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Welcome to the Women of HubSpot, a podcast celebrating the voices shaping marketing, technology, and the ever-evolving HubSpot ecosystem. Hosted by George B. Thomas from Sidekick Strategies. Each episode brings you the stories, strategies, and superpowers of the women driving this industry forward. It's their time. It's their mic. This… is Women of HubSpot.
Welcome to the Women of HubSpot podcast, the show that celebrates the voices shaping marketing, technology, and the ever evolving HubSpot ecosystem. Hosted by George B Thomas from Sidekick Strategies. Each episode brings you the stories, strategies, and superpowers of the women driving this industry forward. It's their time. It's their mic.
Intro:This is Women of HubSpot.
George B. Thomas:Alright. We're here for another exhilarating episode of the Women of HubSpot podcast. I am again super excited because I'm not here alone because that would be weird if I was, but I'm here with Anne McDonnell. And here's the thing. Let me just bring you up to speed if this is the first time you're listening to an episode.
George B. Thomas:It was a Super Bowl. The Philadelphia Eagles were playing. I was sitting in my living room just about to have some good snacks, and my one daughter started to talk about how the quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles had an all woman team. And I watched her face, and I watched her explain this and and the excitement and, like and it just moved me. And without any strategy, without any thought, I jumped on LinkedIn sitting on my couch, and I did this post.
George B. Thomas:And I said, hey. If you know a woman of HubSpot who's killing it, who's super dope, like, shine the light on them. End of the day, the post went crazy. And I was like, what is going on here? And I looked at my daughters.
George B. Thomas:And over the next couple days, we decided, you know what? We need to dig deeper into this. We need to create a podcast. We need to share some of these stories of these amazing women that ended up being in this post. Anne, you were one of those humans that got brought into the post.
Anne McDonnell:Well, I am super excited to be here, George, and even more excited that it is off the backs of an Eagles Super Bowl game as a not so secret Eagles fan despite being a Bostonian myself. So
George B. Thomas:I love it. I love it. Okay. So we're gonna go on this journey. And, Anne, I'll just warn you as we've been doing this with some of the other guests, we've realized there's, like, some peaks and valley questions in here, but it makes for a really, interesting and exciting journey.
George B. Thomas:And so I'm I'm sitting here and I'm ready to learn more about you and to kind of share your story. And so let's just go back to the very beginning. If we could go back in time and we could meet young Anne just starting out, one, what would we see? And two, what would she be most surprised by about where the heck you are now?
Anne McDonnell:And when we say young, how young are we going here? Are we talking six or or 22? Because I'm happy to go either.
George B. Thomas:It's totally up to you wherever the spirit leads you to start your story.
Anne McDonnell:Childhood me thought she was going be a Broadway Star. That didn't work out the way that we expected and and here we are. But I I graduated college with no super clear idea of what I wanted to do except for the fact that I'd studied abroad. It had been a really incredible experience in my life. I was really passionate about traveling and I wanted to help to facilitate other folks having that same experience.
Anne McDonnell:So I started my career in international education in study abroad, which I didn't even know was a possible career opportunity until I realized, hey, helped me do that thing. I could probably be that person for someone else. And I kind of want to highlight that underscoring there of that helping, that enablement, that empowerment piece. At that time that I first started my career, it all centered around travel and my interest in travel and my passion for travel. That was something that I did for about fourteen years.
Anne McDonnell:But as my career evolved and changed, I moved in some different directions, I realized I wanted to try to do that and facilitate that outside of the context of international education, outside of the context of higher education. But I can tell you right now, 22 year old Anne would not have ever expected to be working for a tech company in the capacity that I am, let alone working with some of our most brilliant partners in terms of being of any assistance to them whatsoever with respect to executing on their goals, their passions, their dreams. So, yeah, it's exciting to be here. Never would have thought that I would have gotten here today.
