allbranded Celebrates Female Leaders for International Women’s Day

The purpose of these interviews is to highlight what it means to be a professional female leader in the modern day workplace. We want to give you some situational awareness involved in being a woman in a position of leadership, what types of traits they believe make great leaders and what makes their workplace a comfortable and accepting place. Each leader works in a different area of allbranded, and they all bring unique perspectives from their experiences.

Meet the Team

First up is Da-Thao Nguyen ("Dati" for short) - our fearless Chief Marketing Officer. Starting her allbranded journey as a Product Manager, her hard work and innovative ideas got her promoted to the Head of Marketing & Product within a remarkable 4 months. As the current CMO, she takes the reins of overall strategic marketing and product development, managing the entire marketing department.

Next we have the Customer Success lead - Anna-Lena Jung. With over ten years of experience, she found her professional niche in customer success. Her success in this role (no pun intended), reflects her experiences with the many other leaders she has worked with. She is always learning and has a hungry desire to help others along their professional path.

This brings us to Olivia Grosspietsch, allbranded’s well versed SEO & Onpage Manager. Olivia manages a small team that is responsible for allbranded’s online content and activity for different regions globally. Her professional start in online marketing was at an agency, soon moving on to allbranded as an Online Marketing Manager for the DACH region. Being a true student of the SEO game and soaking in as much information about the industry as possible, she earned her promotion to SEO team lead shortly after joining.

Key themes and topics important to our leader Brandies

Our discussions with our leads touched on several key themes. We get to touch on management styles, the challenges of being a woman in the workplace, the overall growth that has been seen and a general outlook for what can be done to improve things are all topics that we explore in this piece.

How Do You Like to Lead?

The leadership styles of our women leaders have one thing in common; empathy. It makes all the difference facilitating a cohesive and comfortable environment to work in.

Strategic thinking is another trait that came up with all of our leaders. Both Olivia and Anna-Lena highlighted this particular trait as important to them.

"Great leaders should be able to think 3 steps ahead. They need to analyze complex situations and make decisions that align with the company mission." - Olivia

Dati finds this aspect a bit more subjective, but likes to be there and ready to facilitate the needs of those who may need it. "[...] And I guess that’s the greatest and probably also most difficult trait for a leader to have - being able to adapt the way you lead based on your team members needs." says Dati.

Where Does Your Inspiration Come From?

Developing a style of leadership can often come directly from how you’ve seen it done before, someone who has inspired you to lead in a particular way. Our female leaders have looked up to a more diverse crowd.

For example, Da-Thao was inspired by the actress and activist Emma Watson because of her work raising awareness of the associating feminism with hating men. Watson believes bringing more men into that discussion is important and Dati really resonates with that. Whereas Anna-Lena highlighted one of her former team leads earlier in her career. Olivia also pulled inspiration from an influential person in popular culture.

"Many years ago I read a book about Malala Yousafzai. It is extremely inspiring to see how she has not stopped fighting for girls’ education in Pakistan, despite the many obstacles she has faced at her young age." - Olivia

Of course, inspirations or advice from previous generations may not always be applicable to today’s time or to the specific individual. One can get inspired by seeing examples of what not to do or already having an idea of knowing what will and won’t work in their position.

"I guess most of the advice that I have received came from leaders of different generations and have in some way not really aligned with how I always wanted to be led. And this is what I started doing differently then." - Dati

What Kinds of Advice Guides This Discussion In the Right Direction?

Communication, communication, communication. This seems to be the leading piece of advice our leaders want to give to others wishing to follow in their footsteps. Being communicative with your team, staying transparent, understanding their needs and helping them to learn from mistakes is what makes someone successful in a leadership role.

"There needs to be transparency in promotion processes by clearly communicating the criteria for advancement." - Anna-Lena

Anna-Lena believes there needs to be a clear path for promotion processes and make it understandable for exactly what is needed for advancement. "This helps mitigate biases and ensures women have a fair chance moving up the organizational hierarchy." says Anna-Lena.

