Ever wondered how to juggle what you love and your work like a pro athlete? In this episode, we’re talking with Katrina Purcell, who runs a company that helps tech businesses and charities grow efficiently. Katrina shares her career journey, from her days in media with the Discovery Channel and Bloomberg to jumping into the tech world with an MBA from Columbia. Her journey shows how important it is to be flexible, have good people around you, and do the work you feel called to do to really make a difference.
From TV to leading in tech, Katrina talks about learning to swim as an adult and getting lapped by kids, which is a lot like learning to be a better leader. We focus on how having mentors and supporters is key to moving up in your career, and you’ll learn how to make real connections that bridge your skill gaps and help you grow.
Struggling with managing your energy and keeping everything in balance? Katrina opens up about managing her many roles, dealing with draining people, and checking in with herself every few months. Find out her tips for being a genuine leader by being open, caring, and always ready to listen. With a nod to helping others and facing new challenges, we highlight the importance of community support. Katrina also gives us her take on making a positive mark, no matter how well-known you are, by acting on your values and investing in yourself.
👉 Listen now on iTunes, Spotify, and all major platforms!
#Leadership #ProfessionalDevelopment #LeadershipDevelopment #EnergyManagement #AuthenticLeadership
Ever wondered how to juggle what you love and your work like a pro athlete? In this episode, we’re talking with Katrina Purcell, who runs a company that helps tech businesses and charities grow efficiently. Katrina shares her career journey, from her days in media with the Discovery Channel and Bloomberg to jumping into the tech world with an MBA from Columbia. Her journey shows how important it is to be flexible, have good people around you, and do the work you feel called to do to really make a difference.
From TV to leading in tech, Katrina talks about learning to swim as an adult and getting lapped by kids, which is a lot like learning to be a better leader. We focus on how having mentors and supporters is key to moving up in your career, and you’ll learn how to make real connections that bridge your skill gaps and help you grow.
Struggling with managing your energy and keeping everything in balance? Katrina opens up about managing her many roles, dealing with draining people, and checking in with herself every few months. Find out her tips for being a genuine leader by being open, caring, and always ready to listen. With a nod to helping others and facing new challenges, we highlight the importance of community support. Katrina also gives us her take on making a positive mark, no matter how well-known you are, by acting on your values and investing in yourself.
👉 Listen now on iTunes, Spotify, and all major platforms!
#Leadership #ProfessionalDevelopment #LeadershipDevelopment #EnergyManagement #AuthenticLeadership
Thanks for coming back. I'm your host, Dr Latasha Nelson, and we have a truly remarkable guest with us here today. Katrina Purcell is the founder of a consulting firm that specializes in efficient growth metrics for tech companies and, yes, and for nonprofits. We're going to talk about that in a second. Katrina's journey from conquering an Ironman which is mind-blowing to leading her own company, reflects her passion and growth for empowerment, and so I am so super duper excited to dig into this and, Katrina, I have to ask tech companies and nonprofits.
Speaker 2:I know it seems a little like it doesn't make sense, right, one is all about impact and one is all about making profits, but in reality companies are all the same. They have a lot of similar challenges. They have, you know, they want to hire the best team, they want to motivate their team, they want to be able to scale and grow, and even nonprofits are trying to grow their impact. They're trying to grow the amount of fundraising, and so it really actually makes a lot of sense when you get into the nitty gritty of it, but people are always a little taken aback when they find out at first.
Speaker 1:Yes, Give me some more about your journey. So I would love to hear more about how your family adapted to your transition, because I feel like there's a story there and I'm glad you made the connection, but take us on that journey with you.
Speaker 2:So this is a it's a bit of a winding journey. I love my career path because it's not a ladder, I like to call it more of a jungle gym. So I've made some lateral moves. I've, you know, I've gone back and forth. Maybe I took a step back to go forward, and so I started my career in media and I worked for the Discovery Channel and then I spent 12 years at Bloomberg and so I loved media. It was fun. I really enjoyed the adrenaline rush of live news, but it really wears on you after a while and it's kind of a lot.
