Monique Kelley, author of Redefining Networking, Discusses How to Embrace This Critical Skill #159

Networking gets a bad reputation. And honestly? It's earned it.

For most people, the word conjures images of awkward small talk, business cards nobody keeps, and conversations that feel more like auditions than actual human connection. It feels transactional. It feels fake. And for a lot of women, especially, it feels like a game they were never taught how to play.

But what if the problem isn't networking itself — it's the way we've been taught to think about it?

On the 2B Bolder Podcast, host Mary Killelea sits down with Monique Kelley — professor, consultant, and author of Redefining Networking: How to Lead with Your Unique Value, an Amazon #1 Bestseller in Business Ethics — to completely reframe what networking is, what it isn't, and why getting it right might be the single most important career move you make.

Monique is a two-time PRNEWS Top Women in PR award recipient, a founding member of CHIEF, and has been featured in FOX and Fast Company. She's built a career working with some of the biggest names in biopharma — Pfizer, Roche, Lilly, Johnson & Johnson — not by chasing opportunities, but by building meaningful relationships that opened doors long after the conversation ended. Today she teaches the only Career Readiness course at Boston University's College of Communication, shaping how the next generation of professionals show up, connect, and lead.

This conversation covers it all — her career journey from a pre-med detour into communications and healthcare PR, the moment she stepped in to present to a major client when her boss was out and realized that relationships matter just as much as the deck, and the pivots that took her from agency life to in-house roles to fractional consulting and eventually the classroom.

Mary and Monique dig into the real stuff:

• What most people fundamentally get wrong about networking — and why that misunderstanding is costing them real opportunities
• What "leading with your value" actually means in practice, not just as a concept but as a daily behavior
• A clear, three-step framework for defining your unique value, choosing the right audience, and showing up consistently — on LinkedIn and beyond
• Why your network isn't a list of contacts. It's a living system of people who understand what you bring and actively want to advocate for you
• How to build a network from scratch when you feel like you have nothing to offer and nowhere to start
• Why remote work and meeting overload are making organic connection harder than ever — and what to do about it
• The truth about "I don't have time to network" (spoiler: it's a prioritization issue, not a time issue)
• What Monique is seeing right now across executives, students, and mid-career professionals — and the specific behaviors she notices in women who are actually building momentum
• What she teaches her Career Readiness students at BU that experienced professionals desperately need to hear
• And the one thing she wishes she had understood earlier about building a career that lasts

Whether you're in the middle of a career transition, feeling stuck in a role that no longer fits, or just dreading the next industry event — this episode will completely shift how you think about connection, value, and what it actually means to build a career on your own terms.

🎧 Listen now on the 2B Bolder Podcast. Share it with a friend who's making a move. And leave a review so more women can find this show.