How Have Past Challenges Helped You Grow?

It goes without saying there can definitely be struggles as a woman in almost any work environment. Each of our leaders has reached this stage in their careers by facing and overcoming these challenges thrown their way. Feeling the need to prove themselves, being passed on promotions due to gender or skin color and staying confident in the face of sometimes undue criticism are all themes stemming from the sentiments our team gave.

"Women tend to be more insecure about their skills than men. I have read in an article that women are less likely to apply for jobs, when there is at least one requirement they don’t meet. Men are more likely to have the confidence to still apply for that job, and I think that’s interesting." says Dati.

She believes that organizations should stand up to the face of biases and help create a culture that verbally empowers and gives women more confidence to follow these paths. Being flexible and aware of your surroundings is also important, according to our interviewees. Things like allowing flexible schedules or implementing focused programs can help women feel more comfortable in the workplace.

Anna-Lena also had a particularly interesting take on this, as she has been affected by the time she grew up in.

"Although there were employers who treated everyone equally, this sense of needing to prove myself has been a deep-seated belief, likely influenced by the generational context in which I grew up." - Anna-Lena

Dati has a unique take on this as well. Her set of obstacles come from a slightly different take on life due to her background.

"[...] reflecting on those experiences, it's difficult to pinpoint whether the barriers stemmed from my gender, me being a person of color, or simply age-related biases. In retrospect, it required a huge amount of energy and perseverance to break through these barriers and make people recognize my true value." - Dati

Olivia was hands-on with her approach. The prejudices that come with women in leadership positions were a bit intimidating to her, so she sought guidance to overcome this. Olivia says that she "[...] went to a workshop about women in leadership and discussed that topic with other female leaders. That personally helped me a lot."

Of course, gender equality is also very important. All three of our interviewees said almost the exact same thing - that individuals should be based on their skills, abilities and character over their culturally defined gender roles. "Gender equality, to me, signifies a state where individuals of all genders have equal opportunities, rights, and access to resources." says Anna-Lena.

What To Look Forward To and Future Goals From Our Team

We look forward to society continuing to erode at social barriers that have been propped up for so long. It’s great to see more and more women in leadership positions and allbranded is all-in at recognizing their female talent. 

There are ambitious women at this company and high-reaching goals will always be important to them. Dati wants to focus on creating a more inclusive environment, "When I think big, like really big big, I see the possibility of establishing an organization that forms a robust support system for specifically BIPOC and queer communities." Olivia wants to grow the SEO team into something bigger and Anna-Lena wants to help her current co-workers become rock stars.

"I wish to enhance my skills as a team leader. My goal is to empower each team member to identify and cultivate their individual strengths. Ensuring the team feels recognized, valued, and genuinely enjoys their work." - Anna-Lena

Family is another important topic that is sometimes difficult to navigate. But the environment in which women work can make this easier. Flexibility is the key and is something all companies should take note of.

"I admire all women who manage to combine family and work. I think it also depends a lot on the company's benefits and, above all, how flexible work is. Working from home and my flexible working hours will definitely help me later on. Together with my fiancé, we will find a solution that fits all of us." - Olivia

Here’s What To Takeaway…

We hope this peek into the mindset of our remarkable female leaders has offered valuable insights of the current landscape in which they work. It's clear that inclusivity, transparency, communication and awareness of issues are key themes here. We’ve learned that an environment conducive to creative freedom, comfortability and empowerment are all important to women in the workplace, so companies should definitely take note.

"I hope that at some point this topic will no longer need to be addressed, as it has become a matter of course. Women should use prejudices as their motivation to demonstrate that everything is possible as long as they fight for their dreams." - Olivia

The entire allbranded team would encourage you, our readers, to reflect on the insights shared by our women leaders and consider how you can apply them to your own lives, careers and even companies as a whole. Thanks for reading!

We look forward to further exchanges and experiences you might have about this subject! If you have any ideas, tips or suggestions on the topic of female empowerment, please feel free to contact us at any time so that we can talk about it together. We look forward to expanding on this discussion.