Speaker 2:And I'm really good at project management. I have been my whole life. I'm the oldest child, so I feel like it's just innate in us to manage everyone and everything. And so I decided to do project management, but sticking with media and sticking with the technology side of media. But doing that, I started doing change management projects. We were changing people's roles, we were adding and implementing new technology which changed processes, and I really kind of fell in love with that part of business and so I decided that the time was right.
Speaker 2:My husband actually very much pushed me towards this, getting an MBA, because my undergraduate degree was in media. I had a lot of self-limiting beliefs that people weren't taking me seriously because my undergraduate degree was in media, that I didn't have a business degree. And my husband felt like the investment would be worthwhile because that way I could be more confident. So he thought maybe you won't learn much, but I want you to be more confident and if you learn that then it's worth it. And so I did an executive program at Columbia and it's 24 months, it's Saturdays all day and it's intense and it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of effort, but it was very much worth it.
Speaker 2:And after that I switched to pure play technology companies, did an IPO during COVID and then decided you know what? I can? Take my skills on the road. Why do I, you know? And my husband again pushed me and said just do your own thing, let's see what happens. And so the company was born last year in the summer. It's been almost a year. I can't believe it. It's insane to think about and it has not worked out exactly as I thought. In some ways it's worked out way better. In some ways maybe not as well, but it's a fun ride.
Speaker 1:There's so much to unpack there. I love the change management aspect. I love the support, I love the confidence booster. That's one of those areas I can completely relate to. I actually my advanced degree is because I decided, hey, I want to start my own charter schools and while I'm a learning enthusiast, you can give me a class on basket weaving and guess what I'm taking it. I was like, yeah, I don't want to leave people who might look at me and say, what do you know about public education? Right, and so I decided to go back to school. For that reason. I wanted that credibility, and so I love hearing the investment that you were, that you made in yourself and the support you received from your family to help with this. So tell us a little bit more about some of the things that have gone better than expected and some of the other things.
Speaker 2:So when I originally launched, I was going to purely focus on tech companies, because that's where I had spent the majority of my career and that was really what I felt was my bread and butter. And in the early days of launching, a nonprofit reached out and they said we're really trying to grow, we're really trying to scale, we're making a big impact, but we want to 10X that impact. Can you help us? And I said, yeah, I mean, why couldn't I? And so at Columbia I had done a lot of social entrepreneurship classes and done work with nonprofits and pro bono work and really felt called in a way that you know, in doing the work you almost don't feel like you're working right Because you know that you're making an impact. And I think for me, that was really what I was searching when I thought to launch my own company. It was how can I work for people who I like, how can I help people who don't have access to resources? And so I was so happy they reached out, because they are a fantastic client. I love working with them, I'm really embedded with their team and getting to bring things to fruition and getting to kind of set the strategy, but then also help them execute on it, and so that's worked out better than I could possibly have imagined, I think you know.
Speaker 2:Where do things not work out as well? I'm my worst manager, like I'm a terrible manager. So there's that when you work for yourself, you have no one to answer to but yourself, right? And so you know. When we are type A, you know to-do list a mile long people. Sometimes it no one to answer to but yourself, right? And so you know. When we are type A, you know to-do list of mile-long people. Sometimes it's hard to say let's, you know, take a step back.
Speaker 1:You know I am always here. You just need to say just tell me to stop. You don't need to know the details, Just tell me to stop. But what I hear also is there is a passion that has driven a lot of what you've experienced, especially as you've transitioned into building your own company, and balancing passion with professional endeavors can be tricky. Can you talk to us a little bit about that and what it looked like for you?
Speaker 2:It can be so tricky.
Speaker 2:So you can be passionate about something that in no way will make you money.
