S 01 | Ep 36 Authenticity Unleashed Victoria Pellier was a CEO of a multinational corporation at 24 , spent decades leading at Accenture , IBM , and American Express , and has spent the years since trying to articulate what she wishes someone had told her earlier : that the parts of yourself you are most tempted to hide are usually the parts that make you most effective . The conversation moves between personal brand , resilience , and authentic leadership , but the thread running through all of it is the same . Victoria spent years showing up as the Iron Maiden , all business , no vulnerability , and it worked up to a point . The course correction came when she realized that trust , the thing that actually moves careers and client relationships forward , requires the courage to share something real . Her three practical tips for building genuine connection are deceptively simple : be intentional about creating space for it , find the specific point of commonality quickly , and offer a small vulnerability first to signal that the other person can do the same . What makes the episode worth listening to is that Victoria does not make any of this sound easy or costless . She talks about baby steps , about earning comfort with your own story by telling it in small settings before large ones , and about giving yourself permission to evolve publicly without treating that as a failure of consistency .