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OhHello - Ryanne Laredo
79 Plays2 years ago
Ryanne Laredo joined Nielsen as the new SVP of Customer Success on Jan 30; she will focus on delivering high-touch and at-scale experiences for customers
Ryanne has a phenomenal background in technology, media, and data and brings deep expertise in creating corporate and customer strategies to maximize customer health, revenue, and company profit. Ryanne most recently served as Chief Customer Officer at Smartly.io, where she was responsible for driving customer centricity internally, launching a customer experience practice, and scaling revenue growth across more than 700 global brands and agencies through adoption, expansion, and cross-sells. Previously, she held the role of Chief Customer Officer at Amobee and additional leadership roles at Turn. Ryanne has a Master of Arts degree from DePaul University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In addition, she is the founder of AdTechCares, an organization that combats misinformation about COVID-19, and supports fact-based journalism and other causes.
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Transcript
Introduction and Greetings
00:00:22
Speaker
All right. Hi, Ryan. How are you? Good. How are you? Aren't we supposed to say, Oh, hello?
00:00:29
Speaker
I love that you said that. That's part of the journey, is having the guests say, oh, hello. Oh, hello, lion. Hello, from multiple miles away in Chicago coming to you live. From former neighbors to now, maybe about 10 miles apart.
00:00:51
Speaker
Coming at you live, hello to our Oh Hello listeners and those that are watching the video after this is recorded. It's nice to see your face. It's nice to see your beautifully decorated, both office and attic, as you just gave me a tour right before we started.
Meet Ryan Loredo
00:01:09
Speaker
Ryan, who are you? Why are you here? Oh, yes. Hello, first and foremost, I'm a Jeremy Bloom fan, maybe a Stan, as the kids say today.
00:01:21
Speaker
But no, yes, so Ryan Loredo, I founded an organization called AdTech Cares, long-term ad tech veteran, currently Nielsen's SVP of global customer success, excited to be here. And I think separately on a human level, mom of a couple, wife of one, and dog mom most recently. So exploring all the ways to nurture not just customers, but most importantly, the humans around me.
00:01:51
Speaker
a whole lot of nurturing in the Laredo Hart family, for sure. There's no doubt about that. Ryan, what defines you? Tell us a little bit more about your style, your style of leadership, your style of mentorship, just who you are and what has made you the executive that you are today. Yeah, so I learned early on.
00:02:14
Speaker
I love innovation and what I mean is not just, you know, certainly don't code or at least well, I once did a mouse through a trap, but really helping translate
00:02:26
Speaker
problems into what could be, not just what can we do now, but what does the future look like? And that plays on my second piece, which really driven by growth, personal growth, and not necessarily in terms of titles or anything. I call that out because I feel it's really important for us to have experiences and bring people along.
00:02:46
Speaker
So I'd say that last part outside of really being innovative and being focused on growth is really being inclusive and making sure that community and the people around me feel supported, again, nurtured, and that we're growing and learning together. Those are the real drivers for me on a human level that translate to my leadership style and really how I bring myself anywhere I am within the workplace or within my community around us.
00:03:16
Speaker
It's really interesting here. So basically, as a listener, as a friend, it sounds like areas that you characterize your skill set would be a nurturer, an innovator, a leader. Are there other skill sets that you are going to be offering to the Oh, hello community? Yeah, I'm really helpful.
00:03:35
Speaker
establishing clarity which is important when you become a leader at a manager level even if you're an individual contributor taking on a project how do you establish clarity and then how do you connect that for mutual goals to really get everyone aligned and on the same page i once got a very
00:03:56
Speaker
I think helpful piece of feedback, which was positive, but was like, oh, Ryan's a dog with a bone. And it was from a very big industry leader that I appreciate. But I was like, yes, but it doesn't have to be a scary dog. It's very much a, hey, let's all play together. Let's all get to where we're going. If you've seen the movie Homeward Bound, I think it's like a collection of shadow with the wisdom, sassy with like,
00:04:25
Speaker
you know, this stubbornness and, you know, the chance with the playfulness along the way. I honestly think those all are really important. And it's really about what is our one defined goal? How do we collaborate to get there? How do you get people on board and how do you keep people on track? So again, whether you're a leader or you're taking the lead, that's something I can coach on.
00:04:47
Speaker
There's a really good metaphor of picturing a dog with a bone and everyone thinks about a dog with a bone in a different way. Yeah. So that's a good way to just explain it and to create the visualization along with just talking through clarity.
Balancing Work and Networking
00:05:02
Speaker
Clarity is something that I haven't heard any other
00:05:06
Speaker
Oh, hello, mentor talk about with that said, if you were looking back at your career, just thinking through all right, what would 22 year old what would 25 year old Ryan, what would you tell yourself? What would you tell the up and commerce? What would you tell your peers who are in similar roles, friends, people within marketing, advertising, tech,
00:05:28
Speaker
Design sass just any form of creative analytical business of what they can do and what you've learned over the past fifteen years or so within your career yeah. I've heard in people post from a place of privilege you know work smarter not harder.
00:05:52
Speaker
I would say that my experience is to do both at the same time. And so I very much would give myself a gold star for working hard. But I would also say, at a certain point, I said to myself, OK, are we doing enough connecting? Are we doing enough networking? Am I making sure that people know not just how hard I'm working, but the impact I'm making?
