2B Bolder Podcast : Career Visibility Strategies & Leadership Stories from Women in Business, Tech & Sports

#127 From Harlem to Harvard: Gisele Marcus's Journey to Leadership Excellence

• Mary Killelea • Season 6 • Episode 127

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Meet Gisele Marcus, a leadership dynamo whose remarkable journey from Harlem to Harvard Business School epitomizes what it means to be bold in pursuing excellence. Growing up in what she affectionately calls "old Harlem," Gisele was raised in a household where excellence wasn't just encouraged—it was required. This foundation propelled her through Syracuse University, into a Harvard MBA program, and ultimately to becoming a TEDx speaker and respected operations executive.

What makes Gisele's story particularly powerful is her candid admission about learning the true value of networking at age 39. "I wish someone would have told me earlier that excellence alone doesn't guarantee career advancement," she reflects. After following a sponsor's networking advice during an international assignment, Gisele returned to find not just one job opportunity awaiting her, but eleven. This revelation transformed her understanding of career development and now forms the cornerstone of her guidance to other women.

Throughout our conversation, Gisele shares game-changing insights about political astuteness in the workplace, creating a compelling personal brand (hers: "I make organizations hum"), building a career portfolio that showcases your full range of talents, and embracing AI while developing the emotional intelligence that technology can't replicate. For women facing career pivots—whether by choice or circumstance—she offers practical strategies for identifying transferable skills and enlisting friends or coaches to help you see strengths you might miss in yourself.

Perhaps most inspiringly, Gisele defines boldness as "taking that extra step when you're questioning yourself," reminding us that for women, there's no such thing as being "too bold." Whether you're just starting your career journey or looking to make your next strategic move, this episode offers both the practical tools and the mindset shifts needed to truly show up and be bolder in all aspects of your professional life.

Resources:
 www.giselemarcus.com

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Gisele Marcus's Career Tips for Women Transcript

The 2B Bolder Podcast provides first-hand access to some amazing women. Guests will include women from leading enterprise companies to startups, women execs, coders, account execs, engineers, doctors, and innovators.



Mary Killelea (Host): Hi there, my name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the 2B Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. 2B Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Hi there. Welcome back to another episode of the 2B Bolder podcast, where we celebrate and amplify the voices of women who are making bold moves in their career and lives. Today, I'm honored to welcome a powerhouse in leadership, networking, and career growth, Gisele Marcus. Gisele is a native New York raised in Old Harlem. Gisele is a TEDex speaker, a Harvard Business School MBA graduate, and an operations executive who has spent her career making organizations thrive. She's passionate about helping women build their career portfolios, elevate their leadership, and master the art of networking and relationship building. Gisele has shared her insights with major organizations like the Associate of Chamber Executives, National Sales Network, Syracuse University, Autodesk, and Amalgamated Banks of South Africa. She's also been featured in Huffington Post, Black Enterprise, the Milwaukee Business Journal, and the St. Louis Business Journal. Gisele, it is so great to have you here on the show with me. Thank you for joining us.

Gisele Marcus (Guest): Thank you so much. Wonderful to be here.

Mary Killelea: Awesome. Okay. Well, let's get started. I would love for you to share your journey because we love to hear how successful women paved their own way in the path that they took. We know that, you know, not everyone takes the same linear path. So, tell us your story.

Gisele Marcus: Certainly. So, as you mentioned, I am a native New Yorker from New York City from Harlem. I like to always be clear that it's the old Harlem and not the new because Harlem has been re-gentrified and is very different from when I lived there. When I lived there it was really a place of no socioeconomic growth I would say and I was raised by my mother and my grandmother primarily because my parents divorced and separated when I was single digits and I grew up in a household where excellence was required and where initially excellence was invented. So, I remember in my elementary school years whenever I would get 100 on any of my tests or exams, my mother would take me to this store that was in our neighborhood and I could buy anything that I wanted. That actually incented me to get the A and the 100. And then when she took that away, I still kept getting the A's and the 100s. Excellence really started there. I come from a household where I am a first generation college graduate. Both of my parents elevated the most high level of education to a high school diploma. Though I will say that my mother is one of the smartest people I know on the face of the earth, right? Because all smarts do not necessarily come out of books. I went to public school from 1st through 12th. I had a very brief stint in Catholic school for my first grade year, I believe it was, and it just didn't work out well for me. That was because the nuns thought that I was like a snappy mouth, I guess. And growing up in a household as an only child with adults, I didn't feel that that was the case, but that they did. So that was problematic. So my grandmother required that my mother pull me out of there cuz she didn't want to have to go down there to have a firm discussion with any of the nuns.

