Embrace the Unknown

You know, it's interesting that you bring up risk. You moved to San Francisco with very little money but a very big dream of establishing SOA, the Sustainable Ocean Alliance in San Francisco in Northern California. It was a risk for you. You were young, just graduated from college. For you, what role does risk-taking play in being a successful leader?

I believe you need to be fearless in order to be successful as a leader. And when I say fearless, I don't mean you canÕt be afraid of anything, I rather mean you're going to be afraid, you're going to be fearful, but the fact that you're acting on that fear is what matters. And so to me, I didn't have job security once I turned down all my job offers after college. My mom was actually depending on me financially, so I needed to make sure to be that support system for her as a single mother. So there was a lot at stake for me personally, and I was afraid that I would fail. However, I also knew that I would never forgive myself if I didn't try and if I didn't follow my own calling, which was to continue building SOA. So ultimately, what I would say is the worst thing that can happen is that you fail or you start from scratch. And to me, just keeping that in mind as I was going through my journey was so important, because I kept saying to myself, what's the worst thing that can happen?

And that's important, right? Because once you get over that hurdle, then it doesn't seem so daunting anymore.

Definitely. And that's when you also build yourself, you build yourself up and you have more confidence in knowing that you're following your decisions, and then you're staying true to what you want to do as opposed to being driven towards a different career, or trying a different project because of what your family is encouraging you to do or what other people are telling you.