OYP Episode 36: Teresa Barreira

Teresa Barreira, Chief Marketing Officer at Publicis Sapient, tells us about the power of embracing your roots, the importance of actively seeking diverse and new challenges, and the freeing affect of bringing your authentic self to work.

Interview

Peter Szczerba - Welcome back to the Own Your Potential Podcast, where you'll hear stories from leaders across the globe, about how they've taken control their career growth and lessons on how you can do. I'm Peter Szczerba. And today, I'm very excited to be sitting down with Teresa Barreira, who's the Chief Marketing Officer at Publicis Sapient. Teresa so excited to have you on the podcast. It's an extreme pleasure been looking forward to this conversation, why don't we just get right into it? Can you take us through your career journey leading up until this point?

Teresa Barreira - Yes. Thank you, and excited to be here with you as well. Looking at my career, I started my career at IBM after graduating from business school, I spent 10 wonderful and exciting years at IBM working in many parts of the business and traveling in different countries and regions around the world. I loved the experience and the work and the people. You know, I often say that IBM was my first love, because that is where I learned how to do marketing, I really had a discipline and the broad of marketing, from Product Marketing, to brand marketing to industry, marketing to Alliance and solution marketing, I worked in all kinds of facets of marketing and different parts of the business as well. And really was the best learning ground for any young person that is motivated and wants to learn. I left IBM after 10 very successful years, not because I was unhappy, but because I felt I should try something new, I felt after 10 years, perhaps was time to meet to, you know, sort of leave and go explore. And it was a very, very tough decision. Because like I said, I really love that I really like to drink that Kool Aid and wore that T shirt. I decided to kind of, you know, spread my wings. And I left to go to a software startup to build their brand and help launch the company define and create a new market space and, and help them you know, consolidate and create a new product portfolio. And I was there for about 18 months or so. And then I was called I got some calls from ex colleagues from IBM that had now joined Accenture and Accenture just become a public company. And they were, you know, they were very successful in convincing me to come and join them. And I did. But to be honest, I was like a bit hesitant to join a consulting in a service organization it took it took a lot of convincing. But I went to Accenture because the offer was and the opportunity was very attractive. And I really actually thought I was going to spend maybe two to three years there and then leave. But I did end up turning the two to three years to 13 years. And when I look back at Accenture, you know, it was a great place to put my marketing knowledge to practice, but also to learn leadership skills to learn how to prioritize and build a High Performance Team. It really taught me how to focus on outcomes and versus activities. In Frankly, I think one of the things I took most from that experience was how to grow as a leader and Accenture also gave me the great opportunity the opportunity probably that a lot of woman desire, which was to be a mom and a professional at the same time. And for that I'm super grateful to be able to have that to be able to do both and, and have the flexibility to do both and being able to, you know, lean in in one versus the other as different times permitted. Then I left Accenture to join Deloitte after 13 years as to become the first cmo for Deloitte Consulting, it was a I mean a phenomenal opportunity to come to to an already established company or a successful brand, and to really help rebuild the marketing organization and the function to be fit for purpose and become a growth driver. So obviously, I I didn't turn it away, and I embraced the challenge. And I was able to rebuild and refocus the team launch a new advertising campaign, create 12 signature issues and really make marketing accountable for outcomes. So while I was at Accenture, Deloitte, I was there for about two years. And one day I received the email from a guy named Alan Wexler. I was actually on a vacation and a beautiful holiday in Nantucket. And I open up my personal email, I get this email from this guy, Alan says he'd like to meet with me and I look at the closing of his email and I said he was the CEO of Sapient Razorfish not to tell you my first reaction was how does so long ago, I remember Sapient, as well as Razorfish, there was amazing brands. So I did reply to Alan had a first conversation with them. And then the rest is history. Three years later, here I am talking to you now.

Peter Szczerba - I mean, I want for the first comment I have is, I just love the fondness that you kind of speak about your your kind of journey and career path with, and how you sort of reflect on how much joy you got out of different parts of your journey and the experiences you had. I'd love to before we get into some of the heavy hitting questions that I wanted to address with you, I'd love to touch a little bit on your time at IBM, you talked about the fact that across 10 years, you had so many different experiences to do marketing in different areas of the business. And it really helped kind of build your perspective and, you know, had explosive growth for you. So I'm curious, as you were kind of transitioning from one area of marketing to another was all of it, you know, done with intent? Or were you kind of following the impact? Or was it just opportunities happen to pop up to shift gears into other areas of marketing? How exactly you navigate going from one area of marketing to the other? What were the driving factors?

