll we'll talk about as part of my career journey. I probably spent a few more years, but we'll get to that.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Okay. So you were 29 years old. You clearly were a high achiever, as most of the people in my circle are, which is not a surprise. And then you chose to have a kid, you got pregnant. It just seems like you were lining everything perfectly, right? You're the kind of person as I am, which is your plan. Yeah. And you were like control every outcome.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

I had, you know, I had a pregnancy spreadsheet with multiple tabs and conditional formatting that was all about leaves and things I needed to get done and milestones in the pregnancy. So yeah, I mean, this is such a common theme for me the control it, plan it, organize it, and you'll get the outcome. And you know, if you the more you do that, the more you can kind of control that outcome and even reduce the anxiety of the unknown.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Yes, exactly. That's how you work through the variables and control the outcome. Okay. And then so what happened? How did you get your diagnosis at the time?

SPEAKER_00 13:05

So it was January, and I remember actually just getting dressed or something and feeling like this hardness in my breast. And I thought, well, I'm pregnant. It could be anything, right? It could be a blocked duct or just like swelling. I don't know. And a few days later, I even remember, I was like, hey, to my husband, hey, can you feel this? What do you think that is? And he goes, I don't know. But you know, you go to the OBGYN every month, just ask her your next appointment. And then he goes, then you don't have to worry about it, right? Just tell her and she'll say it's nothing and you won't have to worry about it. So I go to my OB appointment in February. And routine appointment, everything looks good with the baby, which is great. That's always the thing I worried about. I always thought something's gonna go wrong with the baby itself. Like it'll be a difficult pregnancy, or heaven forbid, you lose the pregnancy, or something like that. It never crossed my mind in a thousand years something could be wrong with me. So I go and I show her this. I go, hey, there's this like swelling here. What do you think? And she goes, no idea. But she was always a very cautious OB, thank God, because she saved my life in being cautious. And she said, Well, let's just go get it scanned. They can just do a quick ultrasound. You're getting ultrasounds on the baby, they'll ultrasound it and they'll, you know, you'll have an answer. So I said, perfect. So she set that up for me a couple of days later. I go to the radiology center and it's it's pretty routine. It's an ultrasound. I've seen these dozens of times with my baby already. And the tech starts, you know, doing the ultrasound and immediately takes a couple measurements and then leaves the room. And you're thinking, that's not good when they leave all of a sudden. So she leaves the room and she gets the doctor and she comes back. And the doctor looks at it and basically says, What I'm seeing is super suspicious, highly likely it's cancer. We need a biopsy today. And I say, wait a second, wait a second. How do you know this? What's the odds here? Because I'm like a very odds person. I'm like, when you say highly likely, what are we saying? Right. I'm like, give me a little bit more data. And she goes, 95% chance this is cancer. I'm just floored because only experience I have of people being diagnosed with cancer is in movies. And the person's behind this mahogany desk, and it's all very like, we have your results and we're gonna tell you this. And here I am, I'm in this dimly lit room. I'm 26 weeks pregnant. And she basically says, without even a biopsy, 95% chance it's cancer. So I'm floored. What's crazy is my husband was there in the waiting room because I had this nervousness going into the appointment, and I said, go get my husband. And they go, Oh, well, he can't really come back here because there's people in various, you know, states of medical dress and everything. And I was just like, go get him, right? Because I'm freaking out at this point. And so they they found us like a broom closet to basically like huddle in the two of us, and we're in there, and we're just both shocked. He's just like, I thought you were being a little bit hypochondriac. He's like, I had no idea. And so they do the biopsy, and the doctor was right, the one that said 95% chance, uh, came back three days later, triple negative, lymph node positive, uh highly aggressive scoring, all of that comes back like as aggressive as it comes, which makes sense because it basically came out of nowhere. When they did the scanning, they biopsied the lymph node at the same time. Oh, because they once they saw the breast lump, they ultrasounded that area, and then they uh they realized that it was in the lymph node too. So, you know, that was just shocking. And then on top of that, of course, I'm pregnant and thinking, what the heck am I gonna do in this situation?