Gisele Marcus: So I went to public school and in New York City people always laugh because our public schools have numbers. So I went to PS11 for elementary school, IS-70 for intermediate school, and then I went to a specialized high school, Murray Bertram High School for business careers. because business was what I knew. My mother worked for the phone company in total by the time she retired I think it was 40 47 years and 8 months. So she started there as an operator and she retired working in their command center putting together specialized lines. So if say the president of the United States was in town, this is before we had all this technology, you actually had to have special lines created for phone calls to actually happen. So she worked there and my dad worked for the New York Times. So all I knew was business. So that was the path that I took. Interestingly enough, in high school where I had the opportunity to possibly major in advertising or marketing or operations, I actually majored in secretarial studies, right? At a time when shorthand, which is something that is such a thing of the past, was in vogue and it was helpful and typing right at 70 words, 80 words a minute. Was what I strived for. It turned out really great because by the time I got to high school and to college, I was able to type all my papers. I was able to take notes quickly. I'm able to take notes now that no one else can read besides me in shorthand. Then when I left and I graduated like I think 16th out of like 560 students in my high school. So this excellence is something that was just inside of me in terms of who I was. I decided to go to Syracuse University to get my undergraduate degree. so I have a BS in business and management information systems and transportation distribution management. Why did I choose those fields? Because at the time, management information systems, computers were really vogue. And from a business perspective, I wanted to learn a little bit more about them. So that's why I chose that. And then they added transportation distribution management which now people would refer to as logistics because at that time Syracuse University was one of 11 schools that had that major. So I thought it made sense that I needed to find work after graduating. So I was hoping to ensure that I would have a job where I could pay back my loans.

Gisele Marcus: So that's those choices happened and then I ended up working at what is now Accenture was Anderson Consulting at the time as a consultant and it was a great role had the opportunity to work within banking and building what we call then graphical user interfaces for companies that were doing trades. I loved it because a number of people that graduated with this MIS degree ended up doing coding and you can probably tell that I am someone that's an extrovert. So for me to interact with a computer all day, it's not going to work very well for me. So the fact that I was able to go beyond that at Accenture was something I really enjoyed. I always kept my mind's eye on graduate school. I always wanted to earn an MBA, not quite sure where that came from. I think it just is a string of this excellence. And maybe, you know, I know I do know where it comes from. When I was applying for undergrad, I also got into New York University and I really wanted to go to Syracuse. My mother sent the money to NYU because she felt that that was the better choice because here I am a New York City girl. She's like, "How could she be 5 hours away from this baby of mine?" And that was the first time I think my mother and I had what I'm going to call a discussment, a discussion argument. And she was just really firm. And I I can understand it now as an adult being concerned about my safety. How could she be away? But what she did the morning the money was due to Syracuse, she said she couldn't sleep that night. She said, "So, you know what? I'm going to let you go where you want to go. And if by chance your grades do not look good, you will be right back home." So, that was my ticket, my golden ticket to go. And I went. I just really had a great undergraduate experience. I felt that I belonged on the Syracuse campus. It was a very diverse campus. A large campus. We have about 60,000 students. So, it's a pretty large student body population. I was in leadership there. I was the president of the pre-professional management society, which was within the school of management. I pledged a sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated, which is an international sorority that is based on public service. And I then ended up working at Accenture. I ended up working at Accenture when I left Syracuse University which I had spoken about a little bit earlier. And what that led to, the reason I wanted to go get my MBA is because when my mother told me that I could go to Syracuse, I think she felt that new NYU was a better school. So, I told her at that time, I'm going to get an MBA from an Ivy League school when I graduate. And she was like, "Yeah, that's so far out." And the other reason I believe I was interested in getting an Ivy League MBA is because Colombia was one of the schools I was also very interested in and they didn't accept me for undergrad. So, I think all of those things told me, "Hey, I'm reaching for more after I get this undergraduate degree." So, I applied to five business schools, five that are always in the top 10, including Harvard, Northwestern, Wharton, University of Michigan, and I was able to actually get into all five of them.

