Last night at a defense tech D.C. event, I was told that my career success was partially due to my looks…
Which may be true to some degree.
However, I responded by explaining that half of the 1B+ organic views I’ve generated over the course of my career, have been social content I wrote, directed, and produced, but was never seen on-screen.
I was then told to stop being defensive and take it as a compliment.
I apologized, and continued to explain I wasn’t being defensive, but I don’t want all my hard work to be chocked up to my looks.
The person got so upset that they got up and left the event entirely.
To make that the first point you respond to my career trajectory with ignores:
- That I have been studying defense tech for the past two years at the top communications program in the country
@USC (where I have a 4.0)
- I have been the Marketing Director at multiple multi-million dollar start-ups in aviation and AI tech
- I wrote a television pilot that was sold as a feature film development deal to an executive at Viacom at just 21 years old
- A large majority of the videos that grew my channels to over 1M+ followers never showed my face
- I designed and developed my own social media intelligence platform to systematize viral messaging for my Masters of Science program
- I have been featured in
@nytimes,
@voguemagazine, and
@BusinessInsider without ever seeing my face
Maybe I’m in the wrong here, but I think it’s unfair to assume most of these accomplishments have anything, or very little, to do with appearance.
Would love to hear thoughts.