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Let's talk about that diagnosis a little bit. The triple negative, the significance of that, and if the cancer gets into the lymph node.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

So for those that don't know, triple negative is a type of breast cancer that isn't fueled by estrogen, progesterone, or HER2. It has none of those receptors. So there's really only the traditional treatments for it, which is chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation. So a lot of the cool drugs you hear about on the market for HER2 and these breakthroughs, none of that applies there. If you Google it, which I don't think anybody should Google this, it has all these horrible headlines of like deadliest breast cancer and most likely to hit young women and killer and all of these things. So, of course, I'm this type A consultant. I'm still Googling all this stuff, even though you should not do that. I'm, of course, becoming an internet oncologist on triple negative. And then lymph node positive is another poorer prognostic indicator because that means it's broken out of the breast and it's in at least some of the lymphatic system. And that's how cancer spreads. It gets into the blood or lymph, and then it goes finds a home in another organ. Maybe that's lung or brain or bone, and that's what you don't want. That's what gives you the stage four diagnosis. So the idea is contain it as quickly as possible, kill it with chemo, cut it out before it can go to one of those other organs where it becomes deadly.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Yes. And the highly aggressive type also dictates how fast this will spread. So it was not even initial stages. So a very, very difficult situation. I mean, even for a healthy person who was not pregnant, it would have been a very difficult situation to contain and manage. But for you, there was this added complexity of being pregnant and um you were about to give birth. Yeah. So what was your mental state like at the time? What were you thinking?

SPEAKER_00 18:23

The very first thing I said when I found out about this was she has to survive. And that was about my daughter. She was the first thing I thought of. And I think that was my first moment where I truly felt like a mom putting your kid's life first. And I thought, she has to survive whatever it takes. This baby's surviving. And my husband's going, no, no, no, I want you to survive too. So, you know, you gotta manage all this. But that was my first thing. And wildly, the doctors told me these two things, you surviving and the baby surviving, don't have to be in opposition to each other. You can actually start chemotherapy while pregnant. And I'm floored to hear this because you're pregnant and they say, Oh, you can't have coffee or you can't have alcohol or you shouldn't have sushi. And then they're telling me, yeah, just put the most toxic substance known to mankind into your body and everything's gonna be fine. So I'm just floored. I'm how is this even possible? And the explanation they gave me actually makes sense, which is similar to how chemotherapy some kinds can't pass the blood brain barrier, which makes brain cancer really hard to treat, unfortunately. The placenta acts in the same manner, in the sense it creates this blood brain barrier between you and the baby, and some molecules can pass through it and some molecules can't. And so that is what they told me about starting chemotherapy while pregnant.

SPEAKER_02 19:38

So you were worried about the child. And were you thinking about yourself as well? That was just such an afterthought that you created, I'm assuming because you're you're such an intellectual, you created your path for treatment, and then you're thinking about steps that need to be taken, and that's how I managed my diagnosis and my treatment as well. I can see you do this same thing, but did you have time to feel your emotions? What were you feeling at the time?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

I think once I understood that she would be okay, or so I believed through the studies and through what the doctor's telling me, once I believed she's gonna be okay through this, and I could feel her growing and kicking, then I was able to start to think about myself and the real fear that came with that. And I'm going through chemotherapy and I'm thinking, what if this doesn't work? You know, I'm going through absolute hell, losing your hair, feeling sick, all in hopes that she's gonna be okay, I'm gonna be okay, and that we're gonna live this long life together. But then that that question is just keeps coming into your mind, what if this doesn't work? And then the hardest thing to hear about triple negative is if it does reoccur, it reoccurs pretty fast. And so I'm thinking to myself, okay, if this does come back after chemo and surgery and everything's done, there's this chance that this baby's never gonna know me. She won't have any memories of me if this comes back and I die before she's two, three, four years old. And so that just sitting in that thought is, I mean, it's it's surreal. You know, you're growing a life and trying to save your own life and trying to be focused on hope, but there is, there is a lot of fear that surrounds it.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

What a terrifying thought. How did your family react at the time?