00:06:20
Speaker
So it's important to work hard and smart, but then also take a moment, reflect, and share. And it wasn't something that I was super comfortable with, which is like telling how great of a job I was doing. Luckily, people around me could see it, and there were people who were advocates for me.
00:06:40
Speaker
But I do believe it's important for you to take a moment, reflect, and say, I'm working this hard for what is it aligned? What are my outputs? And do the people around me understand that value? And I'm the person that will always work super hard because I'm like, people are paying me money. And I'm making an impact. I have responsibility over humans usually because I'm managing large teams. So I'm going to show up. I'm going to work hard. And I'm going to set that example so that they'll follow.
00:07:10
Speaker
you had mentioned impact, and that's a big, powerful term.
Influences and Role Models
00:07:15
Speaker
Who are some people, whether they're dead, whether they're alive, who are some people that have had a profound impact on you as a person, as a mom, as an executive, as someone within the Oh, hello community? Yeah, so I think my parents always said,
00:07:31
Speaker
an insane example for me. And I guess I knew it then, but I didn't, I definitely valued it. So maybe I was a little bit different, but everyone was always working hard around me. Everyone, like my dad, you know, was working overtime. My mom went back to school to become
00:07:48
Speaker
an educator and then she kept her education going. So for me, I'm very grateful for both of them to show just like you show up, you live on this earth, you put in your dues and then hopefully some good things happen. So I never had, you know, I deserved anything. I never felt that.
00:08:07
Speaker
What a privilege to have somebody set that example, right? Because you come into conversations with other people who are like, you know, this is mine. I deserve it. So that a bit of, you know, kind of an understanding. I'm very grateful for them. Next, I guess, you know, early on, there were people, specifically women that I looked up to that I didn't necessarily have a connection with.
00:08:30
Speaker
But that were leaders at the companies I was at, ones at Okta now, where I was like, wow, you don't have to do everything where you're trying to emulate being a different gender. You can actually maybe be a bit more empathetic, which unfortunately at that time my experience was that the other gender was not necessarily as empathetic.
00:08:53
Speaker
even no matter how great those humans were, that wasn't a skill that they were focused on. So I started to see, you know, this empathy come through. And also, you know, at the same time, the responsibility that certain, you know, specifically in this, in this instance, female leaders had, they had the responsibility of so much human weight and emotion, even from not their own teams. And I was like, wow,
00:09:21
Speaker
You know, that's a lot, but I could do it, so I felt that was a responsibility. Follow in that path.
00:09:28
Speaker
And then I think if I could, you know, reflect for longer, maybe on a next podcast, I could tell you who, what I read and what I, you know, specifically people and humans, but I read books and watch movies and read magazines. I just consume a lot of, of content and media. And I can be watching Emily in Paris and get inspired. I can be reading, you know, sapiens and be like, Oh,
00:09:56
Speaker
I understand better. I can be talking with a great worker in Scandinavia and be like, I never thought of that. Why are we doing this this way? But what comes down to it is I am, again, very grateful for my parents because I never am like, this is the way it should be. This is the way we have been doing it, and it can always change. Well said. Well said.
Breaking the Glass Ceiling
00:10:22
Speaker
It's important.
00:10:24
Speaker
Love to have you come back for another pod to talk through the glass sailing of what you and I were talking about before we started for sure, as that's incredible. Let me state that I did share that with you, Jeremy, you know, I had I have a brilliant network of people that I've connected to early on in an organization called chief. And
00:10:44
Speaker
It is, you know, that organization talks about breaking the glass ceiling. And I love that. And that's a huge responsibility. And a lot of people have worked very hard in all facets of life to move certain populations forward to get them in a better place. But we are not done.
00:11:01
Speaker
And the glass is a mess, so I feel it's very important to go back and clean it up. Not just continue on your journey that someone else maybe made a little bit easier for you, but to go back and say, wow, that's a mess. I don't want you to step on that. And I told you, let's build some escalators. Make it easier so you're not so worn out when you get there, that you collapse and fall off.
00:11:23
Speaker
Lots of cuts and bruises and broken glass everywhere and the glass ceiling is needs to be shattered more and more. It's still there and there's there's going to be a lot of
00:11:34
Speaker
It's messy and it needs to be broken. So with that said, part of the beauty of Oh Hello is the opportunity to give back.
Climate Solutions and Project Drawdown
00:11:42
Speaker
Something that's very near and dear to both of us is being able to give back to different communities, give back to different organizations. Oh Hello, at least within America, we are integrated within 40 plus different charities across the globe. It's several hundred. Within the US, you're going to be able to donate to a different charity. I give you a list of those charities beforehand. What's a charity near and dear to Ryan's heart?
00:12:04
Speaker
So I am currently working with my organization, with an organization called Project Drawdown, which is really focused on climate solutions. So we're running a campaign for them now. So I have many that are near and dear to my heart, but that's the one that I'm very focused on right now. It makes tangible climate solutions. It translates something that can be quite overwhelming and not feel like it's important to one specific human into something that makes humans
00:12:34
Speaker
want to take action and be able to take even an inkling smaller. So again, making it easier, making the connections, and really having all of us make an impact to get to the point of drawdown. Ryan, thank you for being here. You're welcome. That was great. This was a great session. Thanks for being a mentor within the Ovella community. Please listen. Thank you. And look forward to speaking with you soon. Yes. Thank you, Ryan. Hi.