Speaker 2:You can be passionate about things that in some ways, can all come together to help you to be able to bring in income, and so, for me, that's what I've tried to focus on. So I also love learning, and in a lot of my roles, I really focus on what are the three things I'm going to take away from this role that then I can do somewhere else. Right? Because everything you're learning and doing is generally transferable to work, and so I think it's important to think about yourself as a whole person, not just as a person who's passionate but maybe can't make money with their passion, or a person who makes money and then spends time on their passion in other ways, and so figuring out a way. I think it really is winning the lottery to try and figure out a way to have your passion and have it also provide you income, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't have passions that are not income producing, just because they do bring you joy and they help to balance your life out.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad you brought Ironman back into this Last year. My oldest is 26. So last year my oldest is 26. She peer pressured me some into signing up for a Spartan race for her.
Speaker 2:Oh, nice Okay.
Speaker 1:I love your energy, I love your enthusiasm. I was not as happy about it, but she mentioned that one of her friends' moms does several Spartan races with them, and this is still nothing close to an Ironman, right, and with things like this, it requires practice, right? You've got to train to build that stamina that you mentioned, right. So can you speak to me a little bit about that as it relates to your leadership journey?
Speaker 2:Training for a race like that is very humbling. So when I signed up for the Ironman I didn't know how to swim. I had lived my whole life and not drown. I grew up with a pool in my backyard but we used to jump off the diving board and kind of doggy paddle to the side. Swimming 2.4 miles is very different than getting around as a kid, right, and so I took adult swim lessons and it sucked. Every Monday night I would go up, there would be little kids swimming, just lapping you in the pool and you'd be there with a buoy between your legs and the instructor would be saying no, just stay straight. And next thing you know you'd be flipped over and you wouldn't know why you flipped over. They're like suck in, do this. Over time.
Speaker 2:Obviously you get better and better right, and I think as adults we tend to forget how much effort it does take to learn something and how humbling it can be. And when we're children we are so excited to learn new things and as adults we tend to we have fear. So we are afraid we'll fail or we're afraid we'll look stupid, and I think in some ways it's actually better to kind of try and get that childlike sense of who cares if I look stupid. Everyone here looks stupid. They're all trying to learn, we're all just doing the best we can, right, and so giving yourself a little grace and, I think, for me, seeing people along the journey. So there's always someone who's better than you and there's always someone who's behind you, and so figuring out how, while chasing the person in front of you, you can help that person behind you Do they need something from you? Is there something you've learned, right, and you know, maybe 20% more than them that you can give to them and say, hey, when this happened to me, this is what I learned, and just being able to pay it forward, I think is a great way.
Speaker 2:And also the triathlon community is fantastic. It's amazing, and so there's fuel in that community aspect of it, right, and so it's an individual race, but at the same time, you have a coach and you have a team. That's all training for different races, but all training together, going out on those excursions, biking 100 miles and seeing what you see, and so for me, that was actually the start of the really big love of community, and I think I've always been a friend circle person. I've always liked to have a community around me, but the triathlon community was the first time I felt like, okay, wait, I can build a community, I can create one.
Speaker 1:I love that Because what I heard you say is incredible. You were courageous enough, you were brave enough to get involved in something that you knew. You lacked at least one skill for you couldn't mess with them.
Speaker 2:It was all my friend's fault, to be fair, because she wanted to do one and she said, why don't you do it? And I said, sure, why not?
Speaker 1:And I think that's so brave and it's important to call out, because many times, especially if your early career, or maybe you've been in your career for a very long time but you've watched other people advance around you you're always kind of stepping back to some degree to wonder what is it that that person may have that they brought to the table that maybe I didn't have? And you might question a little bit like am I cut out for leadership if I don't have certain things? And much like training for anything, I imagine, especially for Ironman, and I'm going to live vicariously through you with this one. Okay, you don't have to have every skill set, but you can acquire what you need and you can also surround yourself with community, with coaches to you know fuel, what it is that you don't currently have until you get there right, you've probably seen like the mountain diagram, where you've got someone in front of you but you're tethered to someone who's behind you, and, of course, tethered to them is probably someone behind them. So I love that you use that description too to say, hey, there are people around me that I can bring along, that I might have a little bit more in order to pour into them, and inevitably there's always someone who has more to pour into you. So I love that.