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Well, my husband has a deep faith, as do I. And he really put all of his efforts into leaning on faith, on prayer, on believing in the hope that we would survive and come through this stronger. He was always the one that said, you know, you're gonna come through this stronger, even when I despaired and thought all the darkest thoughts, he would say, God's got a plan for us and we're gonna make it through. My parents were hugely helpful. My mom is an absolute saint on earth. She still is a saint and helps me out with my kids who are much older now. But she was just the logistics queen, right? She was helping drive me to appointments and cooking and really she just leaned into the logistics side. Maybe this is where I get this from, where she's leaning into the organization and logistics. To uh to get through that. And then everyone else is just shocked. I mean, you you've seen it with cancer. You vacillate between having to comfort yourself, and sometimes you're comforting other people. Like other people are so devastated for you, right? You're like, I'm okay. And like they're crying. It's very strange. It's a very strange dichotomy.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

My goodness. Okay. And um, so then you were diagnosed 26 weeks, and then did you start treatment right away?

SPEAKER_00 22:25

Yeah, I think it was almost about a week after I was diagnosed. And because again, because it was so aggressive, it was days mattered. And I'm blessed that I had good doctors, that biopsy results, chemo plan, second opinion. I got a second opinion right away that validated all the chemotherapy regimen. And what I started was dose-dense chemotherapy, which is even more compressed, because the idea was let's get four rounds in before my baby needs to be delivered. And then we'll switch to a different chemotherapy drug that's a little less safe. I'm putting in air quotes safe in pregnancy after I deliver her. So time was of the essence. So we were like, let's get into the chemotherapy. I was going every two weeks, and uh, you know, I'm sitting there in the chemo chair, pregnant, feeling my baby kick, watching the red devil Adriamyosin go through my veins, just thinking this is absolutely surreal. You got the red devil. I did, I did, yes, and so did my daughter, but yeah, wild.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

That's the worst type of chemotherapy drug. And how did you feel after your first session? Did you have time to prepare for chemotherapy? Because in my case, my doctors switched the treatment. So I was going to go in for surgery, but then they started doing chemo first. So I did have two weeks to prepare, but my husband reads a lot and wants to research. So I did I felt like I didn't have enough time to prepare for my first chemo session. Did you have time to prepare for yours?

SPEAKER_00 23:55

I definitely don't think I had much preparation. It was very much just in survival mode. And then I was still trying to transition everything at work because I had just left for a normal doctor. Working at the time? I was still working. I was gonna work up until I was, you know, eight and a half months pregnant, but I'm only about six and a half months pregnant at this point. So then I had to transition everything at work. I had to tell everybody at work, I had to transition everything. And then I was into chemo almost immediately. And then they had planned a treatment plan, both because of the pregnancy and the triple negative that I would do chemo first. And that would be part of the plan. So get all the chemo and then go to surgery, and then radiation would be a maybe after that.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

Wow. So that was even more complex because I was thinking that probably you took some time off. So you don't have to worry about work, but you did. You had to then not only think about yourself, your family, but then now you have to make sure that the work continues because you're working with clients. You can't just can't drop things. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

I did transition my client role. I transitioned it to someone else pretty quickly. And then it's wild because I didn't want to waste all of my medical and maternity leave. So I worked some of the time while I'm going through chemo. And I I had an amazing team at the time that was so supportive that helped me work on some internal things. I was doing market research and kind of behind the scenes business development. And so that was very flexible and could be from home during that chemo. And then I did take leave after I delivered my daughter and had surgery as well.

SPEAKER_02 25:22

That's so important. And then what was your first chemo session like? How how did you feel? Because you were already pregnant and it's already difficult. So now you had double bammy of going through chemotherapy and then still being pregnant. So what was that first session like and what happened after? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

I mean, the first session, I can't necessarily remember the feelings there, but I do remember is when my hair fell out. And what is that? Maybe a couple weeks after you have it. I think it was a couple of weeks after your first chemo session. And you're you're my hair is just like falling out in clumps, and then I'm quite pregnant. And it's just this wild contrast of you're like the sickly cancer patient, but then also this life-giving body as well, because you're still growing this baby. And so I had a friend come over who's a hairstylist and she shaved my head to get it over with. And I think that was the moment I really felt like a cancer patient. You know, that was where you because you just have that cancer look once you have no hair. But then it's this weird, like no one expects a pregnant cancer patient. So of course I'm going out, I'm like putting on wigs and things like that to go out around the town because it just, it's just such a jarring sight.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

Yes. Did you take the cold cap celebrate to preserve the plant?

