Secrets to success: Releasing the ideas of perfection and focusing on impact
Women are forging paths, defying odds and shattering glass ceilings. Their journey — marked by resilience, determination and unwavering courage — serves as an inspiration to all. Yet, behind every success story lies a network of support demonstrating that no one truly navigates their journey alone.
In honor of Women’s History Month, we are sharing inspiring stories from women at Kellogg who are helping illuminate the path for others, and we celebrate the collective efforts empowering them. In this next installment, you’ll meet Chelsey Krull ’19 MBA who in 2022 pivoted her career from financial services into the tech space, where her curiosity of AI’s transformative potential grew.
Learn more about Krull’s secrets to success including how she balances her demanding career and family responsibilities, why she believes empathy is the bedrock to strong leadership and how mindfulness can help boost engagement across the workplace.
By Alicia Webb
Chelsey Krull ’19 MBA decided to pursue her MBA because she was eager to learn and believed that Kellogg could help prepare her for a more expansive future. “It is a big world out there, and I want to experience all of it,” she says. “The professors and students at Kellogg are a group of incredibly smart human beings who come together and truly want to learn from each other.” Now working as a product marketing leader for Amazon Web Services, Krull spends her days building strategies and examining how AI is going to impact the tech industry and how it can benefit our day-to-day lives. There are never two days that are the same — an aspect that excited her when accepting the role.
But her role as a wife and mother also keeps her on her toes. While she’s spent much of her career in the male-dominated industries of tech and financial services, Krull admits she is constantly managing personal and professional pressure. “Women face such an incredible amount of pressure to do everything and be everything,” Krull says. “There are so many articles about wearing many hats, saying you can do it all… but why do we want to do it all?”
She wants to start changing conversations and dynamics at the workplace to move away from the guilt she thinks many working moms and women in general carry when trying to do it all. “We need to start bringing empathy not just into the workplace but into our interactions with one another. I want everyone to make time and create space to think about how we can help each other.”
From Krull’s perspective, the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the pressures of “perfection” women face. “Right now, we are in this environment where we think we should be doing it all. We have been trained to think we should be doing a load of laundry while we are on a conference call,” says Krull. “Why have we put this strain on ourselves?”
Rather than getting caught in an endless pursuit for more, Krull has decided to break away from the chase and the need to do it all. Instead, she focuses on ways in which she can maximize aspects of life that are already in motion. For example, mastering time management has been critical for creating a balanced lifestyle. “I always carve out time in the morning for hot yoga or a run. Finding ‘me’ time is how I keep everything together,” she shares. “Never feel guilty about taking time to do something that matters to you.”
Krull believes you can create a positive impact regardless of who you are or what you do. “A lot of us believe that if we don’t have a certain title by a certain age, we aren’t successful. But success doesn’t have anything to do with a title — it’s more than that,” Krull says. “Success is actually about impact. Really amazing things can happen at any job level if you are willing to listen and have curiosity. You can have an impact in a one-on-one conversation.”
A conversation Krull had with one of her mentors did just that. For a lot of women managing a career and a family means constantly looking ahead to the next role or opportunity, but Krull says the best advice she has ever received is the opposite of that approach. “A mentor told me once to not be so focused on the next move or the next title but instead to think about what I'm doing now and what I can work on in the present,” she says. “We are so often focused on the climb that sometimes we forget to stop and think about the difference we can make in the moment.”
When thinking about advice she would give to her younger self, she says the most important thing to remember is never to keep going. “Don’t stop. Resilience is everything: get back up, no matter what,” Krull shares. “And, take the time to explore, to learn and to be curious.”
A day in the life of: Chelsey Krull
More in this series:
Secrets to success: Drawing resilience from family
Secrets to success: Building a reliable, strong support system
Read Next: Own What Comes Next: Attend the 2024 Kellogg Global Women’s Summit