Speaker 1:But let's talk about mentorship a little bit. So I heard you say coach, and I immediately thought it is so hard developing mentoring relationships for folks. Some people don't know what to do. They know, hey, it's probably a good thing for me to have one, but I've now asked someone what do I do? Now? There are some folks who just hey, I have this mentor and I am fully expecting them to tell me everything I need to know, because I don't know what I need to know and it almost, you know, it could create a little codependency. How would you recommend someone, especially an aspiring leader, kind of navigate that mentorship selection process and what that could look like, to make sure that they're maybe growing with one another versus there being a codependency being established there?
Speaker 2:So I think it's important to separate mentors versus sponsors. So that's the first thing I will say. Your sponsor is someone who's going to be talking about you and putting you up for roles and trying to push your career and most likely works with you. Your mentor is someone who you can be more real with, and so your mentor is going to be someone who you have an affinity for and in some cases you might just click with them and there's no secret sauce there. It's just maybe you have the same personality, maybe you have had similar journeys or similar challenges. But I think the most important thing about mentorship is to go in it with a sense of ownership. So even if you're the mentee, it's not on your mentor to you know, come to you and say this is what you should do with your life. And this is how, because oftentimes your mentor is really just in a good place to ask you the right questions and they're not giving you the answers, because it's sort of like therapy you have to find the answers on your own or else they're not the right answers. Right, and I think that's one of the most important life lessons that I've learned is that you cannot live your life based off what you think you're supposed to do, based off of a version of successful that everyone around you has set up as being that version. Because when you get there, you're going to be pretty unhappy and you know, maybe it will work out and it'll be great.
Speaker 2:But for me, I know I spent most of my 20s thinking, okay, this is the plan and, as my dad said, I had a little checklist. You know, okay, let me just get all these things done, move to New York City, you know, get a good job. And when you accomplish it, you think to yourself well, life's pretty long, now what? And unless you can enjoy the journey, unless you can take those detours, decide to sign up for Ironman, decide to get an MBA. None of those things were on my bingo card when I was thinking what does a successful life look like?
Speaker 2:Right, and I think mentors in my life have been the ones to kind of say hey, you should try this. And they're not saying that because they know for sure it'll work out. They're saying that because I need to be open to new experiences and you want a mentor who's going to push you. But as a mentee, you really have to own it and you have to be able to approach them and say here's the point I'm at in my life, this is the crossroads I'm at. These are the questions I don't know the answers to. You know what am I supposed to do. But the real spoiler here is no one has it figured out. Literally no one knows. We're all just hot messes. You know we're hot messes. We're doing the best we can, and I think some of the early career folks are like I can't do anything because it has to be perfect and you got to throw that out. Just try. Just go out there and try.
Speaker 2:Ask someone to be your mentor, start meeting with them, see how it goes, or start mentoring someone younger than you Find a high school student that you can do mentoring with and start to give back in a way that helps you understand what you want in a mentor.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. You used one of my favorite words ownership, and I've always been an advocate of you. Don't have to wait for someone to give you permission to be the type of leader that you would like to be, the type of leader that you would like to see. I think about Gandhi and his narrative hey, be the change you want to see in the world right. And that doesn't come with a permission slip, that comes with a willingness to take ownership of doing it right. And so what advice would you give someone who is looking to carve their own path Like they're, like hey, you know what I like that word too, I can embrace it. What does this look like? What advice would you give?
Speaker 2:People are going to ask a lot of questions, especially if your path is off the beaten path and you have to feel an overriding sense of self-purpose that when they question you, you're able to say, yes, this is the right thing for me, and if it's not, I'll change, but for now, this is the right thing. So surrounding yourself with the right people is really important Understanding who you can talk about your journey with and who maybe you shouldn't. And so there can be people in your journey with and who maybe you shouldn't. And so you know there can be people in your life who are supportive in many other ways, but maybe, in this particular scenario, are not supportive of the path you're on. And so choosing what to discuss with them and making sure that you're sharing with them things that, if they were to provide feedback, you're not going to feel deterred, I think is really important.