SPEAKER_00 26:32

It wasn't as popular back then. So this is about 13 years ago. So it was happening, but not as popular. But it we just no time, no ability to research it, and just had to jump in head first. So I got to go through all the different hairstyles of no hair and then like the shoe, the super cute pixie hair and the longer hair. So got all got the full cancer hairstylist treatment.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Did you get a chance to do research on the chemotherapy drug? Because that's another thing that I did, which I I'm not, I mean, it's a good thing that you do research on the chemotherapy drug, but at the same time, there are so many side effects, and some are long-lasting side effects that I wish I hadn't read about because that freaked me out more than the chemotherapy itself. Because in some cases, your hair just doesn't grow back. I was really worried about that part. I wasn't so worried about chemotherapy. I knew I'll get better like after a after a week of going through it. But my problem was, what if I just never get hair back?

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Oh my gosh. There are so many things. And like I said, I I I got my internet oncology degree. So I read all that stuff. And then then you read these wild things about, well, if you have chemotherapy, you get leukemia later, right? So then even years down the line, I'm getting blood work done and someone of my blood levels crashes, and I'm thinking to myself, oh, is this leukemia? It wasn't, but it creates all that doubt and anxiety in your mind forever. I mean, I had to be in survival mode given the aggressiveness of the cancer. There really, it didn't feel like I had oh so much of a choice. You know, I had doctors at UCSD, at Scripps, at Stanford all telling me, here's the drugs you should do. You should start now. And so I just I really had to turn it over to their medical expertise and then turn it over to faith and trust that what it what's gonna happen is gonna happen and and it's gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

So you got four rounds of chemo. You got chemo every two weeks. Yep. So and it takes three weeks to recover from chemo.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

So I never recover. I just stayed unrecovered, correct.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

Okay, so you're and geez, chemo really, really, really makes you very weak. Typically, they do red devil, they give like a month in between sessions. So you you got no chance to recover. And then you went into labor in that very weakened state.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

I did. So what so we I had eight weeks of chemo, right? So four, four rounds over eight weeks. And then they actually wanted kind of part of the plan was take a pause on chemo, rebuild some strength. So I think I had my last round around 33 weeks pregnant, and then started to feel actually a lot better, right? I'm like nearing the end of the pregnancy. And then they actually thought, well, you might go into labor early because lost stress on your body from all of this. But of course, I didn't go into labor early. I get to like 38, 39 weeks, and they're they said, Well, now we need to induce because now it's been too long that you've been off chemo. So they're like, Okay, let's induce. So I induced labor. I actually had an amazingly easy labor with her. That was one just tiny blessing I had along the way. The induction went really well. She was born fast. And the best, most amazing thing about this is I'm this bald cancer patient, and my daughter comes out with this full head of brown hair, like just beautiful brown hair. And it was this assurance that she really was okay in there the whole time because here she is, she's healthy, she's crying, she didn't spend any time in the Nikki or anything. She went home two days later and she's she's been a healthy kid to this day.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

That is amazing and such a blessing to for her to be healthy and you know, having gone through so much to see the result that your your child was healthy and born healthy. It's so amazing. And then did you get get into surgery right away? What what was that schedule like for you?

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Yeah, so I I went back on chemo when my daughter was six days old. That's a trip.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Fairly recovered from having given birth. Yeah. And then you went back on chemo because there was a lot of time spent between your last chemo session and then yes. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

So I go back on it, and this is where my I mean, my husband had to step up so much. I mean, he basically raised a newborn on his own because I was so weak and going through chemo. My mom helped a ton, my dad helped a ton, my in-laws flew in, friends helped out, and uh I did four more rounds of taxil at that point and then had surgery and did a double mastectomy. And the amazing thing in the double mastectomy is when they did the surgery, I had what's called a pathological complete response to chemo, which means when they took the breast tissue and the lymph tissue, there was no living cancer left. They could see evidence that cancer had been there. And that was just huge because that was the thing when everybody said, Oh, what should I pray about? Or what are you, what are you hoping for in this? I said, I want that complete response so that I know that chemo really worked. And that's what happened. And just was so blessed to get that news. I mean, it was just the hugest sense of relief that all that chemo wasn't for nothing, that it really did what it was supposed to do.

SPEAKER_02 31:26

That's incredible. I think that that probably is the best thing in this entire experience that you had to go through such a gruesome experience. But at the end of the day, the results were positive. You've been in remission now for how long? 13 years?

