Participant Spotlight | Sarah Wilkins
COO at Reverb
Ceresa Community Manager, Emily Worthington, talks with Sarah about her experience being a participant in the Ceresa Accelerator, and the impact it’s made in her life.
E: Hey, Sarah! Thanks for joining us to share your experience. Let’s start by hearing why you decided to invest in the Ceresa Accelerator program:
S: My company, Reverb, sponsored me to go through the program. I first learned about Ceresa while planning for our day-long HR/People and Recruiting leaders conference in Seattle. Ceresa had signed up to be a sponsor, so before the conference we had a call with Anna Robinson, Ceresa's CEO, to learn more about the Accelerator. Leading up to it, I had been talking to our CEO at Reverb about growth and development for myself. We saw the Ceresa Accelerator program as a blend of coaching, mentorship, 360 feedback, and goal setting, which felt like a wonderful way to work on the things I wanted to work on. It was something we could share with our clients too. The coaching was helpful…it helped me quit doing something that I wanted to quit for years. One of the biggest takeaways for me was learning to say no and let go of things that were not serving me anymore. In addition, I was able to prioritize the things I wanted to focus on by getting things off my plate through delegation.
E: Can you share a specific goal or aspect of your vision statement you worked on during your Ceresa journey?
S: I want to make an impact for women, young girls, and my local community. As a leader, I want to use my power of privilege to support and provide opportunities to others. I want to use my skills to lift others up.
E: What is your favorite thing about your Ceresa mentor?
S: She was vulnerable in sharing her experiences, where she is now, and what she has gone through to get there. It was valuable. As a result, I felt more comfortable sharing because my mentor had been through similar challenges. She is a leader and yet she still has things she wants to work through just like me.
E: What's new about you since beginning your Ceresa journey?
S: I started my Ceresa journey pre-COVID-19 and had completed by 360 reviews, executive coaching, and a lot of my mentoring. I naturally shifted some of my goals due to changes over the last year. The main difference that came up is we changed to work from home 100% of the time. I had to learn how to do that - support our clients, create strong connections, build culture…and do it all remotely. My mentor consults with healthcare organizations, so her perspective during this time was very valuable. We talked about the racial reckoning and how we were speaking about it within our companies, externally, and with our young children. She is a woman of color and was incredibly open to sharing her experience and perspective. It was great to have someone to talk to through that.
E: In what way(s) are you hoping to grow in the new year?
S: I have been thinking about strategic opportunities and how we can use this time to inspire others. For me, a lot of what I want to work on is my external leadership presence and helping provide inspiration to others. I have been a leader internally for a long time, but I want to engage in more external leadership and support my community more in 2021.
E: How do you define leadership?
S: For me, it is honestly about supporting others and providing opportunities for growth and development. It is not about telling someone what to do, but understanding where they are, meeting them there, and guiding them to where they want to be.
E: Is there a resource (book, podcast, game, quote, etc.) that has kept you going in 2020? If so, tell us about it.
S: Back in April, I attended a conference, and it gave me some inspiration to move forward, a perspective shift. I was able to understand that this situation will not change soon, so how are we going to get through it together while supporting and inspiring others? When things got hard, I encouraged myself to think about what I could do to inspire and support myself and others. In addition, having a focus on mental health was particularly important in 2020. At Reverb, we were very conscious of the challenges that 2020 brought and gave people the space they needed to process.
E: What's on your bucket list for after quarantine?
S: We had a trip planned for Europe in March 2020 to celebrate my 10-year wedding anniversary and to see our au pair, who stayed with us for 13 months after my daughter was born. For those who may not know, an au pair is a helper from a foreign country working for, and living as part of, a host family. They take on childcare responsibilities as well as enroll in some courses while in the United States. Our au pair had finished college and was coming to the United States to work on her English and travel before she went back to Belgium to take on her career. I went back to work when my daughter was 5 months old. It was such a relief to have someone that felt like family taking care of her while I was working because we live in Seattle without any family nearby. My daughter learned French from our au pair and even thinks of her as her sister even though they are 4 and 27 years old now. It has been two years since we have seen her, and we are hopeful we can rebook that trip to see her sometime soon.
E: Thanks for talking with me today, Sarah. We wish you the best with the continued pursuit of your goals!
A Leadership Journey
Like No Other
The Ceresa Leadership Accelerator is designed for growth-minded leaders from first-time managers to executives, and this highly personalized program gives you the space, structure, and support to focus on achieving your biggest professional aspirations.