Be a Lindsay

Sometimes we need a push to reach our full potential. For Selena Rezvani, that push came from Johns Hopkins Professor Lindsay Thompson. An MBA student and business management consultant at that time, Rezvani knew exactly what she wanted to pursue for her capstone project and pitched the idea to Thompson. "There were so few women in leadership. I wanted to know, who are these unicorns who have made it to the top and succeeded?"

Thompson agreed to approve her research on one condition, Rezvani says. "She said, 'Selena, you have to go after the giants—the women you think will say no.'"

Rezvani reached out to women she considered "stratospherically successful and amazing." More than 30 said yes, including Katharine Weymouth, CEO of The Washington Post, and Jamie McCourt, president of the LA Dodgers. Rezvani thought others could benefit from what she learned, so she pitched a publisher, and her project became her first book, The Next Generation of Women Leaders, published by Bloomsbury in 2009.

Rezvani's next push came from a new boss who gave all the consultants a mandate: they must publish articles and speak at conferences three times a year. It was daunting at first, she admits. "I felt like a baby deer, standing in front of an audience doing those early talks. But it put me on a path to public speaking and writing, which are two things I really love." Those experiences gave Rezvani the confidence to quit her job once she got her MBA and launch her own business.

When the pandemic hit, Rezvani was a mom of twins and generating about 90% of her living from speaking engagements. A timely opportunity ushered in the next phase of her business: LinkedIn invited her to launch a branded newsletter. Rezvani called hers Quick Confidence. "It was the first thing I ever did that went viral," she said. She soon gained 100,000 engaged readers.

The newsletter's success, combined with Rezvani's other LinkedIn partnership filming video courses for LinkedIn Learning, gave her the confidence that launched her most unexpected career chapter yet: social media influencer.

In 2021, she began sharing bite-size leadership tips on TikTok and Instagram. Today, Rezvani has 500,000 followers on social media. There, she found an audience of professionals hungry for advice on how to navigate everything from poor performance reviews to condescending colleagues.

Rezvani has also found a new revenue stream partnering with companies that see the value of having a presence on TikTok and whose principles match hers, including Oracle, Adobe, and the Society of Human Resources Management.

And it all started with her sole female professor at Hopkins, Lindsay Thompson. Rezvani says, "I wouldn't have thought that big or stretched that far without Lindsay's prompt. I am always encouraging my audiences to 'be a Lindsay.'"