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Thirst, thirst. So my daughter is almost 13. I was diagnosed almost 13 years ago. So I've been in remission 12 years and change. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

That's incredible. Okay, and then I even you and I were talking earlier. I had this question for you. So you had a newborn, and then you had double mastectomy, which it's a pretty big surgery. It takes a long time to recover from it as well. So after six days, when they started chemo for you, you were not breastfeeding your daughter.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

No, in fact, this is me being a little bit crunchy, is I actually had a lot of donor milk for my daughter. So I had several friends who had babies right around the same time. Many of us, uh, godparents' daughters both had babies who were my lifelong friends. So they gave milk, some of their friends did, some extended friends of friends. I got in touch with a lactation consultant who got me milk from some of her overproducers. So my daughter had milk from all of these amazing women that just generously gave their milk. And then we did formula as well.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

Okay. And then how long did it take you to recover from surgery? When did you get back to work?

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Oh my gosh, it was a while. So definitely the chemo surgery, it takes it out of you. So was off work for several more months at that point, and then was able to come back to work. In fact, I had sold a project in my hometown in San Diego right before all of this chaos. Um, sold this project, had a role lined up for me to be the transformation lead on the program. Of course, I didn't come back as quickly as I would have thought. Someone else had that role at that point, but the managing director on the program at the time really wanted me to be there. He felt like you're a part of this program, it's in your backyard. And so he actually carved out kind of a special projects role for me. I was not qualified for that role, by the way. I had no idea what I was doing. I did all kinds of weird things. I was a data cleansing lead. I did SAP security roles. Like, you're laughing because this is not my background, but you know, it was local. I was able to do it, and I had the support of that leadership team. So I was able to come back and take that role.

SPEAKER_02 33:36

But did you give yourself enough time to process all this though, emotionally? Doesn't seem like you did.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

I mean, probably no. I'll just say no. I think the hardest thing is I came back to work and Accenture is the exact same, right? Like my whole life has had a bomb dropped in it, and I'm fundamentally different. But Accenture is still Accenture. There's still the client demands, the pace, the expectations, the performance bar, the the clip in which these projects move at. None of none of that had changed. So it was this very jarring kind of back to work experience. And I felt like I needed to not lean in as hard, which is a really hard thing to do after being a high performer, but I just couldn't do it physically, mentally. I just couldn't work at that same capacity. And I'd always been trying to get the A at work. And I I joked at one point that I was just trying to not get fired at that point. That was like the career goal. Like, don't get fired this year in this role.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

Oh my goodness. And speaking from experience is a very, very, very hard thing to reconcile. Did it feel to you that it was unfair? Why did you have to go through it? Or you were like, okay, this is it, these are the cards I've been dealt on. I'll play the cards that I have.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

What was going through your mind? I think there's definitely moments of this is unfair when you see people whose lives just kind of seem to magically works out, right? And I think people would have said that about me before all this. Everything worked out so nicely for her. She got this great degree and this nice husband and a cool job and had a baby. And so you see people and their life looks really perfect. And what you learn is nobody's life is actually that perfect once you get to know them. People are always surprised now when they hear the story. They're like, I had no idea you went through all that. I thought you just had this great managing director job and it was all been pretty seamless along the way. So yeah, I definitely felt a little sense of this isn't fair, but it was also the cards I'd been dealt. And I also did feel a huge amount of gratitude in the process because I've said this before as a life motto. I think I'm one of the most blessed, unlucky people ever because it's extremely, extremely unlucky to get cancer at 29 while pregnant. Like, what are that is super unlucky odds? And I'm really bad at casino games and stuff too. In fact, I don't even play casino games because I'm I just don't have luck. But I mean, when I think about all the blessings that came out of that, right? With my daughter being born healthy, with my health being fine, with still being here 13 years later and healthy. I mean, so blessed, even in the in the unlucky hand of cards that I got.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

