At Glamour we talk to a lot of important women—astronauts, pro athletes, executives, and the occasional first lady. And while they span the professional spectrum and live all over the world, we’ve found that high-ranking women tend to have one thing in common: They’re truly excited to hold the door open for the women coming up behind them. In our Future Forward series—part of our College Women of the Year coverage—we asked some of those industry leaders to welcome the next generation to the table with their hard-earned life and career advice. Kimberly Paige, an executive vice president and the chief marketing officer at BET Networks, shares hers below.
Kimberly Paige has a philosophy on marketers: “Great marketers are nothing but storytellers,” she says. As the chief marketing officer at BET, she’s currently telling the stories of Black creatives and artists across the network’s cable, streaming, and digital platforms. Her job, as she describes it, is to ask, “How do we excite and delight consumers?”
Recently Paige led the behemoth task of redesigning the BET logo. The three letters—an acronym for Black Entertainment Television—and single star have been a part of the brand’s identity since it launched in 1980. Paige and her team stacked the elements in a movable square tile. “A big metaphor,” she says, nodding to the idea “that Black culture is constantly moving, evolving, stretching, and flowing.” It won multiple Clio awards.
But marketing isn’t all storytelling, she says. At her first postcollege job—as an assistant brand manager for a consumer goods company—Paige carried a binder stuffed with information and data about the business everywhere she went. That kind of willingness to learn the business, inside and out, “was a real unlock for me,” she says. It not only gave her deep knowledge, but the confidence to engage with the company’s leaders and share her unique ideas with them.
Evolone Layne, a 2022 Glamour College Woman of the Year, who’ll have the opportunity to be mentored by Paige one-on-one, might want to take a page out of Paige’s binder. And you can learn from her too: Below, Paige shares her life and career advice, including how to impress her during a job interview.
Glamour: What’s your typical morning routine?
Kimberly Paige: I kind of just sit for a moment. I don’t call it meditation, because my mind doesn’t shut down. But I do try to give myself a break and reflect on what I want the day to be. That’s generally followed by a lot of water, some coffee, and on most days I try to work out to just get my energy flowing. Then I’m jumping straight in. I think, since the pandemic, there have been 10 times as much on our schedules and 10 times as many demands on our time. But I do try to take that moment in the morning to set my intention for the day.
What was your first childhood dream job?
I always had this insatiable curiosity, so I really thought I was going to be a psychiatrist. As a child, I was always like, “Why, why, why?” My parents quickly realized that it was better for them to just take a moment and explore with me, because the questions weren’t gonna stop.
I realize now that I was trying to get insights. I’ve always really been excited and motivated by what motivates others. Why do you do what you do? What drives you? Wondering what motivates people is ultimately why I became a marketer. It’s all very connected, right?
I think insights are the core to anything that’s going to land with impact and be meaningful. So I still take a lot of time to understand the why—rather than the what—of what people are doing.
Is there a piece of career advice you wish you’d learned in college?
I think it’s really being comfortable with your lived experience and your voice, and not being afraid to enter into spaces. That lived experience makes your perspective unique and valuable. Quite honestly, I think in college we teach fundamentals—in terms of very, very specific elements of marketing function—but I don’t think they speak enough to how it’s been applied and how you as a marketer can show up and have great influence on a brand or business. So I think just that notion of really leaning into your lived experience is important.
If you can always put yourself in the shoes of the consumer by way of empathy, then naturally whatever you put out there has a higher likelihood to be authentic and come across with credibility and impact. I think in college, what they don’t teach you is that most effective brands can connect with not only the head but with the heart. And I think that’s why, today, female leaders are generally more effective. They have a high EQ [emotional quotient], which allows them to not only have a degree of listening leadership but also lead from a point of empathy.
What’s the most valuable career lesson you’ve learned through experience?
Leadership can’t be role-modeled, in some ways. I think you can understand some of the capabilities and traits of other leaders, but your leadership style has to kind of come from and be really connected to who you are at your core. For the most part, my career was kind of a rigid process in terms of the ways that we were working. I came into many situations where it was fairly robotic. So, for me, my unlock was when I defined how I was going to show up as a leader.
If someone is just starting out in your field, how can she position herself for success?
For me, it’s knowing the business of the business. I think I’m a lifelong learner, and I think you have to study the business that you’re entering. I may sit in the seat of marketing, but my first step in any job is that I would find the finance people, I would find the research people—the finance people because I wanted to learn as much as I could about our consumers, and about how the business made and lost money. Show up as a person who is constantly learning and growing and evolving.
How can someone impress you in a job interview?
I think they speak with conviction and passion, and it’s informed by data, but also just they’re showing their innate sensibility and understanding. So the best of marketing is the art and science, but showing up with conviction and passion and being able to speak in a very clear and concise manner excites me. The other thing I would say is someone who comes in with just the most outrageous, bold idea.
Name the people whose Stories you’ll never skip over on Instagram
Of course, my close friends. But I love Adam Grant. Adam really has such a unique take on corporate persona and leadership that I constantly find myself referring back to his work.
Fill in the blank: If you weren’t in your current career, you’d be a _____.
I would start an investment fund to support Black emerging companies.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jillian Kramer is a journalist who writes about health, wellness, science, and adventure. She taps into a broad network of experts to write in-depth articles for leading publications, including Glamour, The New York Times, Scientific American, Travel + Leisure, EatingWell, and Food & Wine.