Gisele Marcus: And I chose Harvard primarily because I really wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to do. And we know that Northwestern is really known for marketing. We know Wharton is known for finance. And I was like, boy, I'm not quite ready to make that decision. And at Harvard Business School, you get a general management degree. So, I thought it would buy me two more years to really figure out where I wanted to land. So that worked out pretty well. And then when I left there, I ended up going into the telecommunications industry. When I left there, I immediately ended up working at United Airlines as a financial analyst, which you will not see on my resume or on my LinkedIn profile, because when I got there, I realized that it was not the right job for me. Didn't really have a lot of responsibility. I was in budgeting and you were assigned to a business unit and you would have to meet with them about their budget for the next year and we had a formula, let's say it's 5%. You know you make you know next year you can have 5% more of a budget and when I would go and have the discussion with the leader of the group and of course they want more they want this guy they want 15% more. I go to my boss and they want 15% more. He says let me go, he's the director, let me go talk to the VP. He says the VP said they cannot have that and they can only get 5%. I went back and I was like is this going to be what my life is like as a budget analyst. I was like I'm going to go brain dead. I have got to do something else, something different. So I ran in just coincidentally in the building I lived in. A gentleman that worked at what is now AT&T was a member then. So I was able to secure a job in product management and new product development. So it was great. I launched two new products that have patents at the US patent office. I went from there into being a senior marketing leader and from there I went into the call center which is when I learned that operations was my thing. And what I mean by that, when I was in new product development, the process of how you're assessed can be very subjective. Meaning, I launched two products, it went well, but what would have happened if I didn't launch two products in my review? Would they say she didn't do well? Is that my fault? Is that the market's fault? And I wanted to take that type of subjectiveness out of the evaluation process because I always want to know how well I'm doing or how well I'm not doing. And being in the call center showed me that they always have metrics. They know how quick it was you answered the phone. They know the customer satisfaction ratings. They know how many customers called. And I felt that month to month I knew how we were doing. So that's where I actually began to realize operations were really where I belonged. And then from there working at Johnson Controls, Thermo Fisher Scientific, I was able to take on these profit and loss responsibilities. So P&L responsibilities where I was actually running businesses and that I loved and primarily they had operations components. So 80% operations, 20% sales. So I really felt that I had my groove. And the largest business that I've run has been $800 million when I was at Johnson Controls. I really enjoyed that work and it encompassed clients that were in 40 countries across five continents and that was really where I had my mojo I would say. And later on here in my career, I recently transitioned to higher education. So I tell people I've been in corporate America since Jesus was a baby. And coming into corporate America, I am now the professor of practice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. And I'm also recently appointed the vice dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion. I'm at Washington University in St. Louis at the Olin Business School. And given what's going on in our country in terms of these three words, I still do feel that I'm the right person at the right time to lead this work. And how did I get here? In my telling you about my story,

Gisele Marcus: I did not come up through the diversity, equity, and inclusion ranks, but I was elected into the space when I was working because it was something that was important to me that I was interested in. And at times, they didn't even have Mary, they didn't even have the titles then, right? So, I worked alongside our executive sponsors who led employee resource groups. I had the opportunity to help design DEI strategic plans to help leaders evangelize those plans. So I was always just at the center of the work and I was looking at an opportunity here at Washington University in operations. It was really funny that the recruiter, I think the interview was seven or eight minutes, Mary, and the recruiter says to me, he's like, you know, I really think you're overqualified for this and I really would do you a disservice if I put you in that role. Through that process I realized I knew someone here, unbeknownst to me that was a professor in the organizational behavior department and said they had this opportunity available to be a professor of practice which basically means teaching from the perspective of what's practical in the workplace and it had been open for a year. They had two failed interview attempts and she said, "You know, I see you have DEI on your resume. Would you be interested?" And I was like, "Wow." She said, "Have you ever thought about teaching, Mary?" I said, "Never." She said, "Well, you have a TEDex. You said you have a TEDex. You've had the opportunity to do a lot of public speaking." She said, "Public speaking is like teaching." And I said, "I think you're right. I can't deny that." So, on and on, that's how I ended up in this role. And it's been fabulous because the professors of practice at my institution require that you have, you know, extensive work experience to be in the role. So that's been great to be able to share 25 plus years of experience in the classroom. But what's nice about working in higher education is that there's no limit in terms of what you can do. And what I mean by that, right before I came here, I started serving on my first, publicly traded board. I'm on the board of a bank called First Mid Bank and Trust. It's a regional bank, but oftentimes when you're in a corporate space, you may not be able to do that because oftentimes they'll say that's a conflict. So being at this institution, they actually embrace that because it helps to round out my experience and keep my experience current. That has worked out really well. And in addition, I can do things like this, right? Be able to be on a podcast and not hide it. I can still post it on LinkedIn,

