This Girl KAM with Melanie Raouzeos-Haid & Audrey Krassnitzer

Melanie is Vice President of Finance and Commercial Excellence at Novo Nordisk, a senior leader in pharma with 10 years of industry experience in a variety of finance and commercial roles across multiple geographies.

Audrey fuses over a decade of pharma industry strategic consulting and marketing agency experience in her role as the Global Director of Multi-Channel Engagement at Novo.

Liv: Hi Mel and Audrey! Welcome to the show!

Mel: Hello.

Audrey: Hi!

Liv: It’s fabulous to have you both. This is the first time we have ever done a double interview. So, we are seriously putting my interview technique skills to the test today!

It’s an absolute privilege to get both of you at the same time on this podcast. So thank you so much. We talk a lot on this show about mentorship.

A couple of weeks ago I had Izzy Gladstone from PA Consulting and she talked about male allyship. One of the things we’ve not covered really in any true detail is this the female side of allyship and that’s why you are both here today at the same time. You are two incredibly successful women with your own stories to tell, which I want to get into.

But I also want to get into the relationship between the two of you, how it’s come about, how it’s matured, and the perspective from both of you in terms of what it has meant to you. How does that sound?

Mel: Fabulous. I’m on board.

Audrey: Exciting. Yeah, let’s go for it. Make it happen.

Liv: Okay, Mel, I’m going to come to you first. So, if you could tell us a little bit about your story your personal story as well, and of course your professional story and how you came to be at Novo Nordisk.

Mel: Pleasure. Thank you. And thanks so much for having us. I know that I owe the pleasure also to Audrey because she brought me into this.

So I’ll tell you a little bit more about who Melanie is, how you know, how I am where I am, and maybe also what goes on in, in my head. I have a lot of thoughts and I talk a lot!

When I think about what has defined who I am, I believe, like many people, it’s my family. I grew up with two younger brothers and four cousins. So, I was in a predominantly male environment. However, I am very sporty and competitive.

You might think that I got these traits from the boys. I’m not sure because I am the oldest, at least in my family. When I talk to my mom, she believes that I was the one who set the pace. But I just want to say that it has been quite natural for me. I also enjoyed subjects like math and science, which some people may consider more male-oriented. But for me, they were just fun, just as I found pleasure in drawing and art, though that feels like a long time ago now.

I studied at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland for my undergrads, and it used to be a predominantly male-oriented environment. More than 75% of the students were men. However, I have to say that it was the first time in my life where I actively sought to have other women around me. While the presence of so many men didn’t bother me, I also enjoyed having a close group of women around me.

And we kind of founded a small club where we also took the opportunity to talk about other things and to share the female perspectives on business, but then also just have had fun together and like, drank a lot of wine and just chatted.

I think that was the first time I also, I think, more actively understood how important it is to have good women around you in a work environment. I think often this also turns into friendship. I think in the case of Audrey, as you know, I’m her boss, so we started in a working relationship, but we’ve become friends over the period. But it’s important to open up that you have people you can trust. And I think that extended into my job. I joined Novo Nordisk more than a decade ago in a finance traineeship. So I stayed with this more men-oriented environment. And it was funny when I joined and very shortly after there was a finance meeting revealing the top heads of the company from the finance organisation. And I didn’t know who they were. So I asked my boss at the time, who is that group? And he’s said “Ah, that’s the global finance leadership team.”

And I was like, “Oh, interesting. You only have men!” And he looked at me and he smiled and said, “Well, you know, that’s here for you to change.”  And whilst I thought, that’s a good ambition, I didn’t focus so much on it. I didn’t think, whether it was up to me to change or whether there was a good reason why there were no women or not.

But, it was a fact. Especially early on in my career, it felt like merit and the amount of effort and hours you put into the day drove success. I had the same 24 hours as everyone else, but I had more available hours and fewer obligations. So I focused a lot on my work. It was only later, when I worked in investor relations, that my gender suddenly became a topic. As the first woman to hold such a role in Novo Nordisk,   I wasn’t taken seriously in the beginning at least.

Not so much by my peers, but by some of the investors. And that was difficult and it took us a bit for me to understand what was happening because I hadn’t been exposed to it before. And it was hard to put it into perspective and understand what it means.

