F'ing Up

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Rita Cidre’s resume is impressive, her career trending up and to the right. She steadily worked her way toward the top however, once there, she had an identity crisis. She found it hard to find the joy in herself and her every day work. Everything she wanted was in her lap yet she struggled to feel successful and satisfied. Listen to Rita’s F’ing Up story to hear the full details!

About Rita Cidre

Rita Cidre is a marketer, professor and entrepreneur. She has 15 years of experience working as a marketing leader for brands such as Zillow Group, Qualtrics, Time Inc and NPR. Currently, she's a marketing consultant and the chair of the Digital Marketing Department at Podium Education, where she develops and teaches courses to thousands of college students around the world. Rita is also a published author, founder of a super cool Puerto Rican ecommerce brand, developer of top-rated courses on Fiverr, and president of her children's bilingual daycare in Vienna, Austria, where she currently resides with her family.

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views, thoughts, and opinions of the companies or individuals referenced during this recording. The material and information presented is for general information purposes only. 

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Carly DeFilippo has spent her career supporting companies through copywriting, marketing and brand strategy. Though she was fortunate enough to work for household names, Carly spent periods in her career where she felt stuck, not doing what she truly enjoyed, in unsupportive cultures.

About Carly DeFilippo

Carly DeFilippo is the co-founder of Cognoscenti Creative, a Denver-based branding and creative studio. Her career has spanned the fields of copywriting, marketing and brand strategy, with a particular focus on the food and hospitality sectors. 

After earning a Master’s degree in Paris—studying French culture and culinary criticism—she spent a decade in New York City, leading content marketing efforts for the Institute of Culinary Education and The Dinex Group (Chef Daniel Boulud). After several years immersed in the world of award-winning chefs, sommeliers and service professionals, she pivoted to an e-commerce start-up environment, leading B2C brand creative for food product design company W&P. 

In 2015, she co-founded Cognoscenti Creative (with her sister, Lauren, a graphic designer and photographer) with the goal of offering comprehensive branding and brand storytelling services at a scale more accessible to entrepreneurs.

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views, thoughts, and opinions of the companies or individuals referenced during this recording. The material and information presented is for general information purposes only. 

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Liam Darmody is the kind of employee you want on your team. He’s driven, passionate, and has an appetite to learn. Despite this, Liam has experienced some unexpected twists and turns in his career journey that will take you by surprise. Listeners will be relieved to hear just how normal he is and how he, too, has experienced trials and tribulations in the workplace.

About Liam Darmody

After nearly two decades scaling operations at startup and mid-market technology companies, Liam Darmody jumped head first into entrepreneurship by founding Liam's Brand Stand, a consultancy through which he helps founders & leaders build magnetic personal brands that attract clients, talent, and opportunity on Linkedin. 

Prior to hanging his own shingle, Liam held leadership positions such as 

• Director of Employer Branding & Talent Marketing at WillowTree (acquired for $1.2B by Telus International), 
• Director of Revenue Operations at Homesnap (acquired by CoStar Group for $250M), 
• Director of Customer Experience & Product Operations at AddThis (acquired by Oracle for $300M), 
• Market Manager at Getaround and Hired, 
• Director of Sales Planning and Enablement at LivingSocial, where he was the 20th employee, 
• Operations Manager at Revolution Health Group, and 
• Recruiter at Ettain Group (his first job out of college), and waiter at Chef Geoff's during college (he swears everyone interested in business should wait tables in their lifetime at some point). 

In his free time, Liam can be found smoking bbq low n' slow, collecting craft hot sauce for his collection, and geeking out over the latest innovations in technology. 

He resides just outside of Raleigh, NC with his wife, Megan, and two kids. 

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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers’ own and do not represent the

views, thoughts, and opinions of the companies or individuals referenced during this recording. The material and information presented is for general information purposes only. 

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Rebekah Bastian's resume is impressive. She worked for companies like Microsoft and Zillow and authored a book, Blaze Your Own Trail, which led to her starting her own company, OwnTrail. Despite positive traction with OwnTrail, Rebekah was met with a challenging feat of raising capital in order to continue to grow OwnTrail. Ultimately, the raise was unsuccessful and she turned to finding a company to acquire OwnTrail, which meant Rebekah would no longer serve as CEO. Rebekah shares vulnerability about that experience as well as all the “No’s” she experienced throughout her career.

About Rebekah Bastian

Rebekah Bastian is a product leader, entrepreneur, writer and artist. She is currently SVP of product at Glowforge, helping people make amazing creations with 3D laser printers. Prior to that she founded social timeline platform, OwnTrail, which was acquired by Teal, and spent 15 years at Zillow, with roles including VP of Product and VP of Community & Culture.

Rebekah wrote the award-winning book, Blaze Your Own Trail and is a Forbes contributor. She serves on the board of Bellwether Housing, founded the AuthenTech and The Time is DAO communities, and is an investor and advisor to technology startups. She has been recognized in the Puget Sound Business Journal 40 Under 40, the Inman 33 People Changing the Real Estate Industry and the Female Founders Alliance Champion Awards. Rebekah earned her Masters of Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley and Bachelors of Mechanical Engineering from the University of Washington.

You can view Rebekah Bastian’s Own Trail here.

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views, thoughts, and opinions of the companies or individuals referenced during this recording. The material and information presented is for general information purposes only. 

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Alex Poon immigrated to the US during a pivotal time in his life, just in time for 8th grade. He encountered numerous challenges such as not knowing English, navigating cultural norms, and looking around and not seeing examples of himself. Alex pushed himself to work hard and overcome obstacles, but found himself struggling with the desire to always want more and finding it hard to be satiated. 