Teresa Barreira - Yeah, that's a great question. It's a bit of both right. I think one of the things that IBM at least back then, and I think probably still done in a lot of companies do that. They actually encourage you to move. And they do that because they want you to learn the business. So working in different facets in different parts of the business and different regions, right, I worked in Europe, I get it, I was amazing, I get go and work in Portugal and Spain for two years. That was incredible. I get to travel to parts in the world I never been I spend time in Japan time in Australia. But they do encourage you to do that. Because when they look for people and they see a talent, that high potential talent, they actually do encourage you to do that. And then sometimes the opportunities come to you but also they encourage you to seek those opportunities. And if you are a person that likes the challenge that likes, that tribes socially on changing and learning has, has a learning mindset that that's a phenomenal place to be in a really serves at anybody well, because often people ask me, hey, I want to become a CMO one day, right? What is the thing? What should I do? And my advice is always look, your path should never be linear. Think about your career like not linear journey, not a straight line, like a jungle gym, right, you have to work in different places, learn different things, learn different skills work in different parts of the organization, because one day, you're going to be a CMO. And you don't have to know everything. I'm not a design expert. I'm not a PR expert. But I have a point of view. Right, you have to have some knowledge and you have to have an a point of view. So you can have on people, you're going to hire the experts and the people in the team. That's what they do. But you also have to be able to guide. So having working in different parts of an organization, I think it's it's great. And so so. So from that perspective, large companies and small companies, right can offer that, but seek those opportunities. So my advice to people is, if they don't come to you, seek them ask for them as for the challenges, and again, you don't have to live in organization to have these experiences you can have them in, in the same company. like think about the people that been in our organization, so many people celebrate 20 years anniversary, it's incredible.

Peter Szczerba - Yeah, absolutely. And it's something that I've always found interesting about kind of the culture and how we've able to maintain and retain folks for for two plus decades is, you know, and I guess part of that comes from the consulting space, you know, having a lot of diversity and experience inherently, you know, going from one client to another one industry to another. So I think that maybe lends itself well to this kind of diversified continued learning that you speak to but, you know, I want to lean into the next part of your career journey where you talk a little bit about, you know, taking a chance and leaving after 10 really great years who was your first love, I want to quote you there, you know To leave your first love, it must be pretty daunting. And you did it to simply try something new and experienced something new. You know, that takes a lot of bravery. And I wonder, you know, were you cognizant of how much bravery it took in the moment? Or is it something that you reflect back and think, actually, that was a really brave thing of me to do? And I'm glad I did it. And building on that, you know, from there onwards, what role did bravery play in your kind of continued growth along the rest of your career?

Teresa Barreira - Yeah, it does mean, you have to also have to be a person that welcomes change, and is not shy by it. Right? I, it was hard for me to leave IBM because it is true. It is. No, it's always going to be my first law. I when I was leaving, I actually I was crying. And one would say, Why are you leaving then? But I pushed myself to go. I remember at the time, because I felt Wow, 10 years? Do I want to continue which I could have been there for 2025 30 years? Or do I want to go spread the wings. And I forced myself to do that. But it does take bravery, and it to do that. I think when I think of myself, I always consider myself as a builder. And as a builder, I look for opportunities where I can build and I can reinvent or or I can innovate. And that's what I always when I look back at my career, my pattern has always been like that. So I don't shy away from change. Like I said, I welcome and I and I even welcome disruption. And I really believe at least for me, it gives me fresh and it keeps me relevant. So what I was going to say to this change in innovation, sometimes people think about, it doesn't have to be this big gesture or this big move. Right? It can also be incremental. But but it's about I do believe it's about having this sort of learning mindset. But I also want to make the point, I left IBM because I wanted to kind of, you know, look, see what's was beyond the Big Blue. But you don't have to change doesn't have to mean you have to change jobs, to continue to learn or to grow, you can do it in the same job in the same company, as long as you continue to stretch yourself. Like, I have a person in my team, that she said this to me once that I thought was stayed with me. She has been in the company now for 20 years. And one conversation I was having with her she said to me that she feels in 20 years here, she feels incredibly lucky that the past 20 years, she had the opportunity to do so many different things. And feel like she has worked in different companies in those 20 years. But she wouldn't have the pressure to go look for a new job.

Peter Szczerba - You know, you touched a little bit now on this idea of a learning mindset and being willing to be disruptive and but that that change doesn't always have to be huge. It can be incremental, which you kind of touched on. You know, I am curious, though, like that's very clearly your approach to growth in your career. Is that also reflective of how you approach growth and just maybe your day to day life outside of work? Is that Is it just authentically who you are and how you kind of look at life?