But I’m also a stubborn person. So, to some extent, I was like, you know, just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I cannot do this job. So I thought, “Okay, I’m going to prove you wrong.” I tried to turn it into something positive, and I can confidently say that I succeeded.

Having achieved that, I think it was the first time that allyship and paving the way for others became important to me. It was crucial for me to ensure that while I was the first woman in that position, I wouldn’t be the last. And I haven’t been because ever since, there has always been a woman as part of the team. Sometimes there were even multiple women, and now it has become more normalised. I discovered that beyond my passion for the job I do, I truly love our company. It’s an amazing company that offers plenty of opportunities for development and growth. I have had the chance to work in different countries, and all of this has fueled another passion of mine, which is bringing women together and making it easier for each other and for those who will follow us. This has become an area where I dedicate more and more effort.

In fact, I’m about to transition to a new role within the company. I will be the CFO of one of our regions. Looking at my team there, it is currently predominantly male, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. However, I genuinely hope and believe that by having a woman in a position like mine, I will enable other women to enter that region and hold important roles as well.

So, that’s a little bit about me and how I got here. It’s also why the aspect of allyship and women coming together has become an area of interest for me, even though initially I didn’t want to talk about it because I thought it didn’t matter.

Liv: So obviously your background is very much finance as you said. What attracted you to pharma? Was it just that you found Novo Nordisk or was there always an urge to work in healthcare?

Mel: So there was a period in my life where I wanted to become a doctor.

There’s always been that interest in science and health. I then realised that being a doctor might not be the best way for me to do it. But it was a very deliberate decision that I was going to use my skillset in the healthcare industry and not in banking or anywhere else.

Liv: So let’s go on and get a little bit about your background now, Audrey? And then we can bring it all together. First of all, Audrey, tell me about your background, what brought you into pharma, and what brought you to Novo Nordisk. And then we’ll talk about when you met Mel.

Audrey: Yeah, there’s, gosh, these intros are always funny, right? Because I can give you so many different threads to weave together.  I’m going to pick two threads. The first thread is about how I ended up in pharma and how I ended up at Novo. But the thread I think that is most relevant is, why is this topic interesting and a passion topic for me? And that thread picks up about five years ago. So I’ll give the quick and dirty of my background. But the more interesting part is what happened five years ago to put me in this chair today.

Similar to Melanie I wanted to go pre-med.  I wanted to be an ob-gyn. I love babies.  So I wanted to just like deliver babies for my whole life and like be a doctor with babies. And then I went to university and after my first chemistry exam, called my dad and said I was dropping out of school and I was done with it because it just seemed so much harder than I was anticipating.

My dad laughed and said, no. Oh, by the way, this is a college in the US where you pay for it. Small liberal arts college. So you really pay for it! And he said, “Nope, you are paid for for the first semester. So you’re sticking it out.” Then I figured out a new path and I went a very different path. I went more liberal arts but always stayed close to sciences in the sense that I had like a physics cluster or a chemistry cluster or different things like this, but I was really into archaeology.

So Latin, Greek ancient history was my major. Then I leap into not knowing what I wanna do with my life. So I leave, go to Ghana and I teach for a year expecting the universe to tell me where I should focus my energy. The universe doesn’t deliver messages like that, which I quickly figured out, so I ended up working in New York.

I end up in New York after a couple of pit stops, ending up in New York City working for a medcoms agency where I worked on publications, and planning for pharma companies.

And that was the first time I saw marketing strategy at work. And I saw marketing strategy at work in the sense of understanding what launching a product looks like when you have a really clear medical communications plan. So at the time, it was Rivaroxaban for J&J, and it’s five years before this product is gonna launch.

They are looking at health economics data and where they’re gonna publish it and what doctors they’re gonna have write their New England Journal of Medicine articles and like, just, it’s all of these different pieces and how it came together. And then the Head of Marketing saying, “well, this data is going to be really helpful if we want to file for that indication…”

And then, it was like, whoa. This is all connected. Anyway, light bulbs go off. I work in the agency world in New York across different functions. Started in publications, and planning, went into speaker bureau activity, so, HCP management, basically speaker training digital marketing, the whole kit and caboodle of the agency span, always in the pharma space.

