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💥 Today’s Highlights

• Reminder: The Mixdown is back

• Your weekly spark

• Communities are redrawing the category map

• ICYMI: The inaugural Wellth 30, plus Beyond the 30

• Roundup of open jobs across the community

🔥 And now, for your weekly spark.

The Map.

Last week, I wrote about the ripple that can come from opening one door for someone.

This week, I’m asking what happens when the problem isn’t opening the door.

It’s that you don’t know where to look for it in the first place.

When I started Hue, I kept hearing C-suite executives say some version of the same thing:

“We’re looking for leaders from diverse backgrounds, and we can’t find them. They must not exist.”

I remember thinking: you can’t find them because you’re looking in the same places you’ve always looked.

Instead of fishing in fresh waters, they were swimming in a sea of sameness.

The people, expertise, businesses, and communities weren’t missing. The connections were.

Companies were looking for people to help with research, product development, partnerships, speaking opportunities, and in joining their teams. But the networks they relied on weren’t always connected to the people they needed to reach.

That became part of the reason I built Hue.

I wanted to create a bridge between people who should be connecting but didn’t always have access to one another. Particularly for mid- to senior-level leaders, so much opportunity moves through relationships.

If you’re not connected to the right people, you can be invisible to a system that’s supposedly looking for you. That experience has stayed with me because it’s bigger than we might realize at first.

I’ve spent a lot of my life being aware of what sits outside the default. I’m an immigrant. My parents are Pakistani and Malaysian. I’m Muslim. I’ve often been the only person in the room from my background.

👉🏽 When you’re used to being outside the center, you notice pretty quickly who gets placed there.

You notice whose perspective is treated as the norm, whose experience gets considered representative, and who gets invited into the conversation.

Just as importantly, you notice who doesn’t.

That’s what made the latest in Wellth hit home for me: If You Won’t Build the Category, Your Customers Will.

The story shows what happened when a customer base existed long before the market decided to recognize it as a category.

The customers, demand, and money weren’t new. The map was.

Businesses get themselves into trouble when they confuse the map with the market, because a map is a representation of reality. It’s not reality itself.

Someone drew it and decided where the margins were. Over time, those decisions started to feel like facts.

It can continue to feel that way until someone proves otherwise, whether that proof is the customer, the employee you didn’t know how to find, the founder building the thing your market research said didn’t exist, or even a community that’s been telling you what it wants for years while your organization keeps looking elsewhere.

When you change who you see, you change what becomes possible.

What connects us is greater than what separates us. But connection only works when people can actually find one another.

📌 Redraw the Map

Before you decide something is too small, too niche, or not your customer, ask:

👉🏽 Who drew this map, and what assumptions are built into it?

👉🏽 Who isn’t showing up because we aren’t looking in the right places?

👉🏽 What are people already doing, buying, building or asking for that our organization hasn’t caught up to yet?

👉🏽 Who could we reach if we expanded the margins or tools we’re using to find them?

By bringing the margins to the mainstream, you might even realize that they’ve been shaping what comes next all along.

🔥 The opportunity wasn’t about finding what was missing. It was about finally seeing what was already there.

Communities Are Redrawing the Category Map

Read more…

ICYMI: The Inaugural Wellth 30 & More

Introducing the Wellth 30, and a crop of notable leaders beyond the core 30. They’re shaping how we work, what we value, what gets built, and who gets to participate.

The Wellth 30 is possible with the support of our partners Tumblr, Project Management Institute, EDO, and Kindle Scribe.

Meet the honorees. Their work expands what’s possible for the people, communities, and industries around them.

Read more…

✅ Now Hiring

Is someone you know considering what’s next for them? Here are a few roles with people hiring across the network. I list roles here every week, so stay tuned and make sure to spread the word.

💥 VP, Marketing — BET

💥 VP, Marketing — United Parks & Resorts

💥 VP, Brand & Integrated Marketing — Aspen Dental

💥 Sr Director, Brand & Integrated Marketing — Hint Water

💥 Sr Director, Marketing — Miami Dolphins & Hard Rock Stadium

💥 Sr Director, Media — Walgreens (multiple other roles)

💥 Head of Social — Canva

💥 Director, Marketing — Frontier

💥 Director, Influencer Marketing — Orchestra

💥 Director, Digital Marketing — ACI Worldwide

💥 Sr Brand Media Manager — Rula

💥 Lead, SMC Marketing — Snap

💥 Brand Manager, Content & Connections, Huggies — Kimberly-Clark

💥 Manager, Brand — Logitech

ICYMI Last Week:

💥 SVP, Global Marketing — Tumi

💥 VP, Global Marketing — Sorel

💥 VP, Brand — Girl Scouts of the USA

💥 Sr Director, Global Brand Marketing — Stanley 1913

💥 Sr Director, Brand Management, Smartwater — Coca-Cola

💥 Exec Director, Product & Vertical Marketing — Toshiba

💥 Director, Culture Marketing — Red Bull

💥 Director, Marketing Strategy — Novartis

💥 Director, Marketing, Lego Education — Lego

💥 Director, Digital Marketing — Tyson Foods (multiple other roles)

💥 Group Product Director, HCP Marketing — Johnson & Johnson

💥 Marketing Director, McDonald’s Park — Chicago Fire FC

💥 Associate Director, Social & Live Commerce — e.l.f. Beauty (multiple other roles)

💥 Associate Director, Consumer Marketing — Regeneron

💥 Brand Head, Allegra — Opella

💥 Brand Marketing Lead — Hinge

💥 Manager, Brand Marketing — Foot Locker

💥 Manager, Brand Activation – Garnier, Thayers, and Dr. G — L’Oreal

💥 Product Marketing Manager — Sprout Social

💥 Manager, Social Strategy & Community — Chomps

And before you go, consider who else might value this newsletter and what’s coming up on YouTube. Make sure to fwd this newsletter onward to them too. They can subscribe here for more directly in their inbox.. 🔁 

In community,

Fahad