From Corporate to Creative: How Pursuing Passion Leads to Success with Katherine Li

Speak In Flow

Welcome back to another exciting episode of Speak in Flow with your host, Melinda Lee! In today’s episode, we will embark on an inspiring journey with Katherine Li on how passion leads to success. A leader in strategy, business development, and operations, with over a decade of experience, she’s led both global teams and design teams in their early stages of prototyping in Fortune 500 companies as well as various businesses across the globe. The main ingredient throughout her endeavors? Pursuing her passion.

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

Transitioning and Upleveling in Career and Life:

Katherine gets candid about her diverse career experiences, including the challenges and rewards of transitioning between roles and industries, and she opens up about the importance of curiosity and continuous learning for personal and professional growth.

Balancing Innovation and Team Cohesion

She shares her insights on the importance of building cohesive teams across various time zones and disciplines to foster innovation. She brings in some real-life examples from her work on sustainable projects to help illustrate how she balances business needs with environmental responsibility.

Pursuing Passion and Happiness

Katherine talks about her bold decision to pursue singing, and how prioritizing her personal happiness led to some amazing opportunities and significant personal growth. She emphasizes the importance of listening to your intuition and making time for activities that bring you joy and fulfillment.

Developing Confidence and Authenticity

Reflecting on her journey to build confidence in singing and public speaking, Katherine gets real about the vulnerability that comes with performing and how being authentic helps in connecting with the audience.

Human-Centered Design and Empathy in Leadership

Katherine offers valuable insights into the role of empathy and human-centered design in leadership and innovation. She highlights why it's crucial for leaders to really understand and connect with their teams and stakeholders to create impactful and meaningful solutions.

Memorable Quotes:

“You can observe all you want; you can participate as a team member. But running something on your own is really a unique adventure that any entrepreneur can probably attest to.”

“We’re taught that ‘hey, not everything in life is going to be pleasant and you just kind of have to deal with it’ and ‘if something doesn’t feel good, just work through it’. But I started realizing those signals and the more I listened to that, the happier I became and the more things just fell into place organically.”

Connect with Katherine Li:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/likatherine/

About the Guest:

Katherine Li is a founder, builder, and advisor to startups with over a decade of experience working in the corporate world as well as various government entities. With her interest in Fintech, digital health, and the arts, she shares how passion can lead to success, helping her thrive not just in advancing her career but in her personal growth as well.

About Melinda:

Melinda Lee is a Presentation Skills Expert, Speaking Coach, and nationally renowned Motivational Speaker. She holds an M.A. in Organizational Psychology, is an Insights Practitioner, and is a Certified Professional in Talent Development as well as Certified in Conflict Resolution. For over a decade, Melinda has researched and studied the state of “flow” and used it as a proven technique to help corporate leaders and business owners amplify their voices, access flow, and present their mission in a more powerful way to achieve results.

She has been the TEDx Berkeley Speaker Coach and has worked with hundreds of executives and teams from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Caltrans, Bay Area Rapid Transit System, and more. Currently, she lives in San Francisco, California, and is breaking the ancestral lineage of silence.

Website: https://speakinflow.com/

Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/speakinflow

Instagram: https://instagram.com/speakinflow

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mpowerall

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