And then meanwhile jumped into getting my masters in strategic communications. Which is marketing essentially. Then we moved to Switzerland. So I end up in Switzerland and I end up working at a consulting company where I had like seven rounds of interviews with this company, and I think round six, I’m sitting in front of a partner.

I’m telling him about myself and I’m excited.This was absolutely the job for me. It’s an international company… I want this job. Okay. And by the way, at this point, I have an eight-month-old baby at home. So now I’m excited to get back into the workforce.

And it wasn’t pharma and I was excited about. So I tell them, oh, I’m looking to leave the pharma world. And they say, “Well that’s interesting that you say that because we’re interviewing you specifically for our life sciences team! Now what do you think? So I backpedal! I say, well, my challenge with pharma isn’t actually pharma. My challenge is that it’s not changing. I have ideas, I see opportunities for change in how we’re using digital marketing to engage our customers, but pharma doesn’t do it. So it’s stuck. And I’m getting frustrated. So if you, mr consulting company, tell me that you’re also going to be an advocate for that conversation I’m in.

But if I’m going to have the same roadblocks I’ve had for the last eight years of my agency experience, then, I’d like to explore other teams. So anyway, I end up getting the job and that’s what I did for four years in consulting. I was always in the life sciences space. The cool thing about consulting is it’s like a condensed career.

So I was sprinting through different projects and commercial strategy and digital marketing and all these different spaces. I worked as a brand manager for a year and a half. I did a lot of different things, always in pharma. Anyway, then I have a second baby. And with that second baby, I say it’s time for a lifestyle change, and I find Novo.

And here I am at Novo. I’ve been at Novo for about a year, almost a year and a half now. So that’s the thread on how I got to Novo.  We can dig into that if we want, but what I really want to tell you about is what happened. About five years ago that puts this topic on the radar for me.

 Five years ago, so back in my consulting days, life was intense. Now I said it was a condensed career, which is great. What’s not great is when you’re the only mum on a team. What’s not great is when you’re trying to keep up with a bunch of 20-somethings that don’t have families.

And as much as a company tells you they advocate for women in business and family and they’re going to give you all these special allowances, which they did. I had a fixed work-from-home day. That was normal. And by the way, that fixed work from Home Day ended up being me on the client site. Still. I just had a nanny at the house rather than my kid in daycare.

So there’s as much as there’s “yes, we’re here to support you.” I… maybe it was my internal motor. I still don’t have a good answer for this. Who’s responsible for the crash? Is it the individual with this strong internal motor who doesn’t know how to set their boundaries because they think they can keep going?

Or is it a manager’s responsibility to say, slow down, we see you, you’re great, you’re doing awesome and you still have a kid at home? And pause. Just pause. We don’t want to see emails coming out from you at 2:00 AM for four nights in a row. Stop.

So anyway, there was a crash, there was a point where pregnant with my second child, it was very difficult. And my doctor pulled me out and said, you need to step back. So I did.

And at that moment, like the pregnancy and then having the baby, I started to wonder, How do women do it all?

Because I’d been struggling I was mid-level management, but what about executive-level management? How are they doing it? And I interviewed women.  I thought I would focus on this whole thing and I started interviewing a bunch of women from Google, from pharma, from consulting, all kinds of spaces.

And what I discovered is that we all struggle with the same thing. They just developed muscle to get through it. How do we embrace anxiety? For me, I was swallowed by anxiety and they embraced anxiety and let that be their fuel to push rather than feeling afraid of it.

And also to be the fuel for setting boundaries. And for me, that was where the challenge had been. I didn’t feel empowered to set certain boundaries. Because, what’s going to happen when I say no? I’m going to get overlooked for things, so I find Novo or Novo finds me one of the other.

I’m supposed to join in January and in October my team has an offsite and Melanie says, I know you’re not coming for another three months, but that’s fine. Do you want to still just like meet the whole team? So we have this team offsite in this team event, we’re going curling. Okay. And the whole team, like everyone knows Melanie really well.

They all gel nicely. And something about being competitive comes up, and everyone goes, “Oh man, Melanie’s the most competitive. She’s so competitive!” And this woman does not hold back for a second. She’s not worried about whether her competitiveness is going to come across as too edgy or she is her full self?