Yes, I think I'm gonna steal that. I was trying to give name to what my life looks like. And I think I would be one of those blessed, unlucky ones as well. Yeah, because you're you think you figured it out, and then something hits you by the by the side, and you're like, yeah, that's not what I signed up for. Okay. So then you intentionally took a step back in your career. And by the way, let me just actually double clock on that point that you mentioned about being blessed because triple negative is the worst kind of cancer. There is a lot of, as you mentioned, recurrence risk, very difficult to control. So it is truly, truly a blessing that you were able to control it. Because when I was going through my journey, I saw some women who had given birth, and then for them, chemo didn't work. Yeah, and I just couldn't imagine the pain, the emotional toil, and then reconciling the fact that you may not be there for the child. So that aside, but there's the cancer is such such a complicated disease. People just don't understand how complex it is managing that. And it seems so simple from outside. I would want to ask you what your experience was, but at least, like in my experience, once the surgery was done, chemo was done, and you're back to work. I'm saying that in air codes, people would just assume that you're back to normal.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Oh my gosh. Yes, a hundred percent. And I think that was one of the biggest surprises, both for people that are your friends or your colleagues, as well as for yourself. Because as you mentioned, triple negative has this early relapse period. It's those first five years. And if it relapses, it's basically deadly. There's nothing, there's not that much more else you can do once you've done the chemo and the surgery. Like there's just not many more treatment options. And so those first years back at work, the anxiety was so real for me all the time. You know, I really just couldn't trust my body. Any headache could have been a brain metastasis. Any backache wasn't just a bad chair at the office. It was in my bones. I broke a rib by tripping and falling, holding my daughter so silly. I thought then I thought my rib was broken because of a metastasis. It was just broken because of the fall. So just so many of these things came into my mind over and over again. And so not only are you managing just trying to get your work done, but you're managing all this fear and anxiety. And no one has any clue. Everyone's just like, she's done, she's cured, she's happy, she's got like cute hair again, and so everything is good, and no one can imagine the mental toll that this continues to take on you.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

Yes. And I think I shared this with you when we were chatting when I was going through my journey, and I hadn't really taken a step back to process that emotional turmoil at all. And there used to be times when I used to cross the street to get to the hospital from our office, and I would just break down crying because I had held together everything for the eight hours when people were upset with me, yelling at me. But when it was done and I it was time for me to be alone with my thoughts just in crossing the road to get to the hospital, I would be bawling. I wouldn't know why.

unknown 39:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

And I I I mean, I I laugh about that now, but I still think it was just you, even you don't know what you're feeling. There's so many things that are happening.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

You don't know what you're feeling. God bless our spouses because I kept it together so well at work, and then I'm getting home from work similar to what you're saying, and then I'm Googling things about long-term effects of chemo or metastasis, and I'm upset. And my husband's like, Can you just like try to not be so anxious about all of this? But then he's my safe person, so I'm venting to him about all of this, and like you said, just really trying to keep it together. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

Okay, so then you went back to work, adjustment period. You're also taking care of the newborn, and then you mentioned you decided to take a step back. You took more of the back back office roles. And what was that like?

SPEAKER_00 39:55

I did that special projects role at the aerospace client, and then I did some internal roles for a while and really focused just it's much slower pace internal at a consulting company. Although I can't say I liked the work nearly as much. And so I did go back to client side roles, but I was very picky about what I chose as my role. So again, focusing on local roles so I could be close to home, close to my family, close to doctors, all of those things. No more of that consultant on the road thing that I'd done for years and years. And also as a senior manager, you carry targets around sales and revenue. I mean, I did the bare minimum on those. Like some of the years, my numbers were quite bad. And in fact, even some leaders told me it feels like you're kind of hiding out down there in San Diego or just kind of hiding out. And I, you know, I think they meant it lightly, but it kind of stung too because I, you know, I wasn't hiding out. I was, I was recalibrating. I was trying to stay in the game and be successful, but I couldn't go with the same clip that that managing director partner making clip that a lot of my peers were on.

SPEAKER_02 40:52

So, how could that change your definition of success? Because when you were 29 and you had mapped out your career perfectly and it was going perfectly, then you were dealt this hand that nobody saw coming. And now you're deliberately taking steps to take it easy, step away. Listen to your body, which I would commend you for it. Not a lot of women are able to do that, but you listen to your body and commend Accenture for giving you that space to be able to take the time that you needed. How did your definition of success change during that time?

