Elizabeth Burr

"What's been your experience over the years as a woman and LGBTQ plus executive? And what advice would you give to those who aspire to lead large companies? The first thing I always say to everybody is hold on to your sense of humor because you're going to need it badly. I would say, well, I started on Wall Street and things were really different then for women than they are now. And I think at the beginning when I was talking about how it felt sort of revolutionary at the time to kind of go after Wall Street, go after the men's professions. And there weren't that many women on Wall Street back then in the early eightys. And so that was not easy, that was challenging. And so I think back then that was really just relying on other women who were going through the same thing and being able to talk amongst ourselves a lot. So kind of having a posse of support back then. But I think what advice would I give to people? I would say leading is hard and I think sometimes people think that leaders need to have all the answers. Like you feel like when you're a leader, sometimes you're wise. And I think if you think that, you've gotten into trouble if you think you have all the answers. And there are plenty of CEOs out there, plenty of narcissists out there who think they do and it's toxic and doesn't create good environments. I think the solutions are always deep inside of an organization. And your job really as the leader is to kind of free up the gunk, to free up what I call the clay layer, the place where stuff gets stuck."