Speaker 2:And so you know, launching your own company is something a lot of people don't understand, because a lot of people don't do it and it's very risky.
Speaker 2:And you know, my parents were very supportive, but they asked a lot of questions Well, how is this going to work?
Speaker 2:And are you sure, and you know, and, I think, understanding that people are coming from a place of caring. They care about you, they want you to be successful, but they also only know what they know. And if you're forging your own path and you're going out to create your own pattern of leadership or you're going out to, you know, have a role that no one in your family has ever had, you kind of have to be okay with blazing that trail, and that's kind of lonely sometimes, right. And so we talked about community. It's so important to find a good community, people who are doing the same path as you, who understand some of the trials and tribulations, so you can go to them when you have an issue or when you're nervous or when you want to kind of talk through something that might be challenging, and making sure you're talking about it with people who can actually provide good feedback and who can provide you options and who are going to be supportive.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you touching on the fact that you have to be open to receiving the feedback from where it's coming from, right.
Speaker 1:There are people in our lives that love us and they only want to see what's best for us, and sometimes you know the motivation behind that, or what best looks like for you doesn't necessarily align with what you're looking to do, but being able to receive it and take what you can use forward with you without being offended is critical, and being open to hearing something that maybe you haven't considered before but it's exactly what you need to hear, is also critical, and so that's just part of, I think, maturity and growth.
Speaker 1:So I appreciate you bringing that into the fold. I also really appreciate you mentioning that you know you don't need to share your journey with everyone. There's a spirit of discernment that may need to come with that in. There's a spirit of discernment that may need to come with that, and it may not be because people are being intentional and not being able to be supportive. They may just not know how to be supportive, but whatever the cause is behind it, being mindful that, hey, there are people that are going to be behind me, regardless of how this plays out, and there are others who just may not be able to get it enough to provide any level of support. I think that's an energy saver.
Speaker 2:Definitely an energy saver, and I do feel, as I've gotten older, I'm much more concerned about my energy and where I'm spending it. It's not infinite, is it? It is not infinite, no, and I think where we live in a world where we're constantly bombarded, things are constantly trying to take our energy. There's social media, there's, you know, there's just so many things happening, and so guarding your energy and knowing what gives you energy is so important.
Speaker 1:So with that in mind, how do you balance, like, what you're passionate about, where you'd like to spend your energy? Inevitably in life you have energy vampires. So you know you've got those tricky things, those more challenging things, that whether you want to give them energy or not, you have to. How do you balance that?
Speaker 2:There's no perfect, no perfect recipe. I think there are days I do really well at it and there are days I do a terrible job. The one thing that I've learned is that when I can feel myself spiraling and feel like my energy is not going where I want it to go, I can reset myself by going on a walk outside. So we live right by Prospect Park and so I love to go walk in the park, listen to the birds, see the geese, see the swans and just kind of reconnect with nature, and that helps me to kind of reset how I'm feeling about things. I will say I feel like I'm in a period of life right now where life is just happening constantly.
Speaker 2:How is it already May? And so time just is accelerating, and so I've been trying to play with that a little bit of okay. I remember thinking, okay, are we ever going to get to May? Now suddenly it's, it's the middle of Q2, and now what? And so taking time to take stock, journaling, you know, thinking about what do you want to accomplish, doing some quarterly planning for yourself. So not just from a work perspective, but also from a personal perspective, what's something I want to learn? What's a passion I have that I felt like I neglected in the last quarter and how can I do better next quarter? Because if we're not honest and sort of taking stock with ourselves, it's going to be December and we won't have done things that we tried to set out to do for the year.
Speaker 2:So just being able to really check in and be your own best friend of? Hey, maybe I should try this, or I haven't gone to this class and I should.
Speaker 1:I completely agree with you on that. So taking stock almost requires you to kind of slow down, to speed up some right lessons that have really kind of shaped your leadership philosophy. How would you categorize these key events and lessons that you've learned, the drivers behind your philosophy?
