It was perhaps a bold and surprising move for Ann Mukherjee to take on the role of chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard North America, the second-largest spirits company in the U.S., given her personal history with alcohol abusers. But Mukherjee’s approach to her career has been to use her personal pain and experience to create something good.

Mukherjee, Ad Age’s 2023 Vanguard Award recipient, has risen through the ranks, holding various leadership positions at companies including Kraft, PepsiCo and SC Johnson. As an Indian American woman in a white male-dominated industry, and the first woman and female of color to hold the CEO role at Pernod Ricard North America, Mukherjee opened up about some of the challenges and self-doubt she faced climbing the ladder in the marketing industry at Ad Age’s 2023 Leading Women Conference this month.

Leaning into her differences, remaining confident and being willing to take risks propelled Mukherjee, a 2007 Ad Age Woman to Watch, to have an incredibly successful roughly 30-year career. She did this all while mentoring other women and underrepresented professionals to be able to do the same.

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Below are three of the top takeaways Mukherjee offered at the Leading Women event to ad professionals looking to build and grow their careers.

Don’t be afraid of failure

Who would have thought Mukherjee nearly failed her marketing class in business school?

Yes, one of the industry’s top marketers nearly failed marketing for second-guessing her abilities, but ended up getting the highest score on her final exam when she finally let go, trusted her instincts and tried “not to be perfect,” she said.

Mukherjee said later in her career she was second-guessing herself again and recalled a time when she was constantly coming home to her husband in a bad mood, telling him she had been fighting with everyone on her team.

“He's like, ‘why do you keep fighting with people?’ she recalled of the conversation. “I was like, ‘because I have to prove myself. What if they figure out I’m an impostor?’ He's like, ‘you're worried about being fired? Look, if you get fired, will you get hired in maybe two years?’ I'm like, ‘yeah, I think I can get hired in two years.’ He took two years of our expenses and put it into an escrow.

‘That way, if you get fired, we'll have the money.’ I walked in the next day and I was like, ‘go ahead, fire my ass.’”

Mukherjee said that while she doesn’t necessarily recommend putting your savings into an escrow account, the move unleashed the “fear” of failure and allowed her to take risks that ended up paying off.

One of which included running with a could-be objectionable ad for Doritos, “Finger Cleaner,” a result of the brand’s 2014 “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, in which consumers submitted their campaign ideas to the company for a chance to have them aired during the Big Game. In the ad, a character puts his Doritos cheese-covered fingers in a hole in a wall and they come out clean; it’s later revealed that a man is on the other side licking them.

“I got called into the CEO’s office,” Mukherjee said, recalling PepsiCo’s reaction to the ad and her conversation with then-CEO Indra Nooyi. “And I called my husband, I'm like, ‘this might be it. You got that two years of savings?’ I went in, I stood up for the brand and they were not happy but I worked it out logically with her and she said, ‘OK, but you need some standards moving forward.’ I’m like, ‘fine, lesson learned.’”

[By the way, consumers loved the ad.]

Bring your personal life to the job

A lot of people are of the opinion that you shouldn’t mix business with pleasure, but Mukherjee said professionals should absolutely bring their passions and what they love to do in their personal lives to work.

“We're in a state today where if you are in business, who you are as a person matters,” she said.

Mukherjee said that’s the most effective way to create trust not only within your company but with consumers, who are increasingly distrustful of brands. “Trust is, globally, at an all-time low,” she said.

It’s not always easy, but Mukherjee said she even brings the painful events from her life to the job. Mukherjee has spoken publicly about traumas in her life including being sexually assaulted when she was four years old by an intoxicated adolescent boy, and how a drunk driver killed her mother when she was a teenager.

She said her experiences have led to work such as Pernod Ricard-owned Absolut vodka’s 2020 campaign highlighting the importance of sexual consent. “We said, ‘look, if you're buying our brand as a weapon against victims, we don't want your business,’” Mukherjee said.

Personal experiences can be used to create authentic brand value, she said.

Mukherjee also discussed how to listen and put other skills to use.

Embrace what makes you different

A priority for Mukherjee as an industry leader is uncovering the unique strengths in all her employees and mentees.

“Most people don't even know their own gift,” she said. “So for me, my life's purpose became about working with anyone I met to understand their gift and to give it back to them.”

Mukherjee is no stranger to micro-aggressions and discrimination being a woman of color in the workplace but she got through them by embracing her differences.

“I’ve faced ignorance since I was young,” she said. “I decided very early, I'm going to own who I am. When I first worked at Kraft, every Monday morning the brand team would sit down, go around the table and talk about what they did that weekend. You got some, ‘we went golfing at the club.’ They got to me and that's where my choice was. Either I could try to assimilate and make up something or I can be me. So, I said, ‘well, I had some friends over and I made goat.’ [They responded] ‘what did you just say?’ I said, ‘yeah, I make a mean goat curry.’”

She continued, “What was really interesting was people got curious, people wanted to know. Rather than hiding it, I dial it up. I have no issues talking about my experiences that may be different from someone else's just to help people have perspective.”

She said the best thing you can do for yourself is love every part of who you are and that will help you grow as a professional.

“I have never seen employees as employees,” Mukherjee said. “I see them as human beings. The hardest thing about human beings is to unconditionally love and accept yourself. And I mean all the stuff; the crappy stuff, the ugly stuff.

And the reason this is so important is look, your strengths are your strengths. That's what differentiates you.”

But, she advised, focus on the good. “Don’t work on the weaknesses. You are who you are. Get over it.”