George B. Thomas:I love this beginning. First of all, Broadway star, come on. Let's go. But then you use the magic word of, like, helping and empowering people in something that you are passionate about. And I think when we can align that to what we're doing, it's it's so amazing.
George B. Thomas:Now, just let the people who are watching or listening to this know, what exactly do you do? Like, where do you sit right now as far as HubSpot and helping humans?
Anne McDonnell:I am currently a partner development manager HubSpot, which means that I work with our solutions partners in helping them achieve our overarching HubSpot goal of helping millions of customers grow better, millions of businesses grow better. But that means that I'm spending time with partners ensuring that they're aware of how they can maximize their contribution to the partner program, understand the impact of updates both to the program as well as to the software and to the product overall, identify opportunities for bringing in new business, look at how they're accomplishing that, work with their teams to achieve that better. But prior to being a PDM, I've been a customer success manager in our strategic accounts team. So working with some of our largest HubSpot customers and then now no longer existing role at HubSpot called channel consultant, which was also partner facing in a somewhat similar capacity to the PDM role today.
George B. Thomas:Yeah, I love that. Okay. So helping millions of companies, just small stuff, just, you know, some tiny, like changing or impacting the world. So let's get back into your journey. We're, 22 year old, we're doing the traveling, we're doing the helping, we're doing the educating, all of the stuff that we laid as the kind of groundwork to get where you are now.
George B. Thomas:Along the way, who were some of your biggest inspirations or biggest mentors?
Anne McDonnell:The first one that I'll call out, and it really pains me to give her credit in this way so she can never hear this podcast, but my older sister, I remember sitting around the dining room table, I was home from college, she was home visiting. And I was saying to my parents, I just want to get a job and save a lot of money for a year and a half. And then I'm just going to quit my job and travel. My sister said, Why don't you just get a job that allows you to travel as a part of that job? Why don't you merge those two worlds together?
Anne McDonnell:That turned out to actually be a really great idea. It worked out really well for me in the long run, probably much better for me from both financial and professional security perspective. But it's just giving that little bit of thinking through, let's unpack what it is that you really want to do here and figure out maybe a different direction to be able to do that outside of the box of what you've been thinking today. But beyond that, I've had the opportunity, I mean, working in global ed, for example, I worked with some incredible folks who the way that they worked with their hearts on their sleeves for the students that we were working with, students can go through some really profound experiences while they're studying abroad, losing parents, going through personal crisis and tragedy, going through emergencies. And a number of our resident directors and our overseas staff were just so inspirational to me in the way that they knew how to really put students first and lead with that empathy and lead with that compassion and think about how to bring that into any job that you're doing, always leading with that human first perspective.
Anne McDonnell:So I've been lucky to work with a lot of really wonderful folks. And I see that continuing on in the folks that I work with at HubSpot too, terms of that human first perspective with regards to how we're all working together.
George B. Thomas:I love the phrase you said, working with their hearts on their sleeves. And I would ask the listeners and viewers to take a moment of reflection and ask yourself if that's how you show up. And if not, could you? Because I think there's something very powerful about showing up as that human to help others. So okay.
George B. Thomas:I love already. So many good little nuggets that we're gonna hit along the way. So and, obviously, I start the question with have. It's it's a no brainer. Everybody has, but I'll still ask the question that way.
George B. Thomas:Have have there ever been any hurdles or biases that you've had to overcome in your career? And if so, how did you actually navigate them when they arose?
Anne McDonnell:That is such a good question, George. And I would say probably the biggest challenge that I ever faced in my career was coming to HubSpot. And the reason for that is I had built a career for myself in global education where I felt really, really confident in my expertise. There was a lot that I knew and if there were things that I didn't know, I knew where to get the answer. And so you take for granted what that confidence looks like and feels like in terms of how you can show up in a professional setting.