And I just thought, okay, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Her being her full self at that moment was a red carpet for all of Audrey to also show up at work.  And like, I can be competitive. I can set boundaries, I can do all these things.

And it’s, oh, not only is it okay, it’s welcomed, it’s a please do it. Because we all do our best when we bring our best. And that was, for me, it’s just been this, like when we talk about females, it’s being our best selves, our full selves. Because that opens the door for the other women ahead of us, next to us, behind us to also bring their full selves.

We all  need, even these executive women that I was interviewing during my maternity leave, there were still moments when they were asking themselves the same questions that my insecure self had been asking. And that’s why this community is so important. It’s because you need a safe person to say that, I’m not too much right there, am I?

Then they can say “No. You’re not too much. You are spot on. Keep bringing it.”  For me, sometimes that’s it. But men also need that kind of diplomatic cushioning now and again, you know?

That’s why I love this topic, and that’s also why I wanted to bring Melanie into this conversation because it is like, what does it look like when we bring our full selves to work?

Liv: The contrast from where you were to where you are now I think is pretty spectacular.

So just before we dig into that a bit more, I need a clearer picture of your family setups now. So you are both married? Do you have children as well?  What does your life away from work look like?

Mel: Yes. I am married happily to Phillip. And we have two young boys. They are three and four and a half. And they inherited my level of energy.

So Audreys are a similar age, so we also hang out all together.

Liv: Oh do you? Oh that’s sweet.

Audrey: But it’s awesome seeing, because you know how in a professional environment, you can wear your power woman hat, right? Where you’re organised and you have structure and all. You add kids to that mix and, it doesn’t matter how organised you are, they have a different plan for you!

It’s fun seeing, and just being all the different hats. For me, with Melanie, it’s great because  she sees me at work, she sees me as a mum, which was a thing I didn’t bring to my consulting spot. I wanted to hide that I was a mum.. I didn’t tell most clients for the first year and a half that I was a mum. I was afraid I would look weak or limited. I was afraid I would look limited.

That also motivated weak boundary setting, let’s put it that way. So anyway, it’s nice having an environment where the tone is “I’m leaving at five o’clock because I’m picking up my kids.”

Liv: So I’m curious to know what your husbands are like? What do they do? How’s the balance at home?

Audrey: Balance is crazy because we have no family nearby. He has an equally demanding career. He’s in finance. So it’s a partnership.

Mel: I think just to also answer your question. One of the reasons why Audrey and I can relate to each other quite a lot is that, my husband is also in finance.

He works in private equity. And I think what kind of just adds a little bit to the spiciness of our setup is that he commutes to London. So we are based in Zurich as a family, and he commutes to London more or less every week.  For a couple of days each week.

So our family life has been impacted, and there is just a lot of organising! Luckily I would say that’s one of my strengths.  I’m very organised. Our weeks are planned, so we have it figured out. But it is also it’s been difficult. There are conversations where it’s like,  is it you or me? We have a business trip and you know, my parents cannot come.  So who is the one that cancels who can push it and so on?  And I think what has been really where, you know, we may talk about female allyship, but I have to say my husband is the strongest ally that I have. Yeah. And he’s the one that from the beginning has always pushed me.

It’s also one that is contributing because it was clear that for me to advance my career at Novo, there are significantly more opportunities in Switzerland than there are, for example, in the UK. So that’s when I moved from Denmark.

We deliberately moved to Switzerland where I am from, where we have family that can support us. And it meant that my husband would commute. And of course, that also takes a toll on him. But he does it. With hardly any complaints. So I think that is also what it takes.

And I think to Audrey’s point, and I thought it was a bit of a weakness of mine, but I’m starting to try and reframe it. I have a lot of women and we have a lot of couples in our group of friends where both are driven and have careers in advance. And I think that’s also, it has also become our support network.

Because, in the beginning, it felt a little bit that you’re constantly on the defence bench in your private life where people are like, What do you bring your kids five days to the nursery? That’s crazy! And you only went on maternity leave for five months? That’s crazy. And I’m not saying that you know, there are not other choices that are equally good, but this worked for us. And I think we were also just trying to find a set-up where in a group of friends you’re not constantly the crazy person. 

