In the Cut Leadership Conversation with Archita Fritz

Archita and her husband sharing their love for running with their Third Culture kids.

Archita says that she was never supposed to be in those rooms. Not in boardrooms where multi-million-dollar decisions get made. Not in private equity meetings where marketing is an afterthought. Not in leadership huddles. The only woman. The only person of color. The only voice asking different questions. And yet, here she is. A LinkedIn Top Voice in Thought Leadership and award-winning product marketing strategist, innovator, keynote speaker, podcaster and board member.

Archita, I’m so glad to talk with you and that we met however many years ago. And I’m so glad you did the thing that you thought you couldn’t do and you’ve done it in a really big and beautiful way.

Thank you, I am forever honored and indebted that you said “yes” in that mentoring mashup that we had with How Women Lead. And you didn’t have to. And I’m thankful to the Universe for bringing us together because you’ve been a light through all these years for me.

Sheila: Thank you.

Let’s start in this complex world that we live in. you have a multi-faceted, multi-cultural, multi-lens to the world. So, let’s start with how you identify?

I identify as an Indian. Daughter of Vijaya who never felt like she was enough because she grew up in a country that had prejudice against people of darker skin color. No matter how smart she was, how clever she was, what she did above and beyond the 6 children that she was a part of, she always felt like she was never enough. I grew up being the daughter of Vijaya who pushed us to be more and the daughter of Sivakumar, my Dad, whose Mom gave him 50 Indian rupees and told him to run away from his village so he didn’t get married off to the Headmaster’s daughter, and he did. He built his career as a lawyer and international labor officer and built his family of 4 in another city in India. And now, I am a Mom raising 3 Third Culture kids with my husband in Dusseldorf.

That’s how I identify. It’s the core essence of who I am.

Sheila: It’s sad how quickly we identify someone and think something about them simply by what they look like. We make all kinds of judgements and none of that is true. The origin story that we make up isn’t your origin story and we are going to bring this forward when we talk about leadership and how it shows up in you.

Archita taking her Dad and Mom, Shivakumar and Vijaya, to Jungfrau! The one place her Dad wished to take his bride for over 4 decades!

What’s the work that you do?

The work I do now is multi-faceted. I’m a vessel holding many different superpowers. I am the Founder and Principal of Ready Set Bold and work primarily with private equity-backed organizations to help them build their next growth story. I love being a part of growth stories, taking things from good to great, and that’s what I get to do as a fractional leader or a Board Member.

The other space I hold for myself and others in this vessel is as a coach and keynote speaker to women, individuals and organizations to help them live out their potential. I do 1:1 coaching helping people transitioning out of the workplace.

The last 2 spaces are rooted in my activism work which is how we connected. I’m the Chief Marketing Officer of Speak Out Revolution which is a UK-based not-for-profit focused on ending the silence about bullying and harassment in the workplace.

And finally, I have a space to share and bring around a bunch of folx like the ones you’re interviewing In the Cut – the first, the few, the only. I co-host a podcast with Olivia Cream called Embracing Only.

Those are the different aspects of what brings me joy in the work that I do today.

Archita sharing all aspects of her identity as host of the yearly Diwali Fest to an audience of Indian and German cultural enthusiastes.

Why did you decide to go after PE backed firms? Is growth the magic link?

I did what all coaches would tell you to do. I’m an engineer and I created a Venn diagram. I looked at what I love to do, what people pay me for and what people say I really do well. I then wrote stories about it like, “this brought me joy when I did this project…”

I then spoke with a bunch of people who had left corporate because I had made the decision that the way corporate was constructed, the life I wanted to lead wouldn’t be possible if I stayed. I spoke with men and women, and you were one of them, You gave me a lot of insights about what kind of business I wanted to grow. You asked me if I wanted a business that was just me or did I want a team. It was an important question because everyone I had spoken with had built a team.

Then you introduced me to your colleague, Pati Navalta, who shared gifts that were so critical in helping me identify what my journey was going to look like. After I collected all this information, I learned the language of fractional work which I didn’t know even existed.

