Why Marketing Exec Bozoma Saint John Wants You to Be More Selfish

On living boldly

“There has never been a job I’ve left that mentors or friends and family have applauded. They’ve always counseled me that I should be careful. That I should be more modest, more concerned with my reputation. And I don’t know that they counsel men like that.” 

“That guy? He’s a risk taker. He’s a leader. He’s out in front. You try to do that as a woman, and people are like, ‘Oh, girl, don’t you think you should take it easy?’ Or, ‘You don’t want to get there and then find that you’ve made a mistake.'”

“Even when I moved to a job that didn’t work out—I would say that my experience at Uber feels like that to me. But at the end, it still was a great thing for me, it put me on the map in tech. But nobody said, ‘Oh, yeah, you should leave Apple and go to that disaster of a company, Uber.’ Nobody said that. If I had been a man, they’d be like, ‘Oh, he’s a risk-taker. Bold. Adventurer.'”