Audrey: Yeah. Every woman is going to have a different opinion, because there are as many women as there are ways to be a mum.  I come from a family where my mum is a family therapist who focuses on early childhood development. So I get an earful about how to manage it and it’s beautiful and appreciated and I love the resources but at the same time, it’s like, how do I, then define what it means for me to be a mum and what do my husband and I agree on? For me in consulting, that was exactly the question. It was me trying to keep up with kids that didn’t have family responsibilities. And I was kind of just blinded by the motor inside me telling me to, go. Grow and do and grow and do, and the affirmation of what I can do, in this work environment.

I felt great. I was on fire and then I was coming home and it was not easy. It was hard. That was the hard stuff. And at a certain point, my husband looked at me and he goes, what kind of mum do you want to be? Is this what we were looking at when we decided to have kids? Because right now, we need to look at this.

And we did. And it was painful. That question was really painful. But important because what was beautiful about it is when I took a step back I realised I am not going to miss opportunities because I took the time to be a mum.

Those opportunities are going to keep being there because I am who I am and I don’t have to jump on the next big project that’s going to take me away from my kid. Owning that and realising that life will keep unfolding and it will keep being great and I can enjoy where I am in this moment and be patient with that process.

And that little by little, owning that I’m a mum, what that means and embracing that definition and embracing that on top of being a professional. So there’s this huge constellation that comes together.

Liv: When you’re talking about paving the way for other women, you’ve both clearly got that balance right. What are the things that we can do to therefore pave the way for other women?

Because, you touched on it, Audrey, when you asked who’s responsibility is it? Is it the individual’s responsibility or is it the organisation’s responsibility? I would argue it’s both.

Mel: I fully agree with you. It’s both, right? It’s an organisational and managerial responsibility, but there is also a personal part that everyone and every woman also has to play.

If we stay with the managerial and the organisational part, I believe  from my own experience, some structural things help. So, working from home and having working from home as something that is recognised to be normal.

So everyone does it. And it’s not just the individual contributors, it’s as much the execs. That also helps because it is easier to have a day or two where you can also work from home and juggle a few things. 

I think there are other elements when it comes to, you know, how long maternity leave do we grant? Because not every country is as advanced as the Nordics where you get up to a year paid. I think that could also help. I do also believe that talking about it and making it a topic is important because just purely the fact that it is okay to voice that you have personal needs when you are a parent, or also for other reasons.

And I think that’s also something that I’ve learned.  My biggest need is to balance my work and my private life due to my kids,  but for others that’s because they’re super competitive from a sports perspective, semi-professionals and that’s what they need to balance. Or they have parents that are no longer doing well. So I think we should not discriminate and says it’s only if you’re like a mum or a dad with young kids. I think there are many other parts, but I think just talking about it helps. 

One thing that I’ve then started myself doing is, I talk about the fact that I’m off because I’m picking up my kids. We have flexible work hours, so people are not supposed to be in the office from nine to five. And that also then translates, in my view, very much to the fact that if you have, say, a parent-teacher event for half a day, you don’t need to take the half day off because we probably on average work more than 40 hours that are stated in our contract.

So I believe living it and talking about it is important. So it’s not only,  I take it out for myself, but I give other people also a little bit of the freedom to replicate it because it is absolutely okay,  and I would say the norm. When it comes to me, what I think I had to learn and what I’m still learning is to speak up when it is necessary and also be okay that there are points where I’m not as good as my job as I potentially could be if I had a few more hours in, in the day. But at that time there is something else on the private side that is more important. But then also be okay that sometimes I might be in a bad mood when I get home because I had some very difficult meetings and as much as I dislike it I cannot leave all of it the moment I leave the office.

And that took a bit of time to come to peace with myself that I sometimes you know, I can bring some of that bad mood back home and then it impacts my kids. I’m not proud of it and I’m working on it, but I will not be able to ever get rid of it. And that’s probably okay.

Audrey: Way before I had kids  I was living in Brooklyn, I had my cool agency life, whatever. I would come home. I had two roommates and the first thing I would do would be go to my bed. I would go to my bedroom and I’d close the door.

