“You are the decision maker,” Preeti Nadgar from EssenceMediacom

Meet Preeti Nadgar. She’s living her dreams in Chicago with her family, garden, and rescue dogs—all while making big decisions as Chief Strategy Officer at EssenceMediacom. With nearly 20 years of experience working at creative and media agencies, Preeti is the comms planning OG. And for her, strategy is where it’s at, playing a pivotal role in the new comms economy as the agency designs breakthroughs for creativity, connectivity, and culture.

Our Sales Vice President of Agency Partnerships, Priscilla Valls sat down with Preeti for an inspiring Pass the Mic interview. If you’re ready to feel more empowered in your life and career, take a listen to the full interview below.

Living your dreams, honoring your emotions, embracing your mistakes, and making the decisions—that’s the kind of empowerment we all need more of. We’ve captured some highlights to reinforce the many beautiful messages and advice Preeti shares.

Decide who can un-empower you.

Highlight: “I get to decide who gets to un-empower me. And I find that to be my way of caring for myself. I am the decision maker of who will decide… In any situation, if I am advocating for something, if I think this is the right thing, I will get to decide who gets to un-empower me, including in my job, including in my ambition, including in my career progression, including how I am allowed to treat my team. Every single point.” – Preeti Nadgar

Don’t put yourself in a box.

Highlight: “I would say, I hate being put in a box, but that also works professionally. So, I think people at any age are capable of learning, of growing. And I feel like when you don't do that, you become unwanted and unusable.” – Preeti Nadgar

Acknowledge emotion, negative or positive.

Highlight: “I am one of those people who is all about acknowledging emotion, whether it'd be negative or positive, in any situation, because I feel like there's no human way to be able to dampen down how we feel. We can't stop ourselves from that. It's just natural, and it's actually healthy.” – Preeti Nadgar

Mistakes are a gift.

Highlight: “Making mistakes—absolutely is a gift we get. And if you're going to not celebrate that, then it's going to stop you from becoming a better person or finding the things that you don't want.” – Preeti Nadgar

Imagine the scatterplot.

Highlight: “Imagine a trajectory going upwards. There are things above it that are happening that are beautiful. There are things below it that are happening that perhaps are not things that other people see or recognize, but that are still probably rankling you forever and ever… As far as it's the right trajectory, that scatterplot is so important to ground yourself because you can get stuck in things, especially as you rise in your career.” – Preeti Nadgar

Success is a lagging indicator.

Highlight: “Success is a lagging indicator… If you take a promotion, that's really a lagging indicator of having done fabulous work for many, many months and years. If you think of that, that success is a lagging indicator, it makes you feel okay about the fact that everything you're doing today will bear fruit at some point in time.” – Preeti Nadgar

Find work-life harmonization.

Highlight: “That word is really important: harmonization. It really means to me that I am bringing my whole self to work, which means it's my magic, it's my mayhem, it's my mess, it's whatever I am today, I'm bringing that to work. But here's that unwritten rule. If this is a place that you're spending 8 hours, 10 hours, 12 hours, your sweat, your blood, your life, your thoughts, your ideas, your tears, they should care back about you.” – Preeti Nadgar

You deserve your dreams.

Highlight: “Your dream can be yours, and you are deserving of it… There are so many hurdles in people's ways, perhaps more hurdles in the way of women, minorities, people of different genders, orientations, disabilities… And we just allow ourselves to think, 'this is good enough.' And I hope people never settle for that. Don't settle for a thing that's not your dream. Just don't.” – Preeti Nadgar

You are the decision maker—keep that in mind as you move through your day, your career, and your life. Need more reasons to feel empowered? Check out more Pass the Mic content for another dose of inspiration.