“Choose how you show up,” Sarah Ivey from Havas Media Network

Meet Sarah Ivey, Chief Strategy Officer at Havas Media Network, where she leads strategy, intelligence, content strategy, and business intelligence across North America. Building brands is one of Sarah’s passions. She brings her Gen X, middle child, and Canadian background to her can-do, roll-up-her-sleeves, make-it-happen attitude, which informs her leadership style. Sarah’s impressive career has included judging awards shows like Cannes Young Lions and speaking and presenting work at Cannes and Advertising Week.

Sarah joined Jocelyn Hudak, Senior Director, Content and Digital Marketing, for an interview at our Pass the Mic lounge at CES in Las Vegas, created in partnership with The Female Quotient. Get empowered, and give the full interview a listen.

You have a choice.

Highlight: "The phrase that I've heard used most often is choosing how you show up. And that's actually the tipping point as people develop as leaders, and especially women. You don't realize that you have the choice." – Sarah Ivey

Understand your power.

Highlight: “The other thing that's really hard is realizing how much power you have and grasping it. And I think that's a journey. You don't realize how much power you have in the room. We tend to underestimate, as women, how much power we have in the room. And stepping into that occasionally when you choose how you show up is also the next step of being a leader.” – Sarah Ivey

Express all aspects of yourself.

Highlight: “There are aspects of our personality that need to be expressed and explored. Professional me is an awesome woman. It doesn't have to be home me. And the other big revelation that I had as I was raising my kid is that I thought I had to choose to be one or the other in any given moment, and I suddenly realized I can be all of those things.” – Sarah Ivey

Embrace critical thinking.

Highlight: “We're wired for consensus. And consensus is a wonderful thing, but critical thinking is an interesting skill that culturally North America is not great at, and we're not great at it. But it's essential as a female skill. That's something that I don't think I was taught to lean into, and something that I learned to embrace.” – Sarah Ivey

Recalibrate for growth.

Highlight: “As a female leader, you invest a lot of emotion in your teams. Watching somebody grow and blossom, you can't just drop that. Now on the senior side of it, I'm also seeing the fact that sometimes it's a recalibration. And the constructive feedback in those tough decisions is actually a huge growing opportunity.” – Sarah Ivey

Sarah helps us understand that we’re all multifaceted beings and empowers us to embrace that. For more empowering insight, check out our Pass the Mic content page.