Women Of The C-Suite: Wendy Pease Of Rapport International On The Five Things You Need To Succeed As A Senior Executive
An Interview With Ming Zhao
Get a coach. Research shows that entrepreneurs with coaches perform better. It helps you with accountability. And it turns out I didn’t need help with getting things done, I needed help with reminding myself how much I did get done.
As a part of our interview series called “Women Of The C-Suite” , we had the pleasure of interviewing Wendy Pease.
Wendy Pease is the Owner and CEO of Rapport International, a language services company that provides high quality written translation and spoken interpretation in over 200 languages. Wendy is passionate about connecting people across languages and cultures. She has lived in Mexico, Taiwan, and the Philippines, during which she fell in love with differing cultures and came to understand that we are all human, no matter the language we speak. The author of The Language of Global Marketing and podcast host of The Global Marketing Show, Wendy holds a B.A. from Penn State and an MBA from Tuck School at Dartmouth College.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
My Dad’s international agriculture research took us from the US to Mexico, Taiwan, and the Philippines, and ever since then I’ve loved languages, cultures, diversity, everything about people who are different from me. At one point in high school I told my dad that I wanted to be an interpreter and he gave me good advice. He said, go become bilingual, but also become a specialist in something so you’ve got that to be bilingual about. For me, that substantial something was always global business.
In fact, in hindsight it was really good advice because I never became truly bilingual (though I can get by in Spanish, French, and Italian), yet that love for making connections throughout the world never faltered. About 17 years ago I found myself at the crossroads of a continued career in global sales, traveling the world with small children at home, and the opportunity to buy a small translation company. Rapport International was easily the best choice, the perfect combination of my education in foreign service and international politics, business experience, and my vision of a world where people can truly understand each in an ever-shrinking, multilingual world.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
When I first bought the company I got a call and a request for a Mandingo interpreter, and I had no idea what Mandingo was. (For the curious, Mandingo is a tonal language with five vowels spoken by the Mandinka people in the western African area spanning Senegal to Guinea.) With over 100 languages already on offer it was humbling, on the one hand, but also made me feel like a kid again, witness to the grand scale of the world. We were able to find and provide a Mandingo interpreter, but in the 17 years since I have never seen another request for it!
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The mistake that I made when I first started, and that I still make today, is that I’m too involved in everything. I don’t step back early enough. It’s funny now, after years of negotiating that push-pull and picturing my earlier self; Lisa’s managing the Marketing Department and my background is marketing, so I pop on her calls and cause chaos because I’ve got all these ideas and I’m adding things on — what about this, that, or the other? Linda is my first hire and Project Manager of 12 years, and after “checking in” one too many times she finally put her foot down and said, look, when you send it over to me it’s going to get done. It’s learning the trust fall, with a little push.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Linda and Lisa are truly my “guiding lights.” They’ve been there since the beginning and there are now 13 of us balanced on a stable foundation. And interestingly, stepping back means I’m actually working harder than I was before. I go from call to meeting to networking and at the end of the day I am solely responsible for putting my thoughts together and fitting those thoughts into the Company. As leaders that’s where we need to go, out the proverbial office door to where we can enhance and harness the vision.
As you know, the United States is facing a very important self-reckoning about race, diversity, equality and inclusion. This may be obvious to you, but it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you articulate to our readers a few reasons why it is so important for a business or organization to have a diverse executive team?
I’ve always been invigorated by diversity because if you have diversity around you, you continue to learn. Research shows that companies diverse not just in name but in the shape of true inclusivity have higher revenues and higher valuations, grow faster, and put forth more creative thought. In addition, attracting top talent becomes easier.
As a globally minded company, all of us at Rapport International are keenly aware of how so many things get lost in translation. For example, one of our recent customers is a large office supply company that playfully referenced “refrigerator art” in a recent ad. The concept itself does not translate abroad; no such phrase exists in many other countries. That simple example is representative of how we as humans can so easily and accidentally tend toward the insular, oftentimes excluding others even from our joy.
As a business leader, can you please share a few steps we must take to truly create an inclusive, representative, and equitable society? Kindly share a story or example for each.
Working with a diverse group of like-valued people helps to combat this insularity. I’ve always surrounded myself with diverse groups like Entrepreneurs’ Organization, whose members most recently led us to Mexico for a virtual assistant, via Cápita Works, and from the Philippines before that. Our social networking is done by a woman out of Kenya. And while our cultural backgrounds are all quite different, even among the team here in the US, our likeminded understanding that equity and inclusion are necessary in the world and the workplace mean we work cohesively, and ideas come from multi-faceted viewpoints. That we get to then connect people throughout the world via translators and interpreters is just so fitting.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Most of our readers — in fact, most people — think they have a pretty good idea of what a CEO or executive does. But in just a few words can you explain what an executive does that is different from the responsibilities of the other leaders?