I’d come home straight from work, I would change my clothes and just kind of chill. And then I would come out and socialise. And this was just what I did.  Then one day, my roommate who was like a sister,  she finally, after a year, commented on it and she’s like, “Audrey! You just kind of storm in, you don’t say hi to anybody and you just go to your room and close the door! Why can’t you just come and sit in the living room and hang out?”

I hadn’t even realised I did this. I needed time to take the day off and put the next part of the day on. And, so  kids or no kids, I think it’s human to need a transition time from like the one phase that we’re into the next phase.

It’s just we have to sprint into, I think as a parent… it’s not a mom-dad thing, it’s a caregiver thing.  It’s sprinting into the next level of responsibility and, I don’t think we can wipe our day off so quickly.

Mel: You have one life, right? I’m one that, in the morning when I come I would tell people a story of what happened with the kids while we had breakfast or some other funny anecdote.

Because that’s who I am, that’s what I do. That’s what defines me. That’s what’s on my mind. So I have no interest in hiding that. And the same goes actually, the other way around. I’m very proud of what I have achieved at work, what I do at work. We work for a company that creates impact. So I want my kids to know that, and they’ve been at our office multiple times.

I’ll tell you a very funny story about that.

So I was a very young mom trying to kind of convince everyone that I still got it. I got a call from daycare that I have to come and pick up my son and I had a meeting with my boss.  I was  like, I can’t just cancel on him because my child is sick!

So I go pick up my kid, I bring him to the office and then I tell my team, “listen, I have a 30-minute meeting with my boss. You take care of my toddler and we’ll figure it out from there!”  So that’s the plan. I go to the meeting,  he’s very attentive and then at some point he says, “Is there a baby crying?”

And I’m like, “Yeah, that would be mine!”

He said, “But what are you doing?” 

So I explained “He’s sick and you know, we had this meeting so…”

He just said “Oh, I wanna meet him!” So the meeting ended immediately. He just wanted to play with my son, which was quite funny. It goes to show that, you know, a lot of it was just in my head and I probably could have just postponed the meeting, but I didn’t allow myself to,

Audrey:  I love this story because you said it too, Melanie.

 It was early in that position, right? And you were figuring out the dynamic with your boss. And most importantly, what does it mean to be a mom? When I first stepped into it, it was like, what, how?

How do I be both? And a lot of times it’s the things that you don’t plan for. It’s the sick kid piece. And it’s like, how do I talk about it? Do I just do it? Do I hide it and say I’m not distracted, or do I tell everybody about it and then tell them when I am distracted?

Which by the way is now my approach. Now I’m just like, it is all out there. If I have a sick kid, I’m like, I’m home. I can take this call. I have a sick kid. And when that child needs me, you will notice I am going to be diverting my attention. I feel now information is the best way to just get over whatever conversation is going on in my head because the conversation going on in my head is fear-based most of the time.

Get it out, clean it, and then move on. 

Liv: So I think there’s something in the expectations that we have on ourselves versus reality. We talked before about whose responsibility it is. I know I can say from personal experience, I put a lot more pressure on myself than I perhaps need to.

And I don’t even have a boss anymore. But still, I don’t broadcast enough how difficult it can be. I had an interesting conversation with Vicky Williams from GSK in Germany about the importance of leading with vulnerability, and sharing that vulnerability and therefore, again, reflecting on how we make things different for other people coming into an organisation, it is that recognising your boundaries and sharing them publicly to enable others to do the same, isn’t it?

Audrey: I think that’s really strong.

Mel: Yeah. And it’s also a topic in our company as a leadership theme, how do we lead with vulnerability?

Because it has a lot to do with psychological safety, which is, you know, the ground for how we are inclusive. A lot of that is also required if we want to advance more diversity and as a consequence also more, more female careers. I think it goes a little bit back to what I mentioned before, it’s just to start talking about it. And when people used to ask me, ah, but how do you all do it?

I kind of was like, ah, I know, we’ll figure it out. It’s okay. And I’ve started to more often also say, “You know what? It’s hard.” And because I’ve also gone through a period where I was close to the breaking point because it was too much. I thought I needed to do it all and fast. And, when now, Audrey mentioned that the first time she came into our offsite was just after I had gone through a rough patch.  I was also very open with the team because we did a share-sharing session of,  what are we proud of?

