Giselle:

Yeah, it’s funny. I kind of get chills thinking about this, but it really was the Girl Scouts. And that experience of selling cookies, which it sounds so cheesy, but, you know, as a kid, before you’re asked to walk up to a stranger and sell them something, you never really have to go out on a limb like that other than, you know, trying to get something out of your parents. I have a kind of a funny Girl Scout story, which is I grew up in Wisconsin in a very Catholic area. And so Lent is really strictly observed. You know, I also grew up that every Friday, we didn’t need meat, we went to fish fries. And the funny thing is that cookie season always fell, right before or during Lent. And this never made sense to me. I mean, years and years later, I actually got to meet the head of the Girl Scouts. She was a wonderful woman, and I asked her why? Is this like a character-building experience? And she literally, she had no idea… to them she said it’s set by region. And I was like, well, they really needs to learn a thing or two about marketing and so on.

So I had this amazing character-building experience of going door to door, and having so many people turned me down because they were observing Lent, and they were going to give up sweets. And in my kid head, I was like, ‘Where do I find the people not giving up sweets?’ I decided the best place to do that was at the cookie aisle in the grocery store. I had a little kid robot from Radio Shack with a little tray. And so I put the cookies on the tray, and I drove it through the cookie aisle at the grocery store, and I would have it go up to people. It was a hit, I sold a lot of cookies. I literally got kicked out of the store. Which was such an experience because you expect kids to follow the rules and, it was good because I saw the problem, and I got the hard feedback. And then I kind of worked around that. So I stood outside of the grocery store, figuring there was a subset of people entering that would buy, but it worked. I got my cookie badge. And I overcame that obstacle.

 

Loree:

So that’s such a great story. I am not surprised to hear that you were a brilliant marketer from a young age. That is so smart. Wow. So, what or who were some of your role models for leadership as you were growing up?

 

Giselle:

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. I didn’t have a lot. I’d say the biggest one was my mom. And, you know, I think anybody would say that, but for me, it was that my mom, she had no college degree, she had very few skills… and yet when we were born, she decided she wanted to be able to spend time with us, but she knew she needed to work. So she went out and founded her own advertising agency, which in retrospect is insane because she literally knew nothing about it. And she ended up actually making more money than my dad. And she did this thing where she took us on almost all of her appointments. Again, now that would seem crazy. And she would introduce us as I was the President of the company, and she would introduce my sister as the VP… and she would say to her client, ‘Please don’t embarrass me in front of my bosses.’

 

Loree:

Oh, that’s great.

 

Giselle:

We got all of this exposure to sort of real-world dynamics at a really young age. And to watch my mom persevere through building a business and going out and finding clients was a great education.

When I got my first role at Facebook, it was on the Global Agency team. And I remember that they asked me, ‘What is your experience with agencies?’ And I was like, ‘Well, I grew up in one.’ So it ended up being a really valuable experience that I was able to later draw on for my career.

Then my later one example was a teacher; her name was Miss Woods. She was a black woman; we had a very racially mixed school. And race was definitely a topic. She led a class called ROPE: Rites of Passage Expression. So she took this group of gifted students and really took us on a journey through a lot of difficult topics like race and gender in the 90s, and it was so amazing. I just remember being so motivated in that class that I just wanted to do more, and not for the grade… just that she was able to unleash that in me. And, you know, some of the people that I became friends with then have been friends for life, and we were in that class together. So it was definitely really transformative.

 

Loree:

Wow, that’s fantastic. It’s really amazing how teachers have such an influence on the kids that they teach. Are you still in contact with her at all?

 

Giselle:

You know, we’re not. And I’ve actually looked for her on Facebook, and I haven’t found her.

But you know, on the opposite end, I had a math teacher who was so destructive. She would grade your work in class, and then she’d have the person in front of you say what your score was. And I remember my grades were going down at the time, my parents had recently divorced, and it was just this like downward spiral for me. And I also was like… I wonder if this woman knows the destruction she caused?

 

Loree:

Oh, both right. Yeah, I had one who was so inspiring. That hurts my heart because I majored in math. I love math, and so many people have bad experiences with math teachers. I don’t know what it is about that, but I’m sorry to hear that.

 

Giselle:

It literally took me until business school to get over the label of ‘I’m bad at math.’ Yeah, having to take this accounting class. It was a requirement, and I was terrified. I ended up getting 100% on the first exam.

 

Loree:

Awesome.

 

Giselle:

So it was just like, but it was just a label…I had told myself I was bad at it.

 

Loree:

Yeah. Wow. Wow. So okay, so let’s fast forward a few years. You were talking about your time at Facebook. What would you say are leadership lessons that you learned at Facebook?

 

Giselle:

Oh, gosh, I mean, Facebook… I spent almost a decade there. Facebook was just a whole other version of Business School. For me personally, the biggest lesson that I had to learn was overcoming my own imposter syndrome. You know, I showed up to Facebook as a woman from a state school from the Midwest, and most of my peers had attended Ivy League schools. Many of them had worked for Big Five consulting firms. And those worlds were both incredibly foreign to me. Every day I woke up facing this feeling of ‘I don’t belong here, and they’re going to figure it out pretty soon… and then and then what’s going to happen?’ And it was through a combination of two things. One was doing cognitive-behavioral therapy. The other was reading Amy Cuddy’s book, which I always forget the name Oh, it’s about presence. Yeah, reading her book, I don’t know, cured me somehow, those two things.