Mary Killelea: Right

Gisele Marcus: Versus if I was in a corporation, well, I don't know that I want them to know that I'm doing this. So, what I appreciate about higher ed is that everything can be done in the daylight and it's all suitcased in one in one suitcase, but with compartments and the institution is fine with that because it helps it also helps their brand as well.

Mary Killelea: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing that story. My mom used to work at the telephone company years ago in New York, so there might be some history there or connections, who knows? Secondly, something that I heard you kind of weave throughout your story and experiences was you looked for opportunities to be successful in decision making whether you stayed or left and you didn't waste time in those decisions. What advice do you give women who spend too much time in a job that they should have left a long time ago?

Gisele Marcus: Great question, Mary. So, my response to that is you are in charge of your career. You are also in charge of the story associated with your career. So, for me, when I decided to leave United Airlines, I literally had been there, I believe it was three months by the time I left. And I could have chosen just to stay because you don't want that gap on your resume. But I valued what was most important about the experiences that were on my resume. Um, and because of that, I felt given that I just earned this Harvard Business School degree on top of the three years experience at Accenture, surely I should be able to garner adding experience to my repertoire. That really gives me the opportunity to be a great team member or even to be a leader. And I felt that that particular job was not going to offer it to me. And to your point, as I was interviewing, of course, people said to me, you've only been there for x amount of time. And I said, I know that. Can you help me or not? Are you interested in my skill set or not? And if you're not, I'm going to move on. And I got lucky because someone did it. So it's not that I'm a person that can't stay because that's what that's the question. People feel that if you leave a place, you can't stay at places long. But I was a metech which is now AT&T for six years. So I would say cut and run if it's something that doesn't serve you.

Mary Killelea: Absolutely. Yes. And that's what I think you know well, like I grew up and my dad worked at IBM for 25 years and retired and then I've you know kind of done some rotations over my span. But you look at this younger generation and they're like every two years they're like, "Hey, I want to get a raise and they're not going to give it to me. I'm out." And I kind of think that's smart.

We'll be back after a quick break. Hey listeners, look, we all know that being a woman in a male-dominated tech industry is tough. You have to do everything the guides do, but backwards and in heels. That's why I'm such a fan of the podcast Be the Way Forward from anab.org. Brenda Darden Wilkerson, the CEO of Anita Beam.org and host of Be the Way Forward, is having thought provoking conversations with leaders from companies like Adobe, Slack, Google about fear, failure, and the faith to get back up again. That's right, not success, but the moment when everything went wrong and what they've learned from some of their worst mistakes. Because we can learn so much more from things that go wrong than from things that went right. Every episode is full of insights, tips, and actionable advice you can use in your own career. Sometimes you don't need your sheer heroes to teach you how to soar. You need them to teach you how to fall flat with grace. So listen to Be the Way Forward wherever you get your podcast or watch at anab.org/mpodcast.

Gisele Marcus: I agree. And I would say the only thing about when you do move around, you should be able to explain it.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, totally.

Gisele Marcus: And I believe if you can do that and you're able to weave a story around it, you'll be fine because typically, you know, in an interview someone's going to ask, well, why did you go from here to there? And as long as you are able to explain it in a way that, you know, makes sense, I don't think it's a problem at all.

Mary Killelea: What are some of the biggest pitfalls you see that prevent women from growing in their careers, getting in their own way?

