Who’s the boss? Esther Mireya Tejeda on rethinking what leadership looks like

Ad Age is marking Women’s History Month with a series of contributions from guest essayists. Today, Esther Mireya Tejeda, founder and chief marketing officer at EM Strategic Partners, writes about not waiting for permission to be who you are. Growing up, I wanted to be “a boss.” As a kid, I didn’t know what it meant exactly, but I envisioned myself in a big corner office with large windows overlooking Manhattan, sitting behind an imposing desk, working on an oversized computer with a giant coffee mug. When I shared this, I would often be met with a chuckle tinged with something else—something I could not yet recognize as a 5-year-old or a 10-year-old, but I now know is incredulity. What I was aspiring to was unthinkable, not just because I was a little girl shooting for a man’s job, but because I had the nerve to admit it out loud. I had not yet gotten the message that success, and the power that comes with it, was solely the pursuit of men. Today, I am not “the boss” of everything, nor do I want to be, but I have carved a career in business with successes and accolades along with failures and lessons, working my way to the C-suite, a place that is still largely off-limits to women—especially women of color. As a chief marketing officer, I have led big teams, ran complex transformations, rebranded organizations and launched new businesses. And still, the incredulity persists. I am challenged to prove that I can, that I do and that I will, despite having a track record that already proves that. But the incredulity is not the entire problem. It is the question of what—or who—leadership looks like. As women, we are often executing an impossible balancing act: to succeed, but not too much; to lead, but not too strongly; to play the game, but not to win. To be a man with big ambitions is the expectation, but to be a woman with the same is unseemly. Still today, “the boss” looks like a man. And that picture must be redrawn. My advice is simple: State your ambitions out loud, whatever they may be. Do not wait for permission to be who you are. Have, as they say, a lot of nerve. We have come a long way over the past decades, but there is still so much more left to be done. Until every little girl can say—unapologetically and unashamedly—“I want to be a boss when I grow up,” our work is not over. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here

Who’s the boss? Esther Mireya Tejeda on rethinking what leadership looks like

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