 

So it was very much a personal leadership journey. And I think the great thing being there for a decade at a company that had such growth was also watching the personal journeys of other leaders who really evolved. Who started rough around the edges and then just became so refined and so powerful. That that was really inspiring on my journey. So those are some of the things and then I mean, Facebook was just at that time the most… I couldn’t imagine a more inspiring place to have been. There were posters everywhere: ‘Done is better than perfect.’ You know, ‘What would you do if you weren’t afraid?’ These were the words that I was surrounded by every day. And we really felt this strong sense of mission and purpose, and that united everybody together to work for this common cause of making it possible for everyone in the world to connect for free. So many lessons… and some that I feel like I’m still unpacking now. You know, you get your review, and something doesn’t resonate, and then five years later, it suddenly clicks. I’m just so grateful for that chapter in my career.

 

Loree:

Yeah, fantastic. Well, that’s how you and I know each other.

 

Giselle:

Yeah, I can’t believe I had the honor of hiring you.

 

Loree:

You’re so good. And I just, you know, loved working for you. You were an amazing manager. And what blew me away is that here’s this woman who has a lot of leadership responsibilities and her role to your young children. And then you go and run for City Council on top of all that… she is superwoman. So I’d love to hear more about like I know that you were involved with helping Obama get elected. So after working on President Obama’s campaign… maybe talk a little bit more about that journey from working on a campaign to running for office yourself.

 

Giselle:

Yeah, well, they’re very different. I listened to Obama’s book, Dreams from My Father, when my husband and I were driving cross country after getting married. We got married, we hopped in our cars, we drove to the Bay Area in search of jobs. And on that drive, I listened to the book, and I was just so struck by this man. I knew I wanted to support him, you know, and when we arrived here, I was super lonely. I hadn’t started a job yet, Ryan was going to work. We had no friends and I’m very social, so I started volunteering at this makeshift campaign office and kind of quickly rose through the ranks. When they decided they wanted to hire people, I got actually hired onto the campaign. It was a really small staff for the state of California, and our job was to basically ship people across state borders, to battleground states, and then to do phone calls. And we had some of the highest stats in the country. It was an incredible leadership experience because everybody wanted to be involved in that campaign. And here we are in Silicon Valley. I mean, I vividly remember once literally a Silicon Valley CEO walked in, was like, ‘Well, I can do this, this and that.’ We were like, ‘well, we need phone calls or door knocks.’ And he was like, ‘Great, give me a phone list.’ And you know, it was just that mentality of we were going to do something big, and that meant setting aside our egos.

 

So, fast forward to right after that I got my job at Facebook and sort of shifted into a different phase. Then for me, my motivation for getting into public service was very much about becoming the mom of daughters. I was one of those super annoying people when I was pregnant the first time who didn’t find out the gender of their baby. And I basically gave birth, and the moment my husband said, it’s a girl, I had this huge reaction. And it was actually… sadness. It was sadness because I realized there were so many obstacles this girl was going to have to overcome and bad experiences that she might have just because she was a girl… because she wasn’t born a boy. In that moment, I was like, wow, I have to do something about that. And pretty immediately I was out walking her in her little baby carriage, and I saw a sign for boards and commissions in my city, Redwood City. And I decided I would apply and I wanted to go for the big one, which is planning commission. It’s the commission most cities have that oversee land use, and that’s the most major policy issues for cities. So, in between breastfeeding sessions I was making calls around town, I was reading our city’s general plan and made a precise plan and sort of making my case.

On the day of my interview, my girlfriend was going to babysit my daughter and she ‘no-showed.’ I had this moment of like, ‘Okay, well, you know, I’ll try again next time.’ And this little voice in my head was like, ‘Let’s see how family-friendly the city council is. So I put her in her little carrier, and I took her in, and I did the interview, and the next day, one of the Council members called back to say how impressed they were and that they wanted me to go for it. I didn’t get it the first time, I got it the second time, which was good. The baby was then six months old. Then I had the same experience all over again, with my second child, I had her at home. I’d had a really traumatic first labor, and I decided I wanted to be at home. And that ended up being bizarrely like a leadership experience. And it was you know, really owning my own power. I basically labored by myself, and I helped to deliver her by myself… put her on my chest… and it was really, really empowering. And I remember after that experience kind of feeling unleashed. I was like I just did that and that was really, really hard.

 

Loree:

Yeah, you know, I have to say, that photograph of you holding Vivian and Brian is next to you, and I think you had just delivered her. You have this look on your face, like ‘I could do anything’ and you were so happy. There’s just this amazing joy and strength that totally comes through that photograph. So it’s really interesting to hear you describe what led up to that moment of triumph.

 

Giselle:

Yes, and it’s kind of like after that, I became a junkie for hard things. I was like, ‘What’s another thing I could do?’