Anne McDonnell:So when I did this total left turn in my career in 2020, where I left global education and moved into tech, which I was able to do on the basis of dissecting what are the core skills that I appreciated about working in global education and could I apply that somewhere else, which I was able to do at HubSpot, I was still left with this complete gap of confidence in myself and wondering how the heck am I going to start over? How the heck am I going to build trust amongst these partners that I'm working with when I don't come from a marketing agency? I don't have a marketing background. And I knew that in order to be able to show up as my full self to give them the most value on calls, I had to find a way to find that confidence. And my approach to that was, well, let's go back to the basics.
Anne McDonnell:Let's really spend time learning. You know you feel more comfortable when you know you've done your homework. So I signed up in my after hours to take a digital marketing course through general assembly, not with the expectation that I was gonna come out as a master marketer, but so that I could have some shared vocabulary with the folks that I was working with that could make me feel a little bit more confident in terms of how I was participating in that call. Even if it didn't necessarily change their perspectives of how they were working with me, it allowed me to be able to slowly start to build more value. So just examples like that.
Anne McDonnell:General Assembly was one, really rolling up my sleeves and getting dirty in my demo account, making fake web sites and building out a WordPress present, things that I would never have otherwise needed to do, but that I wanted to challenge myself to being capable of in terms of being able to match some of my partner's energy a little bit further.
George B. Thomas:This might be like the first already rewind point that I would say go back and listen to that because, Anne, this idea of like, so I could have a shared vocabulary, but also this mindset that I heard you kind of teasing out of like, you wanted to educate yourself so that you had understanding, but also educate so you could educate others. And like, there's this dynamic that you can like, it becomes a flywheel, not to be all inbound and HubSpot y, but like the education to educate others, to like understand each other, to like help move people forward. And this idea too that of leaving a place of confidence because you believe in something that could be greater on the other side of that disruption that you purposely put in your life is just super powerful to me. Super powerful. Okay.
George B. Thomas:So let's keep on this journey. And I swear, we're we're gonna we're gonna get into the valley, but then we're gonna go into the kind of the the mountaintop here as we move forward. Have have you ever faced moments where you felt underestimated or maybe even overlooked or out of place in the industry? And again, maybe how did you kind of navigate or handle those feelings?
Anne McDonnell:I think I've experienced that at a couple of different points in time in my career. There were times earlier on, right out of college where I thought, I'm capable of more than I'm being given the opportunity to do today. Where to be frank, I needed a little bit of that gut check of, yeah, sure, you may be capable of that, but you're going to have to work and prove yourself to get there. In time and in turn, did figure out I'm not automatically entitled to being handed every opportunity that I think I'm capable of. I need to show a little bit on my side to be able to get there first.
Anne McDonnell:I think that's the sort of reality check that a lot of us go through as we're moving on in our early career. I think as I grew up later into my career, I think that where I've experienced that the most is probably from myself, if I'm being very honest. I think today, twenty years into my career, I'm often the person who will say, Oh, you can't do that, or You're not capable of that, or That's not the way that your mind works. That is also probably even more important for me to take the lesson and learn and figure out how I can overcome that. I've been lucky and that I haven't necessarily faced that same sort of challenge externally, but we're our own worst enemies at times internally in the way we question ourselves.
George B. Thomas:I just want to let that sit for a minute because that was so good. I I know I too have had times in my life where I've had to say, can I just get out of my own way? Like, can I just believe in myself as much as maybe others around me believe in me? And so if you're listening to this or watching this and you're in that place, just know, like, you got this. You got this.
George B. Thomas:Okay. Anne, talk to me about a significant failure or setback in life. What happened and what did you learn from it?
Anne McDonnell:This may not necessarily be hugely significant in the course of my life, but there are things that we experience where in the moment it's a, gosh, this feels huge thing. What I'm about to share, as I look back now, I'm like, that wasn't so big. But at the time, in the moment, it felt big. It was definitely a sleep losing moment. And was maybe three or four years into my career in global education.