And for me at that moment, I was proud that, I got out of that rough patch and that I figured out how life works with two kids and a demanding job. And that I had to be even more explicit on, what my boundaries are and what I can and what I cannot do. And what is interesting is, that it didn’t have negative consequences.

Actually, on the contrary, it was much more it started to open up completely different conversations. People started to tell me that I’m a more credible leader, So a lot of it also goes to say that sometimes it’s in our heads, but it is also influenced by what we were meant to believe on what it takes to be a leader, right?

Because I think, at least when I defined leadership, it was a lot about the strength that you portray and the conviction and how positive you are and driven. So a lot of, very strong attributes and that is changing. And I think it’s changing for the better, at least. It’s changing for the better for me.

And that’s why I really want to reinforce that message and get it out there because it has helped me so much. And I think others, will and can benefit from it.

Liv: So I have a couple of questions that I want to get both of your responses to.

The first one is, I’d like to know what advice you would go back, if you could go back in time, back to your 18-year-old self, knowing the path that was ahead of you, what advice would you give yourself?

Audrey:  I have two thoughts. One is advice that was given to me. And then one is how I would pull that through. The advice that was given to me was my dad at my first job. I have a big personality.  I take up space and I didn’t know how that was going to fit in my first job.

And my dad, he says,”Audrey, you’re a box of 64 crayons. Your job only needs 12 of them. So, pick the crayons that you’re going to deliver.”

So I was thinking today about this. There’s a piece of that that’s true. Very early on in my career, I, and young women very early on in their careers, stay motivated, stay hungry, stay ambitious, and listen, watch and learn because there’s so much to absorb, right?

But don’t turn off the rest, don’t even quiet it. Just lead with listening and then follow up with the rest. So back to the crayons. Lead with your 12. Don’t forget the rest of the box, because eventually your power and strength come in to being that whole box of 64. It’s just having the wisdom to know when you can start pulling out fuchsia and, I don’t know, chameleon orange and whatever other colours are a little less convenient because they will have a place.

So ultimately bring your whole self, but listen long enough to know where your whole self is gonna resonate with your audience.

Liv: I love that!What about you, Melanie?

Mel: It’s not easy, though it sounds like a question that is obvious to ask,  it’s less obvious to actually to answer.

You who got me thinking. I think for me it is a lot also about trusting yourself and trusting your intuition. And I’m not saying that I was terrible at it even though I have an analytical job, so  I’m good at analysing. I did often also listen to, you know, does it feel right or not?

But then also allowing voices around you that play to the not obvious facts about what looks good on paper. So that can also reinforce the intuition, that you may have on what works for you or doesn’t work for you to then make your path. Because I think we really all have our own story.

And in hindsight, most of them make sense. But they’re not so obvious. Of course, we all can try and be as strong as we can, but, none of us can do it on our own. Right. So I think surround yourself with people that are good for you. And also let you, bring out those not-obvious things and reinforce them and not try to put you into a box or a path that everyone else has walked over before.

Yeah. And I mentioned that my, my husband commutes and we’ve been together for more than a decade and we’ve always had a commuter set up. And when I listen to it, it sounds crazy.

If someone would have told me that this is how my marriage would look, I would’ve told them, no way. This is never how I’m going to do it. This is not what I want. But we are very happy and we’re happy as a couple, we’re happy as a family.It just goes to show that, you know, you sometimes need to trust yourself and then you also need to find people that tell you, you can make this work because you will find a lot of people that tell you this cannot be done.

 I do have another one. And that is not to be afraid to voice your ambitions. Yeah. And, when you think about it, it’s a bit crazy because you’ll ask a small kid, “What do you want to become when you’re older?” And they can tell you anything from like a fireman to a pilot, to an engineer, and you think that’s awesome.

Then there becomes, a point, or at least for me, it was like that as you progress, people start asking you, but what do you want to do? And I was afraid to answer that question.  I was afraid that if I told them that even my, maybe the next step or two steps ahead that I could envision, that person would look at me thinking, “Are you crazy?”

And I didn’t want to get that look, so I would rather say, “Oh, you know, I’m not sure yet. I like to learn, and I want to advance, but I’ll stay curious…”

So it was very vague because that way I couldn’t get challenged. And it took me a while to be bold enough to say, “Ah, at some point, I would like to become a country manager.”

