Rachel B. Lee is a fearless #ladyboss. She started her career with Walton Isaacson, a marketing agency with expertise in multicultural segments, and managed Unilever’s first social media driven consumer activations including AXE One Night Only. After receiving her MBA from the University of Texas, Austin, McCombs School of Business, she entered the technology industry at Microsoft. She has led branding, social media strategy, content development, blogging, influencer communities, podcasts, experiential, paid media and more for the Microsoft Partner Network, a 300K partner ecosystem of small to enterprise size businesses digitally transforming the world.
As social lead for Microsoft Inspire, she achieved over a billion impressions in 2017 and in 2018 won the Speaker Excellence award for her session on modern selling and LinkedIn. Most recently she has led a multimillion dollar brand repositioning and messaging strategy for the Microsoft Partner Network.
She is the City Champ for Together Digital Austin and also a co-owner and branding expert for Standout Authority, which helps businesses and professionals build their influence on LinkedIn.
What is your approach to changing the world?
My approach to changing the world is one conversation, one human connection at a time. Like, you know there’s ways of scaling what we want to do. That’s the beauty of social media, email and all the different pieces of marketing where we can take our message and have it reach more people at one time. Yeah, but every single person that has been added to my following every single email address has been earned. We’ve earned that through conversations through invites. I didn’t just pay for a bunch of emails, or do a bunch of ads. And for us that’s meaningful, because it means that we’ve been touching people in a way that they want to be a part of what we’re creating and so I think those human conversations and appreciating people, thanking people that’s how I will achieve my mission and is how we can make the world hopefully a little bit better.
How do you define leadership?
I define leadership as vision, team and purpose. All of us are leaders, right? The question is, are you going to create a vision, work with a team and other people to create that and do it so that there’s purpose. And serve in a way that’s in integrity, inclusive and making the world better? Not worse. And I think that’s what true leadership is about, you know, love, community, really being in service and an integrity.
What are the qualities of those you call great leaders?
I think great leaders are great listeners. Being a leader is listening, rather than you speak. It’s leading by example. It’s not just saying what to do, but to be what you want others to do. You know, and empathy, there’s this balance of holding a vision but also taking action on it. It’s having the vision and then actually, there’s difference between the action takers and those that just say things and so I’m just so big on like, follow up. And if you say something, you do it.
What do you think hinders women from becoming the great leaders that they are meant to be?
I think it is a cconfidence and a self worth issue and challenge more than anything. You know, we got a long way to go as women. It’s only been in this last 50-60 years that women really started to enter the workforce. The neurons run deep. And what I mean by that is, generations before us, are still part of us. And so, I think that for women, we don’t believe that we’re worthy or capable of not the men, but of anybody around us. It’s like, we’re comparing, we’re judging, we’re impostor syndroming and overthinking. And all of that ultimately stops us from believing in the impossible.
What are your ideal stellar woman attributes?
Vulnerable, authentic, powerful, loving, compassionate, peaceful.
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