Anne McDonnell:I made a mistake. We were working on custom programs, faculty led custom programs. I'd made a mistake in terms of the process for gathering airfare payment from faculty that we were working with. So it resulted in a budgetary issue overall. And I remember being so, so scared about what the outcome of that mistake was going to be.
Anne McDonnell:And I was really nervous about it, but I said, let me do two things. Let me one, be really honest and forthcoming that I've made this mistake and take accountability for it. But two, let me see if I can come up with some perspective solutions and take some action on those so that there's some proactivity being matched with this mistake that I'm taking accountability for. And I went to my manager at the time, I laid out the situation in its entirety. I shared what I was doing and the steps that I'd taken and how I would continue to keep her up to date with regards to resolving that.
Anne McDonnell:And I didn't lose my job, I didn't get demoted, no one sent me home that day. But it taught me a really valuable lesson of the importance of honesty and accountability in terms of that professional integrity, that if you can really take a point of applying those throughout your career to the best of your ability possible, it's not going to mitigate or minimize every potential outcome that could occur. But nine times out of 10, folks are going to appreciate it in a way where it's still going to allow them to show up and have trust in their work with you, even as you face those hardships or those blips in the road, so to speak. And I've tried to kind of adhere to that as much as possible in terms of how I work to this day.
George B. Thomas:I love that so much. Honesty, accountability, and then you said action, which is the part that I really fell in love with of like, hey, I'm gonna be honest and accountable, but I'm also gonna try to figure out how do I solve this thing that I'm being accountable and honest about. Like, so many times we just, like, wanna, you know, bear our head in the sand and, like, start to just melt down, but moving through it, I think, is a very powerful piece. Okay. We're we're cresting out of the valley.
George B. Thomas:We're gonna start heading up this mountaintop, of conversation. Anne, what does empowerment mean to you? And and how do you pass that on to others in your field?
Anne McDonnell:I guess what it means to me in terms of how I would actually think about it is being facilitated or having the opportunity and having the space and environment in which I'm working facilitate my ability to show up with the best of my skill sets and operate with the highest level of my talents without the noise, without the things that would be unnecessary challenges, detractors, limitations, points of conflict, points of friction that can be real deterrents. And that's not to say that empowerment means having a perfect environment in which to work, but it means having an environment in which you can genuinely thrive and in which people can see and value you for the baseline of your efforts and your talent. I think in my own way, what I've tried to focus on throughout my career at HubSpot as much as anywhere else is how can I just be helpful? I think about when I first came to HubSpot, how scary it was to not know anything and how much to this day I remember the folks, I'm gonna call him out by name, Nick Call, if he's listening to this, Hopping on ever so many Zoom calls with me to talk through a technical issue that I just couldn't wrap my head around.
Anne McDonnell:He had no shortage of time for me to help me feel more confident in the call I was about to hop on with a partner to talk through it so that I could have the bravery that I needed to have that discussion. It's the little things like that of someone just giving you that extra shot of energy vis a vis their own time and their own generosity of spirit that I've tried to bring into how I work with others. Now, Nick is a technical genius, so I will never be able to help folks the way that Nick does. But if I have an answer or if I know how to get you an answer, I am so happy to be able to do it, be able to lend a hand in whatever capacity I can if it's taking a little weight off of you to be able to show up for your next call or your next meeting as your full self.
George B. Thomas:Yeah, it's so good. By the way, that's the second, if not third time that you've mentioned showing up as your whole self. And I think that's an important piece because in circles that I run with, we talk about how we have to show up as a whole ass human and not just kind of be half of who we are meant to be in the world. But it's interesting, Ann, because as I heard you talk through that last segment, my brain went to like, it's people and places that clear the space for me to be become the best version of me that I can be and do the best work that I need to do. And I'm just I'm like, that.
George B. Thomas:Organizations, humans, that. Can we just can we do that? Okay. Let's keep let's keep chugging along. So Anne, can you share a moment in your career where you, based now on what you say empowerment is, where you felt especially empowered or proud of what you achieved because of that?