About Alex Poon

Alex Poon is a three-time VC-backed founder. Most recently he co-founded  CharmVerse, a web3 community operations platform. In the last 10 years, he co-founded AI startups x.ai and Visual Revenue, which were both acquired. 

Earlier in his career, Alex built software for unmanned aerial vehicles. 

Alex received his MBA from Columbia Business School. He also holds an MS and BS degree in Electrical Engineering. 

Alex is an organizational design nerd, constantly experimenting with new ways to power the future of work.

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views, thoughts, and opinions of the companies or individuals referenced during this recording. The material and information presented is for general information purposes only. 

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Tessa Wolf spent the first several years of her career unhappy in her work. She had the drive to make something special of her career yet, she couldn’t seem to land somewhere in a role that matched her. Desperate to find her footing, she found herself in startups and felt seen for the first time in her career. She gave everything to her work and ultimately risked her health by not understanding the importance of healthy boundaries.  

About Tessa Wolf

Tessa Wolf is a creative brand and merchandising leader. As the first employee at Framebridge, Tessa built the company's brand, merchandising strategy and assortment, site experience, and omnichannel retail programs. She developed and honed all consumer-facing touchpoints and recruited and grew teams to support them, incubating and scaling functions from single-person operations to 100+. 

With a total of seventeen years of design skill set development and leadership in in-house Creative, Marketing, Merchandising / Product Development, and Sales Strategy functions, Tessa's zone of genius sits in the strategic space between art and science.

Tessa is currently renovating her third house, a mid-century gem in the woods of Durham, North Carolina. She splits her time between there and The Wolf Academy, the 1803 schoolhouse she restored on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

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views, thoughts, and opinions of the companies or individuals referenced during this recording. The material and information presented is for general information purposes only. 

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About Wen Hsu

As an immigrant woman who spent 15+ years in the engineering leadership role in the tech industry, Wen Hsu knows intimately the challenge that immigrant women experience. She lost herself in the quest of climbing the corporate ladder, felt the need to show up in a certain way to gain the recognition she deserved, exhausted from the constant need to prove herself. As she continued advancing in her career, she felt a part of her being rejected and unfulfilled.

That’s why she turned inward to rediscover her authentic self, challenge the norms, and craft her own career path! Wen is now the best selling author of Inspiring Women Professionals Who BossUp, Founder of Wen Coaching.

Now, as a career and leadership coach, Wen is on a mission to empower other immigrant women leaders to be more confident, influential, and strategic in shattering the career ceiling as they let go of the cultural conditioning. As a result, these women get better titles, higher pay, and more importantly, a more fulfilling life!

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views, thoughts, and opinions of the companies or individuals referenced during this recording. The material and information presented is for general information purposes only. 

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Toni Dada witnessed the benefits of a career in consulting and immediately knew that’s what she would want to pursue. Toni worked tirelessly to combat “new girl” experiences and health challenges and rose to start her own successful growth and innovation studio. 

About Toni Dada

Toni Dada, is the founder of Enterscale, a growth and innovation studio that supports founders with strategy and growth execution.  

Toni is a data enthusiast and commercial leader with diverse experience. She started her career in management consulting and moved into shaping commercial strategies for brands in finance, retail, technology, media, and telecoms.

Her expertise has led her to support founders iterating towards product-market fit and work with marketing & product teams at scale-ups such as Flutterwave, Kuda, and Wicrypt. Toni holds a Bachelor's in Marketing from Babcock University and a Master's in Marketing and Strategy from Warwick Business School. She is also a PRINCE2 Practitioner and a Mixpanel implementation consultant.

In addition to her professional pursuits, Toni is passionate about supporting NGOs, particularly those focused on empowering and educating African girls.

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views, thoughts, and opinions of the companies or individuals referenced during this recording. The material and information presented is for general information purposes only. 

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Katy McFee is the Founder and CEO of Insights to Action Coaching & Consulting. She spends time helping women become executives and thrive as senior leaders. Katy, in her own journey, struggled to get to the top tier of leadership. It seemed no matter how successful and results driven she was, that top layer was constantly just out of reach. Katy shares honestly about her experience and how she overcame the hurdles, ultimately becoming an ally to others who experience the same struggle(s).

About Katy McFee

Katy McFee is passionate about empowering women and helping to close the gender gap in senior leadership. 

As the Founder and Principal at Insights to Action Coaching and Consulting, she works with women to break through to executive leadership and become the successful and impactful executives they desire. 

Prior to this, Katy spent 18 years working in sales and leadership,holding senior leadership positions in Sales within the SaaS / Tech space. 

After becoming a successful executive, Katy saw that, like her, many others struggle with the transition to senior leadership and there are very few resources to help. She left her corporate role to launch Insights to Action, with the mission of helping other women make the successful leap into senior leadership and show up as the leaders they want to be, all without burning out. 

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views, thoughts, and opinions of the companies or individuals referenced during this recording. The material and information presented is for general information purposes only. 

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Sarah Haggard is Founder and CEO at Tribute. Though she has a track record of success, it’s been layered with personal complications along the way including assisting a parental figure through substance abuse struggles. Sarah took on the role of adult at a young age which she later discovered stunted her in many ways when it came to actually growing up and then having to navigate the workforce.

About Sarah Haggard

Sarah is an impact-driven entrepreneur focused on increasing access to education and economic opportunity. Prior to founding Tribute, Sarah spent over a decade working in Product at Microsoft where she spent her career as an intrapreneur successfully launching unicorn businesses at one of the largest enterprise software companies in the world. When not working, Sarah enjoys reading a great book, entertaining friends, and family, and sailing the Puget Sound with her husband and two sons.

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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speakers’ own and do not represent the

views, thoughts, and opinions of the companies or individuals referenced during this recording. The material and information presented is for general information purposes only.