For Pereira O’Dell chief growth officer Mona Munayyer Gonzalez, using her professional voice always felt more like an earned privilege than an inherent asset. When she tried to move forward on a project by presenting a list of opinions from people across the agency, her former boss paused and reminded her that she wasn’t being paid to deliver other people’s ideas.
“She said, ‘I’m paying you to have an opinion and to move this business forward,’ and that was the first time anyone had ever said that to me,” said Munayyer Gonzalez, who has searched for a healthy balance between celebrating her readiness to listen and hiding behind it.