Anne McDonnell:I'm going to name drop another person here who's been really influential in my own career as well. As I shared, I can be my own worst enemy, right? I can be the voice in my head that keeps me from taking the leap, taking the step that I need to move forward. And so sometimes the help that I need is someone like Nicole hopping on a Zoom call with me to figure out how the heck am I setting up these sub domains or whatever it is that I'm trying to do. And sometimes it's someone giving you a little shot of a reminder of who you are and mirroring back to yourself the version of yourself that you're not willing to see in that moment.
Anne McDonnell:And someone who's been really instrumental for me in my time at HubSpot in doing that is one of my former managers and someone that I would consider a friend today, Alana Lovett Griffin, who is a tremendous manager within our PDM team and who's just really great at coaching you off the ledge as we would probably both There's more than one time she's coached me off the proverbial ledge there and helped me to see myself for what I'm capable of and remind me of who I am. And I think when you can find those folks in your life, in your career, in your friendship community, whatever it is, hold on to them, lean into them because they're so incredibly valuable to you in taking those steps to progress your career forward.
George B. Thomas:So good. The mirror of you that you can't see. Alana, we see you, by the way. Just gonna throw that out here. Anne, if you could change one thing about how women are supported in this industry, had a magic wand or just ultimate superpowers of like Marvel and DC combined, what would it be?
George B. Thomas:What would you change?
Anne McDonnell:I think I would say the way that we are seen and heard and understood in professional spaces and the way in which perhaps systemic ideologies around the devaluation of women show up even when people don't realize that they're showing up, that despite folks' best intentions to keep that from coming into the room, sometimes it's present in a meeting in ways that I may be able to see, but my male counterpart may not be able to see or understand. I would say this for anyone, gender identity, racial identity, having that awareness outside of ourselves to understand how other folks are experiencing the spaces in which they're working, living, and being. And I think it's something that we have to be actively working thinking about and working towards with respect to whatever privileges it is that we're carrying into our work environments. But I would just wish for everyone to have that curiosity of self to want to unpack that, to want to dig into that and to want to do that work outside of just what it means to show up as a woman in a workspace, but what it means to show up in any identity within a workspace.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. It's interesting you sit and do the work. Like, that's a key point, like to have the empathy, to have the understanding, to to do the work, to get the intelligence, to understand, that was so good.
Anne McDonnell:Well, like, Mandy and George, because you you listen to your daughter, and this is you're helping folks do do the work right now. So that I mean, that's a wonderful thing that you're doing. I'm really impressed by that.
George B. Thomas:I appreciate that. Oh, I don't know why I'm starting to get emotional. Okay. Let's move on. This is the Women of HubSpot, show.
George B. Thomas:So I have to have at least one HubSpot question. So are there any particular tools, strategies, or trends in HubSpot right now that excite you, Anne?
Anne McDonnell:I will actually say, and I don't want to speak outside of my depth here because this starts to where these tools are going, I think is actually so cool that this is not to plug our partners, but this is a great space, would say, to involve a HubSpot partner. But I think some of what we're doing, as it pertains to reporting, I would say tools like datasets are going to start to unlock and ungate some really slick functionality with respect to how you can utilize your data in HubSpot, how you can bring data into HubSpot, and how you can manipulate that data in HubSpot. So obviously, AI is a very big piece of everything that we're doing right now. And so I'm somewhat intentionally going off stream a little bit from that because I think there's so much that our product teams are doing across the board that I want to highlight some of the other stuff that's happening right now too. I think that that operations hub data sets reporting piece is going to get really, really interesting over the next year plus and a real watch the space opportunity.
Anne McDonnell:And again, really great opportunity to start to align with a HubSpot partner who really knows what they're doing and can maximize the value of the tools.
George B. Thomas:I love that reporting data sets operations. Very good answer. And one of the very few that didn't just go right into AI. So I applaud you for that. That's amazing.