Speaker 2:So I believe in being truly authentic not fake authentic, but truly authentic and I think in doing so, that means you have to bring your whole self.
Speaker 2:You have to be able to be open and honest, tell people the places where you fail and where you've learned lessons and help them to understand that it's okay.
Speaker 2:The other thing that's really important to me is being very open to hearing anything that someone who is under your leadership needs to say, and I think this comes a little bit through a lot of the change management work I've done, but also through just wanting teams to be able to bring the bad news, wanting them to be able to talk about things that are on their mind, that they're worried about, because oftentimes, leaders tend to only want good news, and I think how you handle the bad news says a lot more about you as a leader than how you handle the good times, and so making sure that when people are open and they are coming to you with news about missing a quarter or KPIs that aren't where you want them to be, that you're able to address it with empathy and you're able to listen and understand and not you know, I think we talked about this a little bit earlier, not take offense to it or not feel like they're coming at you, that they're just giving and expressing information and how to take that information and move forward with it.
Speaker 2:And so, as a leader, I like to have an open door policy and also just be approachable. Allow people to come to you with any kind of news happy or sad or bad or good and just making sure that the team feels like you're in the trench with them and that you are leading with them, not that you're, you know, above them or experiencing something different than them, so really understanding where they're coming from.
Speaker 1:No, I think you're spot on there. The name for this podcast came from something I say to my team all the time and they laugh at me when I say it, but I literally, even if it's just. We just got back this Monday morning and I'm saying to them hey, thanks for coming back. I genuinely want them to feel like, hey, I wanted to come back. And I tell them I'm like you had a choice today. You know, you could have mailed the keys to the house back to the mortgage company. You could have said, hey, you know what, whether this scratch off works or not, I'm not going back.
Speaker 1:I appreciate them wanting to come back, and a big part of that is their understanding that I'm never going to ask them to do anything that I'm not personally willing to do. And whether I want to hear or like what I'm hearing or not, this is a safe space. This is a safe space we can't improve. I can't be a better leader. You can't become a better leader, right? Because my expectation of them is regardless of title, you are a leader. So you know, there are things that we need to discuss. There are things that need to be brought to my attention, however it may, you know, whatever, however you describe it whether it's good, bad, indifferent please do that. So it all for the sake of investing in you coming back tomorrow. I want you to want to come back.
Speaker 1:So, speaking of folks who may not be leading officially, I would say that they're leading with indirect authority, which I personally think is much harder to do than leading with a title, because it means that you've got enough ability to influence those around you and still accomplish and achieve what you need to get done without being able to just say, hey, I'm the boss, so just do it right. And so, as you reflect on your leadership journey from before you had a title to now, what types of things do you say? Hey, I wish I had done more of that. Oh, I really rocked that out. Or, oh, I should never. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to never do that again in life.
Speaker 2:What a fun question, okay, so I, because I started my my career and spent a lot of time in project management most of my early leadership experiences were through influence, so I didn't necessarily have a title. I was managing the project but I wasn't managing the people, so it was convincing people to get deliverables done when you're not actually their boss. And I think also throughout that you learn what motivates people. You learn how to really talk to people and understand how to empathize with them. Yeah, we're all doing a lot of work, because oftentimes a lot of these projects are extra work that have been given to people on top of their day job and you're trying to get this from them. But they've got a day job and they're supposed to be working on this project with you, and so it brings you back to the school.
Speaker 2:The group work at school, right, where it's one person does all the work and then you know everyone gets the same grade. But so I think oftentimes for me, the biggest thing is understanding where people are coming from and being able to meet them where they are, and really being able to read people, and I think being a good leader is being able to read the room, it's being able to understand and kind of anticipate where your team is going before they've gone on. And I think every leader should actually spend a lot of time in a role where they are leading their influence, because I think that it helps, for when you become a leader with a title that you don't say, do it because I'm the boss or have that feeling, because I think when you come to the table with that feeling, the team knows it and they don't like it and it's not motivating.