SPEAKER_00 41:21

Yeah, I would say success became about longevity, not necessarily measuring success by speed, but measuring success by being able to stay in the game, by aligning work with my home life. And really, it was about getting to that five-year mark for me. And I thought to myself, like, if I can navigate through this five-year period, I can stay in the game and I can feel like, okay, I'm gonna make it through this and uh and then I can, you know, step back in. But here's the curveball that I threw myself in that five-year period. So I get to almost five years and we decide it's really now or never if we want to have another kid. I'm not getting any younger. I'm 35 at that point with chemo, chemo impacted eggs. So who knows if this is even gonna work, right? So we decide, let's try to have another baby. And I did get pregnant. And it wasn't really about just that I wanted two kids. It was about almost getting a second shot at all of this, getting another shot at a healthy pregnancy, getting to actually enjoy my baby and a newborn, and making it through that statistical milestone of five years. And I won't say that it was a perfect pregnancy. It actually was medically a perfect pregnancy, but anxiety-wise, there was so much PTSD, for lack of a better term, because so much of being pregnant reminded me of being pregnant the first time. Pregnancy symptoms remind yourself of cancer symptoms, right? Like nausea, headaches, backaches, like all those things are also either chemo or cancer symptoms. At one point, my oncologist actually said to me, I really like you, but I'm tired of seeing you in my office because I was still going to him for checkups and stuff while I'm pregnant. And he goes, You're healthy, just go live like you're healthy. And I thought that was just so powerful. So I worked actually up until five days before my son was born. I had sold a little project at a former client and I wanted to just get that done. And when my son was born, I felt like I finally stopped bracing for impact. You know, I had hit that five years. I went through a pregnancy, and you know, that actually ended up carrying over into work. And when I returned to work, I wasn't operating so much from a place of fear. I felt like I was really ready to go back all in.

SPEAKER_02 43:24

That's incredible. And you did give yourself those few years that you needed. Be present with family, make the decisions that matter for your personal life in the long term, not just focus on work and have that singular focus. Incredible. So you did eventually make a partner. So tell me about that journey a little bit. Were you then prioritizing work more than your professional life? And then how did that land emotionally?

SPEAKER_00 43:52

Yeah. So I I made a little bit of a career change after I had my son, and I really focused more on industry leadership. So I had been doing more. Transformation programs and I focused more on uh software and platforms industry and leading accounts. And that was something that I ended up really loving. It's what I'm still doing at Accenture. And that's how we know each other from my account leadership role. So I uh I was leading accounts and I felt like I was really passionate about the work. Obviously, the pandemic's in this time frame. So works all in a little bit of a different uh shape with remote work and all of that. So in some ways, that made it more challenging to manage work in a family. In some ways it was a little easier too, because you're not as on the road as much. But I did finally make managing director uh or partner, we use the terms interchangeably in the consulting world. But I mean, that felt like such a huge victory because it had been eight and a half years as a senior manager, which if anyone knows anything about consulting, that is a very long time to be a senior manager. I may have an award for longest longevity in that role. I'm not sure. It's very upper out in consulting. So I probably should have been out many times, but again, I was able to navigate that. I had a leadership that really believed in me. It wasn't just about closing on getting a good big career milestone, but kind of closing that eight and a half year chapter of all that chaos. Because when I made my senior manager promotion, that was 48 hours before my cancer diagnosis. Like that's how close those two things were together. So this whole time period of my life had been senior manager, cancer, baby, another baby. And then those final years where I actually went back on the partner path and was able to achieve that career milestone. It just felt like such a huge victory over all of that. Like I had truly conquered so many things, conquered the naysayers, conquered the fears and the doubts that I had. And I really just felt incredibly grateful that I had made it for both, you know, health-wise and professionally.

SPEAKER_02 45:44

There are two things that stand out to me in this moment. One was your incredible compassion when you reached out to me. When we were working together, of course, we didn't spend a lot of time for talking. And it was so kind and so compassionate of you to reach out to me via text offering help, because I'm not the kind of person who asks for help, or I wasn't at the time. So it was just incredibly compassionate of you. So that was uh very much appreciated. And then just in this moment, as for me, I'm still trying to navigate this messy middle for me after my diagnosis, treatment, kind of maybe feeling okay, maybe not some days, depends on the day. But I'm navigating this messy middle of how do I find the professional and personal balance. I haven't sorted out that so far. But then just listening to your story and sitting on the other side of it right now in this moment. I feel so encouraged and I kind of feel that it's going to be okay because you have been able to do it and showcase that. So thank you for doing that.

