I have spoken at Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. I have keynoted economic summits for the governments of Britain and Ireland, led sessions for Microsoft, and stood in front of the Inc. 500 and Fortune crowds. And almost every time, before I say anything else, I tell the room where I started, because it matters more than any logo on the slide behind me.
I came up as the child of a single parent, without a college degree, and walked into the technology field anyway. That is not a humblebrag. It is the entire point. Everyone in that audience is carrying some version of the reason they think they do not belong in the room. I lead with mine so they can put down theirs.
What I actually teach, once we get past that, is partnership and perseverance — how alliances really get built, how startups scale, how a woman without the standard credentials raises hundreds of millions for her clients across dozens of industries. But I refuse to teach only the wins. The wins are not instructive. The failures are. So I share both, in detail, because someone in that room is about to make a mistake I already made, and I would rather hand them the shortcut.
Motivation, determination, and perseverance go a long way — further than pedigree, in my experience. That is the thread through every talk I give, whether the audience is founders, women entering business, or executives twice credentialed and half as sure. You do not need permission to start. You need to begin, keep your word, and refuse to quit. I am, at this point, fairly convincing proof.