George B. Thomas:Okay, Anne, let's talk a little bit of something that people love and some people hate, but I think it's really important no matter if you hate to love it or love to hate it, whichever camp you've fallen. How important is networking with other females or just in general to you? And are there any certain strategies that you use to build connections along the way?
Anne McDonnell:I think it's very important and I also am absolutely terrible at it. I would say do do not do anything that I do. I am an introvert despite my my proclamations of wanting to be a Broadway star at the age of six. Am actually an introvert. So I look at conferences and networking opportunities as just an opportunity for me to horrifically embarrass myself and do something incredibly awkward from which I'll never want to be seen again.
Anne McDonnell:But I do think that that networking is really, really important. And despite what I think are my own shortcomings with it, I have been able to, I think, build out a network of folks, including women at HubSpot that, again, if I've been able to help them over time and in turn they've been able to help me over time, we have that somewhat dependent relationship on one another. Where I'd say aspirationally, I'd like to be better is reaching outside of HubSpot, networking outside of HubSpot. And again, that just comes back to that little voice in my head of, I don't want to disrupt anyone's day. I don't want to take up anyone's time.
Anne McDonnell:But it's really important to sometimes push yourself and have that bravery and that courage to do so. And I admire the folks who have reached out to me from other companies either to hear about HubSpot or to talk about HubSpot. And it's something that I'd like to continue to work on in my own career.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I think even if you think you're good at it, you can always get better. And by the way, for an introvert, you are doing one heck of a job at this interview. I'm just going to throw that out there. Amazing.
George B. Thomas:Amazing. Because I would have never guessed it. I'm like Broadway, and she's on an interview. Extrovert. Nope.
George B. Thomas:Not not the fact. Okay. So so, Anne, you know, you've mentioned a twenty year career. So far, is there still the future? What has been the most rewarding aspect of your career so far?
Anne McDonnell:You know, HubSpot is is a hugely rewarding part of my career. And being in any way, shape, or part of or in any way, shape, or form, a part of helping companies grow their businesses is really rewarding. But I think if I'm going be very honest, for me, when I was studying abroad or went to go study abroad my junior year of college, my family did not have the finances to be able to support me, very tough financial situation to be able to facilitate something like this. It did not seem like a dream that I was going to be able to make a reality even with the jobs that I was working and taking out additional loans. And it was one financial aid advisor who said to me, Hey, understanding your family circumstances as you've described them, I think you're actually not receiving enough aid right now.
Anne McDonnell:Why don't we appeal your financial aid package? Long story short, it basically ungated financial aid that I should have been receiving that I hadn't received that made it possible for me to study abroad. That changed the course of my life in many ways. I talk to this day about that financial aid advisor at UMass Amherst, Pat. She was a lifesaver, a hero in my life.
Anne McDonnell:So it became really important to me in my career to find other students who are in that same position of wanting so much to be able to achieve this and not being able to make it a financial reality. And that was a focus of mine at the core, both at the first company that I worked with and also at Northeastern University. And there are a few key standout cases of instances where students were not going to be able to make it work, where we were able to hustle, find additional funding for them, get them connected with scholarship funds, look at some other creative opportunities to make it happen. To this day, I think about what that meant for me. If it meant even a tenth of that to those students, then I feel completely content with what my contribution was in that career.
George B. Thomas:Content with your contribution. And by the way, I love that story. As you were telling it, it's like, man, this passion to help other people find their pleasure based on the pain that we once had to face and know that, like, we want to not get them stuck or have them be stuck there. It's so powerful. Oh, this this has been such a good interview.
George B. Thomas:Okay. We're gonna start to we're gonna start to land the plane. We've got a couple more questions that I wanna ask you. But, Anne, what advice would you give other women who might wanna choose this career path that you're in now?
Anne McDonnell:Don't doubt yourself. Do not do what I do. Do not question your own abilities. Do not underwrite yourself. What made it possible for me to pivot from a career in global education to tech, which seemingly have virtually no relationship.