SPEAKER_00 46:48

Well, that makes me so happy to hear that because I do always try to find some meaning from all of this. I don't want to say everything happens for a reason, but there is purpose you can gain from these types of experiences as a leader and gaining, you know, both interpersonal experience and work experience. I mean, some of the things that I stepped back and learned actually came into play later too. So it truly feels like nothing's wasted. But the most important part is what you just said is being able to impact people interpersonally. My teams, and I I make a point of it. I actually have a guy on my team whose wife's going through this right now, and him and I are closer than ever. And I'm even become close with his wife because I truly understand what they're going through with the cancer treatment. And he is a high performer, but he needed to take some time away. And I knew how to help him navigate that.

SPEAKER_02 47:40

And that's incredible. Um that was my experience as well. But for my own sort of journey, candidly, I thought taking time to take care of health was a weakness. Because my default was to push through everything. And after going through my journey, I realized that there are physical limitations in your body that you f have to listen to it. Or my journey was making me a better leader. And then this messy middle is giving me time to do this, which is you know, having conversations like this and telling the stories that we would not otherwise make time to tell. So appreciative of that fact as well. Okay, let's go to my last set of questions. So tell me about this. How has this experience changed how you lead? And you shared a little bit about this now, but it's general sense, how has this experience changed how you lead, especially when people are navigating these invisible battles?

SPEAKER_00 48:30

Well, I would say it built a tremendous amount of empathy, first of all, for people who are navigating battles. And it's not just cancer. It could be being a caregiver, it could be going through some other personal grief or trauma. And I know what it feels like to be balancing those identities of wanting to be a high performer and privately terrified or needing some space to reset, but without wanting to lose that identity you've built at work. So I think it's gave me that ability as a leader to have a lot of empathy and individualization for what people are really going through. I think also, I don't want to, hopefully my team would say this. I think I'm a pretty chill leader as well, because the truth is no problem at work can ever be as scary as hearing the words aggressive cancer when you're young. Yes. Not a project blowing up, not a client escalating. So all of that feels oddly manageable. I mean, I still need to manage these things and I get a lot of that in my role, lots of escalations and things like that. But I take it definitely a lot more in stride than I would have before of all of this, and uh and know that if you can kind of navigate through that and describe my early life as so much of wanting to have that sense of control, where if you can plan everything and control everything, you get all the outcomes you want. And what you realize, especially in navigating something like cancer, is there's just so much you can't control. And that's actually true for everything in life. All control's illusion, anyways. And I think I I bring that to my team as well that here's the things we can control and some things you just can't, and that's okay too.

SPEAKER_02 49:58

That's beautiful. Thank you, Jared. All right, my last question for you. For women listening who may be in this forced pause right now, which could be illness or caregiving or grief. What would you want them to trust about their own trajectory?

SPEAKER_00 50:15

Well, first of all, I would say I know how disoriented it feels. I know that there were times that I questioned, did they permanently alter my trajectory? Am I ever going to be this successful woman that I wanted to be? It can really mess with your head seeing other people progress above you. I saw people that were many years younger than me, people I'd even manage pass me up in my career. It's very humbling. So, first of all, people understand, people like me get it. I would say the pause is not a verdict. What's actually happening during that pause is you're gaining something. You're building maybe it's resilience, maybe it's empathy, maybe it's the ability to set boundaries, maybe it's strength. You're building all of that in that pause. And careers are long arcs. I mean, it sounds trite, but it's it's not a straight line. It seemed very straight line when I was young, right? Like, and consulting really, you know, emphasizes that because it's like you're on this two years as an analyst and two years as a consultant, but a career is a very long arc and not a straight line. And it's okay to take a step back or take a step sideways for a period of time. And when you do enter back in, you're not starting from scratch. You're starting back from a place of strength.

SPEAKER_02 51:23

That is so powerful. Thank you so much for sharing that. It was incredible to have this conversation. And just in this hour that we spent together, I am leaving energized and motivated and hopeful. So thank you for doing that to me.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

Absolutely. No, a real pleasure to be here. And thank you for sharing your story with me and having me here today. Thank you, Kristin. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 51:45

Thank you for listening to the courage curve. I hope this conversation offered you perspective, comfort, and a sense of companionship as you move through your own moment of change. Especially if you're choosing courage before clarity. And remember, women rise best when we rise together. Follow the show and share it with someone who may need it.