Deena LaMarque Piquion, Chief Marketing Officer at Xerox, joins ChedHER to discuss how women can break the glass ceiling in the workplace, and why and how women should stop saying 'sorry' so often.

chedHER

Why Women Should Stop Saying Sorry

joining us now is Dina Lamarque Pickin, chief marketing officer at Xerox. Dino. Glad to have you on this morning. Can you just start first by telling us about your own career journey and how you got to this point? Yes, good morning and thank you so much for having me. It's a privilege and an honor. So you know, I got detected by chance, not by design, it was one of those life changing conversations with the ceo of the previous company that I worked at and he invited me to join a management training program that changed my life and that's how I started in tech started in product marketing grew with increasing responsibility, eventually led my own business unit and P. N. L. And then Xerox recruited me out um about 2.5 years ago to lead a go to market unit here at Xerox and two years later I was promoted to CMO. So it's amazing, I'm here now, CMO position it and my responsibility is really to enable go to market leaders like I was once myself to drive revenue and build awareness and demand for our products or offerings and of course our new businesses. Yeah, the catalyst that is just simply somebody opening a door and allowing you to walk through and continue on that path to success. Um, we know that Xerox obviously that the company has been around for a while, it's been a household name for a long time. I'm curious how are you creating kind of a brand shift as CMO into the tech space. Yeah, I love a challenge and we're going through a transformation here at xerox. Right. So we've always been known, we were a household name for print and copy. But you know, we're making the shift to Xerox as a technology powerhouse, right? As an innovative forum for technology to be bread uh, where we have over 100 years of legacy and innovation and inventing a lot of things that don't even go under the Xerox brand today. But now we're monetizing and commercializing our investments in new businesses like three D A. R. I. O. T. Clean tech and paving the way for the next 100 years at Xerox, right? Which obviously includes bringing in the talent that you need to create a technology powerhouse for the next 100 years. You know, you recently wrote a blog post on why women say sorry so much and why we should actually stop doing that. This is something that I focused on for for quite some time now. So I'm glad it was something that you wrote and you can talk about today. Why should we kind of stop saying, sorry, what's the research that backs it up and how is it holding women back? So yeah, this is near and dear to my heart. I say it's way too much myself and you know, there's a lot of research, especially from child psychologists that we teach girls at an early age to be polite above all else. And so what does that lead to, you know, leading your statement or opinion with? Sorry, undermines what you're about to say right? It kind of says to people, I'm not confident in what I'm about to say or my right to say it. And so saying that really does hold us back. It really does undermine the point and it really does make us come across as less confident. We see it in athletes. I'm a soccer mom. So I enjoyed your previous segment. Um, they, you know, girl athletes say sorry on the field too much for a bad pass or a bad play. And you know, if we want to make a conscious effort to get further, we need to stop opening with an apology and speak more confidently and unapologetically. I'm curious just you know what your thoughts on it and how to start that transformation. Because I know for me it's again, it's something that I'm also passionate about. I have started to count the number of times I say sorry throughout the day, whether it's I'm walking down a hallway and someone bumps me, I will say, oh I'm so sorry and I didn't do anything. And I have that note to myself every time I do that to remind myself how often I'm saying and and how I need to kind of pull back on it. What's your advice? Yeah, counting them just stopping, right? Stopping and resetting. I mean I even find myself starting a text with sorry, like I'm like why am I starting a text? You start and I'll go back erase it, you know, start over. Yeah, I'm beyond that. I'm just curious what other advice you have for female professionals out there who looked to a woman like you with so much success and say hey I want to be in that space, how do I get there? So I think first you know, you got to define your who, what and why? Right? You need to be able to articulate who you are, what you bring to the table, what's unique about you, why you do what you do and why people should choose you. You also need to build a village, we can't do it alone or all at once. Right? So you need to choose a life partner Wisely. You need to build your personal and professional network to be able to do it on your own. You need to be intentional and self aware, look for people in your life that will give you critical feedback that you need to grow and then obviously choose places companies to work that align with your values, right? And what's important to you. So you don't have to compromise yourself and you can be authentic. Deena's such great advice. Really glad to have you on Dina Lemarque, Chief marketing Officer at Xerox