Julie Roehm and Meta’s Nada Stirratt Dig Deep on Achieving Success in the Face of Adversity
Award-winning marketer Julie Roehm recently welcomed former Meta VP Nada Stirratt onto her podcast, The Conversational. Both are among the most successful businesswomen of their generation, but their careers have had their share of bumps in the road.
During the interview, the women discussed the professional and personal hurdles they had to clear, and how these “holy sh*t moments,” as Julie Roehm calls them, were turning points on their paths to success.
The key takeaways from the interview are summarized below. Listen to Julie Roehm’s full interview with Nada Stirratt here.
Paving the Way for Women in Business
Who are Julie Roehm and Nada Stirratt? Both women have spent the last 30 years driving transformational success in leadership positions at major international firms.
Julie Roehm made a name for herself as head of the Dodge brand at Chrysler. Her team developed the “Grab Life by the Horns” campaign (that’s still in use today), revitalizing the dying brand and driving 142% revenue growth for Chrysler. She was named “Marketer of the Year” by BrandWeek and even earned herself a spot in the Automotive Hall of Fame. Roehm went on to serve as CEO, CXO, CMO, and Chief Storyteller at major companies like SAP, ABRA Auto Collision & Glass, and Party City. She’s been named among Brand Innovators’ “Top 50 Women in Brand Marketing” and was a recipient of the “Booth Distinguished Alumni Award” by her Alma Mater, the University of Chicago Booth Business School.
Nada Stirrat is best known for her most recent role as Vice President, Global Business Group for Americas, at Meta (formerly Facebook), where she managed over 1500 people and generated over $30 billion in ad revenue. Before Meta, Stirratt held executive roles at Acxiom, MySpace, and Viacom. A veteran of internet advertising, she even managed the sale of Advertising.com to AOL back in 2004. She has been named one of Cable World’s “Most Powerful Women” and Business Insider’s “Most Powerful Women in Mobile.” She was also awarded the Ad:Tech Industry Achievement Award.
Overcoming Adversity
While Julie Roehm and Nada Stirratt’s careers are defined by their overwhelming successes, both recognize the challenges they faced as having a significant influence on their careers. Some of these challenges fueled their professional growth, while others are related to systemic diversity issues that still exist in the workplace today.
Nada Stirratt spoke about the workplace inequality she encountered as she climbed the ladder working for major businesses like Cosmopolitan.
She met her husband at Cosmopolitan Magazine when workplace relationships were frowned upon. After getting married, she was grateful that he chose to leave the company because she loved working there—though this was far from the norm.
“In those days, the woman would have had to leave the company. We just know it. You just know it would have happened,” she said.
Even though her husband got a job working for a much smaller company, Stirratt noticed that his pay was drastically different.
“I ran a bigger business than he did and he made 2.5 times more money than I did,” she remembers.
Julie Roehm and Nada Stirratt both experienced a lack of support among professional women due to competitiveness in male-dominated industries.
“I was in automotive, you were in sales, and there was a lot of male domination,” Julie Roehm said. “I felt like [women] should be supporting each other, but sometimes it was just the opposite because it felt like there was only room for one woman.”
Stirrat agreed. “There were women who were 10 years older than us and had had to go through so much more, and nobody wanted you to have it easier than they did,” she said.
Luckily, corporate environments are becoming more supportive, partially due to the efforts of Roehm and Stirratt. Both women dedicate their philanthropic efforts toward expanding opportunities for women and supporting positive spaces for women in the corporate world.
Being Humbled by Failure
According to Julie Roehm, the most formative moments in your career can be the ones that leave you feeling the lowest of the low. Both women experienced a string of early successes in their careers, which made it even harder when they came face-to-face with failure.
“My most humbling experience was being the CEO at Verve and getting fired,” Stirratt said.
During their rise, Roehm and Stirratt took executive roles at major companies. Nada Stirratt served as CEO of Verve and Roehm became SVP at Walmart. Both would be fired within a year of gaining these positions.
“It was devastating,” Stirrat remembered. “ I think the first month, you are a puddle and not moving and not getting out of bed because you think you couldn’t even get a job down the street. You think you’re damaged goods.”
Roehm agreed, remembering thinking, “I’m a failure, I’m just going to swim back in my hole.”
But after going through an initial period of grief, each woman turned her disappointment into a learning experience. For Stirratt, it was about escaping from the stress of the corporate world to engage her mind in a different way.
“Give yourself a year to do something that’s completely different,” Stirratt recommends. “I did this beautiful coursework in the South of France. I just did things I wanted to do.”
Long before that year was over, Stirratt began talks with Facebook (now Meta), where she would reach her heights of success.
Julie Roehm’s experience gave her a new perspective on the importance of company culture and the factors that drive people in general. These insights fueled the next stage of her career, as she went on to found her own consulting firm before taking executive positions at SAP, ABRA Auto Collision & Glass and Party City.
“I have a totally different perspective of everything from corporations to agencies, to start-ups, to people in general,” she said. “Everything happens for a reason, and the important thing is how you react and how you move forward.”
Moving Forward
Julie Roehm and Nada Stirratt worked for different companies in different industries, but their careers share something in common: both showed remarkable resilience in the face of adversity, and both were able to move forward with gratitude and positivity.
According to Roehm, these are exactly the situations in life that enable you to develop the strength and perspective to succeed.
Today, Stirratt and Roehm continue to channel their positivity into successful ventures and philanthropic work. After her time at Meta, Stirratt is spending her time working with organizations like the National Kidney Foundation, Blue Star Families (which supports veterans), and LiveGirl (an organization that provides financial aid to women in college).
Julie Roehm is currently an Advisory Director on the Boards of T-Mobile and the Digital Marketing Institute and a consultant for several firms.
For more from Julie Roehm, including additional interviews with today’s top business leaders, visit julieroehm.com.