Anne McDonnell:Although we did actually use HubSpot at my first company back in 2012 when it was just Marketing Hub and it revolutionized the way that we work. But break down what are your skill sets and don't limit yourself to thinking about how they apply within the context of the job description. So many of us, regardless of our career path, have built up applicable skill sets for a number of roles in companies like HubSpot and otherwise within tech and lean into the strength that you bring on the basis of those experiences and help draw that picture in terms of how they can be applied to tech. So don't let anyone else tell you that what you've done is not sufficient for what the needs are in a particular industry, tech or otherwise. Fight that to the best of your ability if that's the direction that you want to go and get creative in terms of drawing that picture for folks.
George B. Thomas:So good. I love that you basically opened up with do what I say, not what I do, and here's what I'm going to say. That was beautiful. I love it so much. Okay.
George B. Thomas:You've made it here where you're at right now, but I'm curious. And what are your long term goals?
Anne McDonnell:You know, I really like what I'm doing right now. So I think to be very frank, my long term goal is to figure out my long term goal. I think I had a very, very clear career vision for myself when I was working in global education that interestingly enough in tech, and I think this is a byproduct of what tech is, it's become so fluid and so quickly evolving that what I say I want to do in five years may be a completely different thing from what I think it looks like today. I think if nothing else, I want to continue to build out a skill set that can be applicable in a world that is very fast evolving with respect to its needs, which is vague, but hopefully that resonates in some capacity. That's my number one career goal at this point in time is to figure out how can I still add value in a world in which value is starting to be defined in different ways?
George B. Thomas:Oh, that's fire. Okay. So, wow. I think you Yeah. I'm not usually lost for words, but the fact that you just landed there is so important.
George B. Thomas:So first of all, I hope the listeners, they heard skill set. Because by the way, it could be five minutes, five hours, five weeks, five years from now. It is if you're in this space, you know, tech, AI, like it's always changing. And so to understand the skill set, to be able to add value when value is now a moving target, that's so good. Okay.
George B. Thomas:All right. All right. All right. All I I could probably get stuck there for way too long. Let's just keep going with the next question.
George B. Thomas:What's a surprising or little known fact about you that people might not expect other than the fact that you're an introvert?
Anne McDonnell:Go ahead. Two things. One, no one would expect this because it's weird. I have the same birthday as my mother and my grandmother. So that's my little fun fact.
Anne McDonnell:It's my paternal grandmother, so it's not quite the same if it was my maternal grandmother, but I've been sharing a birthday for my entire life. The other, and I think anyone who knew me in global education knows this and would come to expect it. But as I shared, I love traveling, never got the chance to travel until I studied abroad, but then just didn't stop after that. Yeah, everyone hop in the station wagon and drive east to go to grandmother and grandad's house. Was our extent of international travel in my childhood.
Anne McDonnell:But I've been to, I think now 54 countries. My husband is holding me back because I used to be on a, I want to get at least two new countries a year. Now I'm having to go back to places because he wants to go see places that I've been to. So he's messing up my whole strategy here, which is fine. But yeah, I am an avid traveler and I do it and go wherever I can, whenever I can.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I love travel. My wife and I love traveling. We love cruises. We love seeing places we've never seen.
George B. Thomas:And dang on those husbands. They just like to throw a wrench in things, don't they?
Anne McDonnell:I tell you.
George B. Thomas:Right. Last question and finish this sentence for me. Success to me equals blank.
Anne McDonnell:I'm gonna say a word and then I'm gonna explain it a bit because I think it sounds a little passive, but success to me equals contentment. And what I mean by contentment here means I know that I've done everything that I can to do what I'm supposed to do or can do to help people in that day. Whether that's helping a customer, helping a partner, helping a colleague, I feel like I've contributed to the extent to which I'm able to contribute in some somewhat hopefully meaningful capacity. And I think when I've done that, I feel good and I feel like I've had a success.