The year 2020 has presented unique challenges and interruptions across all aspects of our lives, but it does not stop us from celebrating the various accomplishments and achievements of women leaders of color! Throughout the month of August, we will spotlight these amazing women and share their unique perspectives, philosophies, and stories.

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Sara Prince is a Partner in McKinsey & Company’s Atlanta Office. She is a core leader in McKinsey’s Marketing & Sales Practice, and is a co-author of the company’s ground breaking series “Diversity Matters”. Her 15 years of experience includes: serving travel, transportation, logistics, consumer and financial services clients on growth strategy, commercial capability building and growth transformation. This experience has aided her greatly in her leadership role in McKinsey’s Growth Accelerate practice, which focuses on building individual capabilities required to deliver a company’s growth strategy and sustained impact.

Prince earned her bachelor’s degree with honors in economics from Duke University. She also received her M.B.A. from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, where she was recognized as a Shermet Scholar. While she has been published in the area of sales capability building and performance transformation, she is currently focused on diving into the areas of talent and capability. Her latest published report, “Diversity Wins” frames the imperatives around inclusion, and continues the conversation that was started in “Diversity Matters” which linked financial performance and levels of gender and ethnic diversity in a company’s leadership team.

We are excited to announce that she will be a speaker at our panel: Bringing Women of Color to the Table on August 28, 2020. When asked about her journey to success, she had a few pieces of advice to share:

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Throughout your leadership journey, from your first job to your current position, what are some key lessons you’ve learned that have shaped you as a leader?

Sara Prince: My first real job was trading on a trading floor, which is a job where you are required to form a perspective that you then use to make bets. Essentially, you have to learn to use your voice to shape what is happening. That experience taught me to trust my own judgement at a fairly young point in my career, which has been invaluable to me. Now that I’m in a leadership role, I focus on helping others gain that same confidence.

Who are some women that have inspired you?

SP: Most of the women who have inspired me are in my own family. That’s wonderful and daunting at the same time, because they know exactly what I am doing and have an opinion on how I am living up to their legacy.

What is the most meaningful part of your job?

SP: The fact that I get to help people at their point of greatest need is an incredibly meaningful part of my job; an opportunity that’s both humbling and quite rewarding.

Every person faces their own challenges and women of color are certainly no exception. What contributes to your resilience as a professional woman of color?

SP: I’m pretty sure that resilience was bred into me as a child. For most children of color, if your parents have hopes and dreams for you, they teach you that you have to be twice as good to go half as far. From a very young age, I was taught that success won’t be easy and it won’t be fair. Many times, even when you do everything right, it won’t work out the way you deserve to have it work out. So there’s no option to quit.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

SP: Over the course of my career, I’ve learned that while you absolutely need to understand and embrace the culture of the organization you are in, you don’t need to change who you are to be successful. In fact, it’s often the points where you are different that causes your success. At the core, I listen more than I speak. I listen to what is said, and also to what is unsaid, and what is needed. Those are the things that make me different, but, that’s what makes me successful.

So here’s my advice: as you use your voice and your talent, and learn all the skills you need, don’t lose the things that make you uniquely you, because that’s what you need to be successful.

If you could start a side-hustle, what type of business would you start and why?

SP: I’d love to start a company that would plan multigenerational family trips abroad, focusing on enabling families to travel together outside their home country of origin. When you discover things together as a family, it broadens everyone’s concept of what is possible. It also more tightly knits together the bonds of familial support around what is needed for people to take risks.