Speaker 2:It just wouldn't be motivating to anyone. All that being said, I think my mother would tell you that I've been a natural born leader. It's just and I don't know if it's just a level of confidence or just a level of I just like to have big ideas and people like to get on board with them. Maybe my personality is just so infectious.
Speaker 1:It's that firstborn mentality.
Speaker 2:The firstborn energy is just. You know, you can't ignore it.
Speaker 1:I think that's amazing. What final thoughts would you encourage anyone who is either aspiring to be a leader? They're just looking to amplify the impact in their space.
Speaker 2:Even if you're aspiring to be a leader, I would be willing to bet money that you're already leading somewhere. Maybe it's in your family, maybe it's in a volunteer organization, maybe there's a lot of different ways to be a leader and I think people tend to undersell themselves. They tend to think, until I have some big title and I have a big team of people, I'm not a true leader. But in reality we're all leading every day with everything that we do, and there's always someone watching, and whether that's someone in your tight-knit family circle or it's someone in your community who sees you going to different events, but seeking out those opportunities to go be a leader, find a community organization, find a way to mentor elementary, middle and high school students they're always looking for and there are programs in every city where you're able to work with kids who maybe don't have mentors and they need help. And New York City has a program which I'm part of, which I love. You go and you help first-generation high school students apply to college and you help them with their essays. You help them with what does it even mean to go to college? How do you fill out FAFSA? What does that look like? And I think you can be a leader without having that title, and I think I would love for people to understand that more and give themselves respect that they are leading, that you can always be aspiring. You could have a team of 100 people and still be aspiring to be a better leader, right?
Speaker 2:And I think becoming a leader and being a better leader is a constant journey. You're always learning, you're always going out and trying new things. You've got to be humble and you've got to be resilient, because things are not always going to work out well. You know the pandemic happened and all the leaders in my circle were saying this is unprecedented. We don't know what to do. And you know many leaders were like we're just going to try it out and see what happens. And so just because you're a leader doesn't mean you've got everything all figured out and you've got the playbook. I mean there can still be things that come at you, and so you've got to keep learning. You've got to keep growing.
Speaker 1:Wow, you touched on so many things in our conversation today. There's the openness and willingness to step into a role. Whether or not you have that role officially or not, there's the change aspect of it and the actions that make the difference. I think a lot of times we do get caught up in having all the answers, but I love what you just said. None of us knew what to do. It didn't absolve us of the responsibility to do something. So the diving into something, literally without necessarily being able to swim, but finding a community and recognizing that there are people who can support you and people that you can support and I think one of the things I really appreciate most about our conversation is the paying it forward part.
Speaker 1:I love what you just shared around the volunteer group, the work that you're doing with first-generation high school students. There's so many people in the world who high school students. There's so many people in the world who, whether people see it or not, you have something to offer, and it's not about size, it's not about visibility, it's about impact and that leaning in in those ways. That's near and dear to my heart. So I really appreciate you sharing that with me and our audience today. Pay it forward in some way, people you can. You got something to offer the world. Give it to them.
Speaker 2:Exactly Everyone has something to offer.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, Katrina. Tell our folks how they can stay connected and plug into all the goodness that you're doing and continue to grow with you.
Speaker 2:Yes, so I am very active on LinkedIn and you can just find me at Katrina Purcell I'm sure we can put the link and my website is just katrinapurcellcom, thanks to my amazing husband, and on there there's also a link that folks can. If they were, are looking for a mentor and they're interested, they can set up some time with me to chat, and I'm always happy and willing to chat with folks that are trying to make themselves better.
Speaker 1:I so appreciate that and I so appreciate you. Y'all heard it here, katrina. Thank you so much. I just want to just continue to encourage everyone, lead and leave an impact where you are. You do not have to have formal titles or any of that jazz. It's all about your actions, it's all about your motivation and there are people who will connect with you, who are more than happy to help you invest in yourself. With that, thanks for coming back.