Driven by Impact: Lessons on Overcoming Limiting Beliefs Through Coaching and Community

The key moments in this episode are:

[00:00] Welcome to Beyond Barriers: Empowering Women in Leadership
[00:31] A Personal Journey: Overcoming Doubts and Embracing Growth
[01:38] Introducing Melissa Healy: From Creative Director to Champion of Workplace Culture
[02:59] Melissa's Nonlinear Path to Authentic Leadership
[05:58] Advocacy and Motherhood
[06:54] The Power of Being Your Authentic Self
[08:55] The Pivot to Focusing on Employee Belonging and Participation
[12:24] Confidence Redefined
[14:34] Leadership and Goals for Impact
[16:11] Building a Personal Brand on Authenticity and Continuous Learning
[22:44] Navigating Professional Growth: Goals, Relationships, and Overcoming Limitations
[25:46] Building and Maintaining Meaningful Relationships
[29:49] Advice to Past Self
[31:22] Impact, Legacy, and Personal Insights
[32:39] Lightning Round: Influences, Values, and Empowerment

Q:  What book has greatly influenced you?
A:   Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Q:  What is your favorite inspiring quote or saying?
A:   "Doctrines and theories are best used in times of weakness; in times of strength, problems are solved intuitively, as if of themselves."

Q:  What is one word or moniker you would use to describe yourself?
A:  Driven, Impact & Joy

Q:  What is one change you've implemented that made your life better?
A:  I got very clear on my values and who I wanted to be.

Q:  What power song would you want playing as you walk out onto a stage?
A:  If it is to a room full of my enemies it is Look at What You Made Me Do by Taylor Swift; If it's to a group of friends, it would be Rise Up by Audrey Dey.

I believe that who we are is intrinsic to what we make. The work of inclusion is work for us all because it drives growth for our people and our product.

Melisa Healy

I think that confidence was me being genuine and walking into a room or a situation and saying, I'm going to be me in this situation. I'm going to react in the way that is genuine and true for me and that has to be enough.

Melisa Healy

Every single one of us, it doesn't matter who we are, how old we are, where we are, where we live, has an opportunity to have impact on people and on situations.

Melisa Healy

Melissa (she/hers) serves as the Employee Belonging and Participation Lead based out of Leo Burnett Group. She believes that fear is the enemy of creativity and that creativity thrives when culture empowers every single one of us. She is guided by her ethos ‘Who we are is intrinsic to what we make'. She strives to advance creativity through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion by connecting community and product. She gets her energy from supporting others and co-creating platforms on which they can flourish and have lasting impact. She is a white woman unlearning, a mother constantly learning, and flagrantly committed to both.

In her current, role Melissa leads the Multicultural Intelligence Practice - an accelerator meant to transform businesses to better reflect the world in which we live, the Inclusivity Product Council – an award-winning multicultural peer-resource that offers a lens of sensitivity and inclusion throughout creative development, is part of the Publicis Groupe Brain Trust - a collective of DEI experts across the Groupe, is a founder of the employee-lead culture collective Create Greater Than, supports our collection of employee resource groups and develops identity-based programming for the Groupe like The Joy Series and Pausing for Action.

She’s an avid mentor and has mentored countless women through She Runs It, We Are Next and AIGA. In her former life she was an award-winning creative director with her most coveted award being The 3% Conference peer-nominated Nancy Hill Award whose purpose is to honor a woman who has gone above and beyond to champion other women.

She’s a big believer in people and the impact they have, and it guides all her work.

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