And then I dug a little bit more and found the private equity, PE world. Early and mid-market PE firms don’t usually invest in tenured marketing leadership. I recognized that they have mandates to grow but due to budgets it might not make sense yet to hire a full time CMO or product marketing leader for instance. They are hungry for growth and I thought this was a great place to start. Growth was the link

I didn’t jump totally into it at first. It was trial and error at the beginning. I learned quickly on this journey that no one wants to be told what to do. But if I could talk about growth, point out the challenges of growth, and create trust, I could help them grow.

Sheila: It’s not lost on me that you said you were an engineer and know you as a marketing person! How stealth it is that the public facing story is “this is what I do” but underneath that is “this is what I get to do because I’m there”.

When I was in corporate and a director, I was pregnant and I was paraded around to places I had never been before to make a point. Now I don’t need any bells and whistles. I get to work my way in and affect change. However, I’m not on the front lines as so many others are to address systemic change.

Sheila: Well, I don’t want you to minimize this really. You are on the front lines of systemic change. You’re stealth at it. You’re not carrying a banner and you’re not shouting “systemic change” and yet, with every move that you’re making in the seat you’re holding you’re influencing someone to think differently. That’s IS the front edge of systemic change.

So, you said engineer and then you said marketing. How did you do that?

I love this story and have perfected telling it because it’s one of my favorites.

I am an engineer because I am the daughter of Vijaya who never felt like she was enough. So, it was like get every damn degree you can and in India that was an engineer, doctor or lawyer!

I’m also the daughter of Sivakumarwho was like, “what do you love doing, my lady?” His mother believed in him enough to encourage him to go make something out of your life. He didn’t think I would want to study 15 years to be a doctor so I became an engineer because I love math. I was a computer engineer to start and I was in a lab for 17 hours a day. I was the only woman and person of color and there were a bunch of 17-year-old boys coding next to me. I was clear that I didn’t leave my country to go to the upper peninsula of Michigan to stare at a computer screen.

So, I did something that I thought was very brave and moved from computer science to electrical engineering which was across the quad. My parents were thrilled that I didn’t go rogue and was still an engineer! It made a dramatic difference because I was no longer the only. There were 3 other women  with me and 2 of them were women of color and immigrants as well. The agency that situation brought to me catalyzed my ability to step up and step into my power. We created a safe space and to this day, we are best friends. They were my bridesmaids and we talk as much as we can. They are in my life these many years later.

I interviewed with a company where I had interned and they had paid for my college following two successful internships. At the end of this they offered me a full-time role in engineering. Even though it was imperative that I have a visa to stay in the country, and for that I needed a job, I was honest and told them I couldn’t take a job in engineering as it didn’t celebrate my talents.

I was so clear that I wanted to be closer to the customer and bless them because they said, “go shadow the job that you want and then tell us what job you want.” I said, “thank you very much!” and went to the engineers who were closest to the customer which was Quality & Manufacturing. They received complaints and spent their time troubleshooting. I transferred into that team and a year and a half later I was the Queen Quality Complaint Closer and problem solver!

One beautiful day I  got a call from my manager that I couldn’t show up for work the next day because they had messed up my paperwork and I was no longer legally allowed to work. Roll camera and cue, I cried and felt like I had failed but I had no control over the situation. My boss told me that they would figure it out and to meet him at a coffee shop because I couldn’t even enter the building.

We met and he gave me 3 options. The first was to go to school; we’ll pay for you to get your MBA; come back and we’ll hire you. This was the good old days of 2007 and 2008, right before the crash, where companies were investing in younger talent. The second was to go to India to our engineering center; work for 2 years; and come back to the U.S. The third was there was a ‘fire’ in Quebec; the FDA is coming in 6 months; turn that plant around for us; but you need to learn French over the weekend. I signed up for option 3!

The President of the Quebec division said, “don’t send an American who cannot speak French. When she comes on Monday morning, she has to report on the quality complaints in French.” Well, I’m not American! And the good news about an Indian education is that you learn everything by rote. So, I learned the language and long story short we passed the audit. And, again, many of the people with whom I worked came to my wedding!