Gisele Marcus: One thing I would say is political astuteness right we as women I'm going to generalize if we think about the technical skills and what I mean by that what's on the job description right typically as a woman you know we have to feel like we have to do 95% of it before we even interview for the job right when sometimes men feel that Hey, you know, half of that is probably good enough. I'm good enough to get that job. I know half of these things right here. But then there's the other side of being politically astute, right? So, it's the things that aren't written in the job description, right? Knowing you know, do you know the people that are two levels up from the person you report to? Do you know when to speak and when to be silent? I've seen someone that I know actually teach a course on political astuteness and one of the things he told me, he said, a CEO told me once, "Bill, you're going to get fired one day for saying the right thing at the wrong time." And I think this whole aspect of being politically astute is something that I don't know where people learn it, maybe just innately in their households. It's surely not something that I learned. So I think that sometimes as women we're at a disadvantage. It also is about the network that you're building along the way. It's about not just the mentors but the sponsors that you have along the way. So I think that is one of the things that's in the way of us as women moving forward.

Gisele Marcus: The second thing that I would say that's in the way is sometimes us. And what I mean by that is, you know, we have aspirations to get to that next rung in the ladder. And sometimes we will tell ourselves a story about what we don't have and why we can't get there, but we'll watch someone else get a promotion. And we'll say, well, shoot, that person didn't seem to have all of the check boxes, right? So that's what I mean by sometimes we get in our own way where, hey, do what you see happening in your workplace. You see others getting opportunities and they might not have checked all the boxes. Why is that? What's different about that? And it probably has something to do with the political astuteness side of things, right? So those are some of the reasons why I think, you know, women sometimes don't elevate and escalate as fast as they would like.

Mary Killelea: I completely agree. You mentioned networking and relationship building. Let's talk about your TEDex.

Gisele Marcus: Sure.

Mary Killelea: Tell everyone what your TEDex is about and then kind of what was that experience like? What were you hoping the takeaways to be from the listeners?

Gisele Marcus: Sure. So, the TEDex title is Networking Made Easy. And what I was hoping that listeners would take away is that here are some really easy implementable nuggets that you could use as soon as the video actually ended. Why did and I created it because I learned or I felt I learned at a late age the importance of networking. I was actually 39 when I really figured it out. And I think if I knew about it when I was 29, wow, what could be different in my life, you know? When I worked at Accenture and I remember after work like on Fridays sometimes they would wheel in like a bar and you could have, you know, cocktails and I was like clutching my pearls. I was like, "Oh my god, they're drinking in the office. I don't want to be associated with that." So, I tried to stay as far back away from it as possible. Then when people would say, you know, we're going out, you know, to socialize, oh, I'm too busy because at my household, I learned I have to be excellent. So, I need to spend at least three or four more hours working on X, Y, and Z to get that well without going out and saying yes. So I learned late when I went on an expatriate assignment to Johannesburg, South Africa, the importance of networking because I left my was it Johnson Controls and I left the assignment I was on to go on this expat assignment and I was just curious Mary I said so when I get back how do I get back into a role? Because it wasn't like back in the day, the heyday of General Electric and GE, they used to tell you two steps, three steps.

Gisele Marcus: This is where you're going after this assignment. You're going to do this and then you're going to do this and then you're going to do this. It wasn't like that in my company. So I said to the person who signed off on it, his name is Ian Campbell. I hope he listens to this. I said to him because my HR person was like, "If you're concerned about that, talk to him." because he signed off on all of the expat assignments. And he was a direct report to the president of my business unit. So I went and talked to him and he said, "Well, you know, one of the things you have to do is meet with your mentors and your sponsors at least every 3 months when you're an expat assignment." And he said, "I will be one of your sponsors." What a gift. I did what he told me. I came back every 3 months and he said, "Tell us 6 months before you return that you'll be back so that we can start looking for a job for you cuz what are we doing? We're putting opportunities on the drawing board." So, we know about them before they hit LinkedIn, right? Or before the job description is even designed and we can begin to say, "Oh, we know Gisele Marcus is coming back. This would be a great job for her." So what happened, Mary. For me by doing what he told me to do I was concerned about having a job. When I came back by doing what he told me to do I had 11 offers. So that told me there's something to this networking and if I would have done it earlier the sky would have been the limit.

Mary Killelea: Wow. That's great advice. Tell me about the career portfolio.