Teresa Barreira - I think so a little bit. I believe that a lot of it like the way we sometimes inform the way we bring to work a lot of it has to do probably the way we are ourselves as individuals. And the last few years I get to actually think a little bit more my my journey, not just my career journey, but my personal journey. And in now that journey has really played a huge role in my career, the way I working my leadership style and the choices I have made and even that the opportunities I pursued. So I'll share with you I grew up in a small village in the northern part of Portugal, literally less than 1000 people. When I grew up, maybe it was about 2000 today is about 850 people that live there. Very, very small. It's a rural farming village people live from the land and from generations to generations here. They live in that village and, and those homes they pass on to generations. I have a house in that village that my father built in 1954. When I grew up there, my parents were small business owners, you know entrepreneurs but they own small business in a cafe restaurant store, a taxi stand, so at a young age I was exposed you know part of it to risk to making a decision And some way to change. I started working on my father's cafe, in the store grocery store at the age of seven. And my folks are going to be listening to this and may sound like child labor here, that I did not get paid well. And that there was common, right. So by the age, let me start ages seven, even, perhaps younger, my father actually built the platform, so I could stand to serve men in the cafe coffee, because I was too short. That's how young I was, by the age of 13. I was already managing the store, opening the store and closing the store on my own. And that meant I was making decisions in terms of inventory, pricing, the things that at the time, I didn't even realize, right. And, and some of those decisions, when I look back, some were good. I think some were not so good that I think that that turned some customers away. But I learned a lot. I mean, I became a really amazing math student, because at that age, I had to do mental math. That really helped me. But I also, most importantly, I was taught me how to be proactive. It taught me how to do do more with less to take risks to improvise, and taught me taught me how to deal with people will deal with difficult situations. But I think when I think back, right, well, how does this has influenced my career, my choices had a lot of influence. Because every day was a different day, I opened the store, and I had to deal with things. So I was really exposed. Right. So to expose to things that and uncertainty uncertainty. So for me, taking on, you know, thinking on embracing change, as I talked about earlier, I think it became one from an early age and be unable to, to take these risks. So I think back of that, and a lot of what I learned that sort of intrapreneur mindset that scrappiness the ability to, let's try things out, lets you know that it's better to be fast. And, you know, I prefer speed over process. Those things, I do think it came from my early years of working in when my parents business and you know, in doing things that probably a lot of people in my age didn't have to do for good or bad.

Peter Szczerba - I love hearing that I love hearing the stories of very humble, kind of foundational experiences, likely in very diverse settings, and you know, maybe even at first glance unrelated to what you end up doing, then upon reflection, translating to so much impact into how you approach things later on in your life, and throughout your whole career. And you had a long and successful career. And you know, especially somebody in marketing, and in some of the leadership positions that you've held over the last number of years. You know, I feel like you're probably pretty cognizant of your brand. And I guess I'm curious, how is your brand evolved over the course of this long, successful career? You know, but also how have you maintained it? Or how's it remained the same, as well, in terms of staying authentic to you?

Teresa Barreira - Yeah, that's a great question. And when I think about him, I think my own perception, my brand and identity, I think, has evolved over the years, when I started my career, right, I started I moved to America, at the age of 16 and a half. I was an immigrant. I'm a first generation immigrant, I emigrated with my mother and sister, and I think that carries a lot. So when I started my career, I, I still have an accent. But I had even more of accent than I mean, I really didn't speak English. I really learned English in university Believe it or not. So I obviously, I, I was always cognizant of that. So when I first looking back at my career when I first started, and after university, I was very focused on sort of fitting into what I call corporate norms and expectations. Meaning, I didn't think much of much attention to my background or my upbringing, my culture was very focused on here's what I should be like in a corporate setting. He is how should I try to speak how I should try to act. And it was important to me because I wanted to fit in. You don't want to be the person that looks different. You want to try to fit in, and I spend a lot of energy on that part. But doing that, what do you I've learned over the years, you don't bring your full self to work. You don't bring your Self, which is a story I just told you were the way I grew up, you in some ways you suppress those things. And it took me longer until I sort of grew into my career and became more comfortable, more secure, and more confident, to bring my background, my experience is into the workplace. And that means bringing my whole self, not to try to fit into this mold that I thought was the right mold. But to say, this is who I am, because who I am, it is the best of me, you get the best thinking, you get all myself with all my energy, or all my passions. It did sort of, like I said, took me longer to get there as I am that I think so might from your question my brand, I started evolving, to be less this brand that should fit here to be more a brand, who I really am. And my true self, not just outside work, but inside work as well. And even sharing the stories that I'm sharing, telling my own personal stories and personal journeys, the one I just share with you, it is became more of the result of me being more open and more vulnerable. And in embracing sort of my, my experience, my heritage, my immigrant roots, and being very open about that. And I think as a result of that, I feel it's been better for me, I think it's better for the company. So I encourage people now and now to do that as well. I try to share more and more as more as soon as I can. Because I think it's it's helps helps the company helps to help steer the team and helps the individual. And I'll think in my own case, I feel like even from me, it helped me become much more empathetic leader and also connect better with others in the team as well. So from that perspective, back to your question, I do think from that my brand probably has evolved to more be, maybe a more open and more authentic brand, if you will,

Peter Szczerba - I think that's such a powerful and beautiful story, but also sentiment and kind of nugget to walk away with this idea that of suppressing your authentic self to conform and fit in you know, really hampers your ability to grow and bring your whole self to work which often unlocks kind of your ability to really realize your potential and maximize your impact. I think that's such a, you know, we could easily I think who just given the the wealth of knowledge coming out of these stories continues conversation for another hour, but I think it's a beautiful sentiment to leave off on today. So this was a really great conversation. I appreciate your time and I can't wait to get this episode out there. Thank you so much.

Teresa Barreira - Well, thank you. It was a pleasure having this conversation with you.