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Ida Martikainen is a Senior Consultant with Collaborative Strategies Inc. (CSI). She is a leadership coach and a strategy advisor who helps organizations and executives develop resilient strategies and robust stakeholder relations. She empowers firms and not-for-profits to navigate the challenges of transparency, collaboration, and rapid change. Ida has developed, communicated, and executed plans that create intentional change, purposefully aligned with strategic goals, for both privately held and public entities across the globe.
She talks to Cynthia about her approach to career goals, the skills needed for effective consulting, and how she was challenged to think better early in her career. As a transplant from Helsinki, Finland to St. Louis, MO she has undergone quite a life transformation, and she brings a fresh new perspective to the podcast.
1 – Introduction 00:24
2 – Building Community 03:36
3 – Story that explains what you do 05:17
4 – How does your team work with clients 10:17
5 – Importance of External Point of View 14:42
6 – Ida’s history 16:45
7 – Her role in communications projects 20:45
8 – Projects that stand out 25:25
9 – Cultural differences between Finland and US 28:31
10 – Young Ida know what she wanted to do 32:21
11 – Principles and values that drive you 34:28
12 – Story of an embarrassment 37:25
13 – How do you think better? 42:14
14 – More factors on learning to think better 44:51
15 – Advice to young Ida 46:24
16 – Understanding strengths and weaknesses and how to fill in the gaps 49:08
17 – How you arrived in St. Louis 50:49
18 – Differences between US and Finland 54:48
19 – Working to the point of burnout 59:10
20 – Normalizing new roles around the home for men 1:02:04
21 – Never feeling constrained as a professional woman 1:03:28
22 – Seeing yourself as a professional, not professional woman 1:08:01
23 – Recap of what’s been covered 1:08:49
24 – Being a shock to business systems 1:13:33
25 – Contacting Ida 1:14:17
26 – Who we work with 1:14:46
Content Notice
This podcast and all She Lift Project content represents the opinions of Cynthia Kirkpatrick and her guests. The content here is for informational purposes only, and should not be taken as professional advice – financial, legal, medical, or otherwise.
Views and opinions expressed in the podcast and across all She Lift Project media channels are our own and do not represent that of our places of work. While we make every effort to ensure that the information we are sharing is accurate, we welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors.
“I got to a point in Frank’s office where I realized there was kind of a ceiling. People that I had come in after me, I was training, were now moving up. And my ego got to the best of me. This is the dream job. Like, what happens after Frank Gehry? What could possibly be next after that?”
We’re catalysts for better conversation. And we know at Filament that the teams that we work with are not looking for the right answer, because there’s no such thing as the right answer. There is the next best answer to the questions that we’re asking.
“Research actually shows when there’s this lack of trust in a relationship, this lack of connection, the same part of our brain that processes physical pain gets activated when there’s an emotional pain. Right? And so if I’m feeling rejected or I’m feeling like I’m not part of the team or I’m not valued in any way, that part of our brain activates and says, like, pain. And so if you think about it in that way, think about the number of people who are walking around your office every day in pain.”
“Women in their 40s start to disappear from photographs because they think that they’re not young enough, thin enough, pretty enough. But the truth is that when you are in your 40s, you are leading a company, you’ve had children, you have a family, you’re doing things in your community. This is when you should be photographed.”
“You have to be cautious and mindful of the board of directors you invite into your head. And we as women especially listen terribly to that board of directors. And if you have one bad seat on there, one bad teacher, one bad classmate, one whatever from your history that you are listening to, it can really sabotage you.”
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