I spoke earlier about having to work harder after finding a team I trust, and so it’s that, having to take all the good ideas from the smart people around you and having the patience to let it sit until it coalesces into something meaningful. Sounds easy, and it can even be fun. But sometimes it’s a natural progression and other times it spells a complete 180 or divergence and only I have the “why” and the “how” fully in mind.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a CEO or executive. Can you explain what you mean?
Sometimes I think our enthusiasm, our vision, leads people to believe that we don’t doubt ourselves, question ourselves. That we just care about ourselves and about making more money. I’m surprised by how many, like me, are driven by taking care of their employees. Ask anyone at EO that’s had to go through cutting back hours or pulling back salaries. If it’s just me I can reign in my budget, but it’s when it affects my employees that it really hurts.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by women executives that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
This one is hard for me in that I know there are differences. I’ve lived them: layoffs during maternity leaves and other types of discrimination, carrying more workload at home, struggling to find access to capital. Yet I struggle to put into words now how I felt about it then. And now, I feel like a leader because I lead. So in the end result it’s all become more inspiring than anything else because it turns out we can be as successful as our male counterparts while managing the inequities.
What is the most striking difference between your actual job and how you thought the job would be?
It may seem ordinary now, but we’ve been a completely virtual company for going on 18 years, in multiple time zones and ever-changing homelife situations. Being a virtual company sounds so ideal but at the outset I didn’t have anyone to do my tech support, filing, deposits, and everything else. In my home office, individual providers naturally wanted to converse and connect, making it difficult to focus on the day-to-day much less the bigger picture.
Is everyone cut out to be an executive? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful executive and what type of person should avoid aspiring to be an executive? Can you explain what you mean?
Not everyone is cut out to be an executive. The person has to want to be an executive and if they have the desire and the work ethic, that will lead to the experience and real-world education. Some people don’t want to manage, lead, take on the extra hours and they won’t be happy if they accidentally get into it because it’s not authentic to them. Executives take calculated risks — nothing is impossible but not everything makes sense.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
- Get a coach. Research shows that entrepreneurs with coaches perform better. It helps you with accountability. And it turns out I didn’t need help with getting things done, I needed help with reminding myself how much I did get done.
- Develop your emotional intelligence. A therapist, counselor, anyone to help you with your emotional intelligence is a huge help because so much of managing a business is working with people.
- Develop your list of mentors. Mentors are those smart people that you call for advice. Keep in touch with them and ask for advice.
- Line up your professionals. Find your accountant, lawyer, banker, strategist, those people that you pay for professional advice. The first ones don’t work out oftentimes, but hang in there, find the right ones. It makes a difference. A relationship with a banker is especially hard in the beginning but it does eventually develop so stay focused on that.
- Build your tribe. My tribes right now are Entrepreneurs’ Organization here in the US and Soft Land Partners is for my global tribe. At the start it was Business Network International and Center for Women in Enterprise. Wherever it is, make sure you’ve got someplace where you feel comfortable when you go and network, and you feel like they speak your language
I work in the beauty tech industry, so I am very interested to hear your philosophy or perspective about beauty. In your role as a powerful woman and leader, how much of an emphasis do you place on your appearance? Do you see beauty as something that is superficial, or is it something that has inherent value for a leader in a public context? Can you explain what you mean?
Beauty comes from the inside, out. It really does. First encounters are one thing — it’s only human to look at people and make assumptions about them — and realizing the inner beauty in someone can take time. That’s beautiful, too, taking the time to really know someone. Someone you just met tells you a story and you feel sympathy; a friend tells you a story and it’s empathy. Empathy is beautiful, and essential to every leader. As for beauty on the outside, I dress professionally and wear little makeup, and am saving the pink and purple hair for my retirement!
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I am a huge fan of microloans to mothers in developing countries. A $100 loan means buying a cow and opening a cheese store or buying a sewing machine to become a seamstress. We’ve long supported Opportunity International, which focuses on sustaining families from business to harvest to adequate education for children. Equitable, safe access to education has been shown to increase standards of living later in life.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them
Laurie Greiner. She’s brilliant, beautiful, and bold. She also just seems like an interesting person to talk to, about business, life, anything!
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