 I had a coach and they said, tell people! And so I started and it was just so fascinating to see that the the response was like, “Ok, interesting. So what is it that we would take to get you there?” And then, there was a conversation.

So I think that’s the other advice I would give my younger self. Yes. Don’t be afraid to share what your dreams are and when they are crazy, maybe you’ll get a laugh, but then you also know, okay, maybe that is crazy for now, but in most cases maybe there’s a path that can get you there.

Audrey: So now when we’ve talked about women in business, let’s talk about women in leadership.

That’s what it looks like. And it’s not just women to women, it’s women in leadership. Period. I have a couple of people that report to me and I start with exactly that question. And one of them said “I want your job!” And I said, “Awesome. Okay. Let’s do it! What are we gonna do to get you there?”

 I think we should be encouraging that kind of stretch mentality. It also helps us to define what are the rings on the ladder to help individuals build up to that. That is a role of a leader to grow their team and if we do our jobs well, we also grow out of our role.

So encouraging bold ambition. I’m totally on a hundred per cent Melanie’s boat with that one.

Liv: I have the very last question, and we do have about nine minutes left, but I have to ask the question because I ask every single guest that comes on this show. So have you seen the movie Sliding Doors?

Mel: No.

Audrey: You see two shaking heads. No.

Liv: It’s ages old. It’s a Gwyneth Paltrow movie, probably from the early nineties. Essentially the story goes, she gets the train every day to work. One day she goes to get the train.

The train doors close just as she’s about to get on it. She misses the train. She has to turn around and go home, and she gets home and she finds her husband’s been cheating on her. And then the rest of the movie plays out how, what would’ve happened if the doors hadn’t closed and she had caught the train and you see both versions of her life, and that’s why it’s called sliding doors, and that pivotal moment of her life was those sliding doors. So you’ve both touched today on times in your life that were perhaps tough, that you had to come back from. My question to you is, do you have what you perceive to be a sliding doors moment?

And do you ever wonder or imagine what the alternative world would look like for you?

Mel: I had one. So I mentioned that I was, you know, into medicine and wanted to become a doctor. I did the entry exam. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t prepare for an exam which made no sense in hindsight, but I didn’t get in because of one point. And I think that was, now you may call it destiny or I don’t know, because I’m very happy where I ended up.

But that was a moment where clearly what I had worked towards and what I thought I would become within seconds turned out to be something completely else. And I had to reorient myself. I did leave myself the option that I can go back to it, but I didn’t. And I do believe that my life would have turned out differently. Maybe not. I would’ve still become a mum because that is something that I always wanted to do. I most likely would’ve married someone else, and I think the whole setup would’ve been very different. 

Liv: Wow. One point. That’s crazy. What about you, Audrey?

Audrey: Yeah. This is a really big question.  So there’s one that I think about often. But the thing is, I have like a zillion small ones, similar to Melanie. What if I had stayed pre-med?

What if I hadn’t got the agency job in New York and I had stayed in LA which is where my family was at the time? There’s so many things for me. The partner I chose has changed my life dramatically. I am from small-town Ohio. I went off to university, in upstate New York. Ended up in New York City, and probably would’ve stayed in the US my entire life.

There was a path of a different relationship that could have turned into something very interesting. So I could have ended up on Capitol Hill, but no, I ended up in Zurich. And it’s because I married this also small-town Austrian guy who somehow randomly ended up in New York, but this was completely unscripted. Where I am in my life was completely unscripted. I didn’t see any of this coming. I don’t know that I had a grand vision for how my life would unfold, but Zurich was not ever on my map, ever.

Vienna was on my map. So the partner I chose, he’s my sliding door. My mom and I had this talk recently and we talked about the other sliding door and it would’ve been a nice sliding door as well. And she goes, “Audrey, that was good, but you got the best.” I thought that was such a beautiful way to talk about like how life unfolded. 

Liv: Oh, I’ve got goosebumps!

I’m gonna wrap it up and thank you both so much.

Thank you both for taking the time. I know how busy you are and it’s incredible that both of you individually have taken the time to come on and do this. I loved having a double interview for the first time, so thank you for making that happen.

Mel: Awesome. Thanks for having us.