It was so amazing and during this time, there was a VP of Marketing who heard me present and shared that if I ever needed a job in marketing to give him a call. When I came back to the U.S., they offered me a Senior Quality Engineer position but I still wanted to be closer to the customer. Where I was, we were solving issues after products had failed and I wanted to help us identify the right product to build.

I gave Kevin Conway a call, the VP of Marketing, who is still an ally in my life. It was a Friday afternoon and I reminded him of his offer and told him that this was that call. I needed a job in marketing. He said it was perfect timing because a woman on his team had just resigned and was going to become a teacher and he hired me on the spot. My job was the product manager of Rest of Work and it was my entry into marketing.

My engineering background helped me because I had to make this division relevant because we were less than 2 percent of the business. We had to launch new products; we had to make build or buy decisions. So, I did a lot of upstream marketing versus brand marketing which got me a lot of other opportunities. Then eventually I got a Kellogg Executive MBA. But honestly I learned so much through the jobs that I got to do and the experiences that I got to have.

Sheila: To say yes to the thing. Do not believe that you’re not capable. Just, go do it. I love that!

“It was literally that day that I realized I had a voice. Can you imagine how powerful that was to hear?”

 Now that you’ve described the experience of doing work you didn’t enjoy to to learning French on a plane ride to Quebec, across all of that, where was the “aha” moment of leadership for you?

Mine actually happened in 5th grade where I had my “say yes” moment. I was the daughter of 2 people who were not business people. In India I went to a convent school which were built by missionaries and were the best schools back then to go to versus a government school. Parents would stand in line for 24 or 48 hours to just get an application in.

I got into the school and in 6th grade you have what’s called a student election of Head Girl and Assistant Head Girl. Think Harry Potter with all of the Houses. It’s exactly like that. There was a Head Girl election where you lead the full middle school. Usually, you assume that the cutest girl or the family with a bunch of money would get nominated. We were sitting in a huge pavilion with 400-500 students. They invited anyone who wanted to come on stage to nominate someone or themselves and then share why the students should pick them or you to be the Head Girl. There was no campaigning like in America where you have days leading up to the election to get people to vote for you.

I was thinking about who I was going to vote for and my geography teacher, Mrs. Fayaz, asked me why I wasn’t going up on stage. I asked her, “what do you mean?” She said you have a voice, exercise it. I didn’t even know that was a choice I had.

I cannot tell you; it was literally that day that I recognized that I have a voice. Can you imagine how powerful that was to hear? I grew up in a home where our Mom shared that with us a lot but it didn’t matter because out in the open world you still shrink yourself constantly for the comfort of others. My teacher gave me permission to lead from within that I had never thought was an option. I got up and spoke and was elected.

I learned an important lesson. I had brought my people together; I had built a team. But that is when the real learning began. I had to learn how I was exercising my voice for the benefit of the constituents that I serve? I used to serve the side of power which were the teachers because I thought they were the constituents. I was draconian and a terrible leader. They had names for me. I thought leadership meant following all the rules to a tee. And that is not at all what leadership is.

I recognized I was failing miserably at building collective joy and support in the community for my leadership. I asked some of my friends why they were terrified of me. They shared, “have you seen how you lead? You are ruthless!” I thought the rules were so great. I wanted everyone to have the correct clean white shoes but didn’t think about the girl who does not have electricity in her house and may have to clean her shoes in the dark and cannot see if her shoes are clean or not. Things like that, systemic issues that don’t affect you but in the same neighborhood that you live in affects 80 percent of the community.

So, I took a complete step back and I led with curiosity and put my name back in the hat in 10th grade. I completely shifted how I led my team then and in 12th grade, other students put my name forward to lead the entire school. I had screwed up in 5th grade. I was terrible. I learned and understood. I brought the community along in my learning being transparent to my limitations as a leader. And then they collectively helped bring me back into a position to help.

It was very, very, very early, Sheila, that I recognized my calling to leadership.