Gisele Marcus: The career portfolio. So, I've had an opportunity in my career and, right around COVID where my job was actually eliminated and I needed to find new work. So, the good thing about that was it was a clean sheet of paper because until that point, you know, had been called to do X assignment, Y assignment and if it made sense, I was like, yeah, I'll take on that opportunity. And I wanted to. So during COVID, I was like, you know, I really need to find a way to suitcase my skill set cuz there's so much that I had done, but in a way that is aesthetically pleasing. So it was a colored portfolio that was bound and it had these different categories. So, it had one category with my bio, one category with my resume, another category in terms of the types of clients I had served because when I was at Johnson Controls and at Cushman and Wakefield, I worked across an array of industries. So, I would share what industries and the different clients because they were all like Fortune 1000 companies that would be familiar. And then I had another section that spoke to what I called my media kit. So it spoke to any time when I actually landed in an article or articles that I had written or if I had been a part of an interview. So I put all of that into a portfolio that was a supplement to my interview because in an interview you can never tell folks everything about you. And what was good about it was that it was a unique way to actually showcase who you are. So, I believe that that assisted me a great deal during the pandemic. And then the other thing I needed to do because in the pandemic we weren't really seeing a lot of people in person. So, I had to figure out how to then make it electronic and I was able to do that. So, it had like page turning like you really felt like you were actually turning pages in a magazine. So, it was a really great tool for job search.

Mary Killelea: I think the way you mention how you're coming in and using that, leveraging your experience and showcasing it, it goes hand in hand with personal branding to me in my mind. Tell me what your view is on personal branding. And I like to hear that in the news more now than ever. And that's something I'd like to concentrate on in discussions on this podcast to help women again take control of their own narrative. So let's talk and get your opinion on personal branding.

Gisele Marcus: Yes. So I think personal branding is essential. My personal brand my tagline is I make organizations hum and that goes along with my operations background. It also goes along with this diversity, equity, and inclusion space in terms of how I help clients do better in terms of engaging their employees. So, that's my tagline. Everything that I do in terms of being on podcasts like this one or anything that I write or recently the BBC actually had me I had a quote in an article about diversity, equity, and inclusion. So everything that I do amounts to that tagline or fits in there so that when I'm speaking with people and they say what do you do and as part of my elevator pitch I start off and I say I make organizations hum and by doing these particular things. So what I think is also important in terms of branding is to always have an elevator pitch. So one that is right you can actually really do it in an elevator. So, you know, you could say it in 30 seconds. You need a two minute spiel as well. For opportunities where you may be in an interview situation, I think that personal branding is really important and because it is such a buzzword today. There it's so much easier to get it done with a lot of the tools that are out there today that are free to help you brand yourself. The other thing that I've done, I invested in a company here in St. called a dose of insight and it is a marketing firm and I've had them actually do all of my collateral and that includes creating my logo and then I also have a PowerPoint deck where I actually have standard slides. I have note cards, right? So everything just I would say everything kind of works with each other kind of like a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces fit together

Mary Killelea: And you're consistent. You're consistent in all your present of how you show up.

Gisele Marcus: Correct.

Mary Killelea: I love that. What I love about your tagline is the hum part. The person who's listening to it can apply their perfect hum. So it's really very clever in the way you use that particular word.

Gisele Marcus: Thank you.

Mary Killelea: So what does to be bolder mean to you?

Gisele Marcus: Yes. To be bolder means to take that extra step, right? There's no such thing for women as being too bold, right? So to be bolder, to be bolder, I think gives us that license to take that next step when we're questioning ourselves about, well, I don't know that I can do that. We think to be bolder, I could do that. And what is there to lose by trying?

Mary Killelea: I love it. What advice would you give your 20-year-old self?

Gisele Marcus: Oh boy. My 20-year-old self, I would say that we are a product of our environment, of our parents, our upbringing. And one thing that I would have liked for someone to have told me is that this whole concept that my mother told me about, you know, get straight A's and do the work with excellence, you'll get a promotion. I wish someone would have told me that's really not true. That is really not how it works. But my mom, this is what she knew. So that's what she told me. So I would have loved for someone to tell me that because I think that my trajectory may have been very different. So I would tell myself that. I would tell myself that networking is not a bad word. Relationship building is all about the opportunity to help you accelerate where you want to go next. So, as you are being bolder, your relationships can help you get there.

Mary Killelea: I love that. I also want to cover the topic of pivoting because I think a lot of people are being laid off. So, you're either pivoting because you have to or because you're forced to. What are some strategies or advice that you have to help women either look at themselves and see where their transferable skills are or just other advice?