Sheila: I love the arc of this story from 5th to 10th to 12th grade. I have this thing that it takes a year to learn a job; it takes a year to do that job; and it take a year to do it your way. It was that thing that happened here with you. You stepped forward with confidence and trust in your own instincts that you knew how to lead. And you did and good on you that it started so young.

I made many mistakes after that, too. There were moments where I made other mistakes but I had a playbook of how to understand, learn and realign with the least amount of harm to the people around me.

“A seat at the table comes with responsibility.”

How does your intersectionality inform your leadership style? You went from being an only to one of four. You come from a family where the influence of your parents is present to you. How does your identity show up in your leadership?

Being an only in various professional settings. University, yes. In my internship I was the first woman engineer. The only person of color in a manufacturing plant in Michigan which is so absurd. I’ve become familiar with the only, only, only journey. I have a heightened awareness of inclusivity because of this only superpower.

A lot of my identity in leadership is recognizing how I use my seat at the table as an only as a superpower to thrive here in this position versus being a footnote. I help lead how we as a team grow, build, hire and innovate. I constantly challenge. I don’t just sit comfortably and nod my head. A seat at the table comes with responsibility that I am happy to step into.

One of my strengths in CliftonStrengths is “command” which means I’m very comfortable showing up, taking up space. And I’m very thankful for my early childhood experiences, and others that helped shape that. I knew that any time I entered a space I already knew that I was going to be the only and I never showed up shrinking. I showed up with all of me. You take me or you don’t have me.

You mentioned a superpower, and they do change, so today, what do you name as your superpower? What’s on our cape?

Curiosity learning mindset. It’s the biggest gift because I explore the moments. They become learning moments.

The other one is anti-fragility. It’s not just resilience. I’m comfortable breaking completely and rebuilding. I’ll always rebuild.

In those times of needing your cape, what bucks you up? Is there a song or quote that you turn to and say, yes!?!

My favorite song is I Am by Baby Tate featuring Flo Milli. There are lot of bad words in it and it’s amazing. It’s my hype song and if I ever go out on stage with it playing they would have to bleep out the bad words!

There’s a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt that I love – you must do the thing you think you cannot do. It has shaped so much of every one of the decisions I’ve made. 

The last is Hindu wisdom, my upbringing. There’s a mantra, a chant, that I’ve used. There is scientific significance to the waves that you create in your body when you chant. It’s called Mahamrityunjaya Mantra. It’s literally 36 words rooted in the god Shiva who has a third eye which is your intuition. You repeat the 36 words 108 times and it helps you reconnect with your intuition and center you and your anxiety. It helps me reclaim my moments of doubt, frustration and exhaustion.

What do you know your life’s purpose to be?

To empower individuals and organizations to realize their full potential.

Do you have a talent that you’re not using?

The full range of my voice.

Sheila: I cannot wait until you find the full range of your voice.

If this 5 years’ is a chapter of your life, what is it about?

I am in a place of empowering transition in the service of others within my definition of what success looks like for me, not for the comfort of the collective society. It’s powerful, scary and exciting.

It’s a year from now, what are you celebrating?

The joy that my husband and I are seeing in our kids that brings us closer. Falling in love with my aging body. Losing my babies who are growing up. Some big hairy goals that I have for my business. Building something together as a family. Not eating my feelings. Raising consciousness of people who own wealth and capital in terms of how they show up and who they need to serve who are underserved in this world. And last but not least, helping more women leave corporate on their terms and thrive

“In whatever intersection of privilege, you may be recognize that privilege and serve from there.”

Is there anything that I have not asked that you’d like to share?

None of this was achieved on my own. It was people like you; like Kevin Conway. I can list a whole slew of people who took time to invest in me. It’s a conversation here and a conversation there that sometimes we think isn’t relevant but makes such an impact in the domino effect of how you can change a person’s life.

To anybody in whatever intersection of privilege you may be, recognize that privilege and serve from there and give back in some way, shape or form. It can truly transform someone’s life.

Archita, I appreciate you! Check out how Archita can help you and your organization and please leave a message for her below!