Gisele Marcus: Yes, I think you hit the nail on the head, transferable skills and I think that that's something that again you need to be able to tell your own story about what they are. I believe sometimes by let's just say if you were someone that came up in the marketing ranks, right? You call yourself a marketing person because that's what you have done all this time. But you've probably also been a leader, right? You've probably also been a great communicator. You've probably also been creative. So when you think about those words, what other roles might I be good at with that? So, and what I would say, sometimes it's hard for us to see ourselves and all of the awesomeness that's within us. So I would suggest sitting with people who know you, talk about what you have done and have your friends kind of help you along with, hey, this is an area that you could that may be of interest to you. Like for me, for example, this pivot into higher education, I didn't think about it, but it made so much sense because I had done that work before, but quite honestly, I would have never applied for a teaching role and I wouldn't because I wouldn't have been looking where they were, right? But now I realize, hm, and it would have been great for that light bulb to come on some other way, but I do believe that things happen the way they're supposed to happen. But when you open yourself up to other possibilities and a lot of times we can't see them for ourselves.

Gisele Marcus: So I would say get your girlfriends together and figure that out. Secondarily, something in my life that has been a blessing is having a coach. I think that that is really important because they can often help you see things that you cannot see and they are on the outside looking in. And I will tell you that coaches for me have just been invaluable. I've had one for I've had two different ones over a decade and a half and they have really helped me to accelerate getting from here to there and they've helped me to see these skills that I may not see.

Mary Killelea: I love that. And I know we're almost out of time, so I just want to touch on a couple more topics, but so AI is changing the landscape of employment of businesses. I want to talk about how you think about AI, how someone can embrace or put their thought or head around AI in a positive way instead of feeling threatened by it. And then also in, you know, thinking about what we were talking about today, I want to bring in emotional intelligence because I don't think and I think that's the human element that AI can't replace. So, I'd love your perspective on that.

Gisele Marcus: Sure. So artificial intelligence, ladies, embrace it. We're not going to be able to avoid it. Matter of fact, for individuals that are looking for work right now, I would say jump into AI in terms of learning more about it. And there's so many ways online that you can learn these things free of charge. This is where we're heading. So whether we like it or not, it's going to be part of our lives, right? So I would say embrace it and not be afraid of it because if we're afraid of it, we are going to miss that next frontier and it's going to interfere with you being bolder. To your point, yes, about emotional intelligence. Yeah, this is the personal piece, right? It is and I actually am certified in emotional intelligence and this is really the secret sauce in terms of how you interact with people and get the best out of people and how you show up at your best. And one thing that I always tell my students is that no one should know you better than you know yourself. Right? And on this journey of being emotionally intelligent, it is a journey. It's never over, right? You've never, you've never arrived. So there's always something to improve upon. And to your point, I do also believe that that is the difference maker that AI, you know, really can't touch yet,

Mary Killelea: Right? What's next for you? Any exciting projects? What? And then also how can people get in touch with you?

Gisele Marcus: Sure. So what's next for me? I have been spending more time with my work in other places abroad. So what I mean by that is recently I was interviewed by a French newspaper about what's going on with DEI here in the United States. So that was lovely. I got it back and it was all in French. So, that was a little bit of a challenge, but I saw my name there, so I was like, they did actually take my quote and I've been on like a few podcasts in the UK, podcasts in Africa. So, I think that what's important is recognizing that the world is not flat, right? That the world is very diverse. And I'm someone that I feel that I am a citizen of the world. I love to travel like in Africa I've been on like to 14 countries for example and I've always been enamored with culture and one of the most exciting portions of a course that I teach here it's called leading across differences and I have a segment called diversity equity and inclusion around the globe and we talk about how diversity equity and inclusion shows up differently how the people that are privileged and not privileged are different in different u parts of the world and how different diversity dimensions show up in different places and spaces. So, I'm hoping to do more work in that space.

Mary Killelea: Well, it sounds fantastic and I so appreciate you sharing your time with us today and just this conversation. I've learned so much and it's been a true delight. So, thank you for being here.

Gisele Marcus: Same here. Thank you for having this podcast and having a space for women such as myself to share our stories.

Mary Killelea: Thank you.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. If you liked our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bbolder.com. That's the number 2 little bbolder.com.