An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Organizations that increase levels of inclusion in their culture are proven to increase levels of engagement which directly impacts workplace safety, reduces employee turnover, improves employee productivity, customer loyalty and profitability.
As a part of our series about “How Diversity Can Increase a Company’s Bottom Line”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Monique Nelson.
Monique Nelson is an Experienced Chief Executive Officer with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Skilled in Digital Strategy, Integrated Marketing, Advertising, Event Management, and Strategic Partnerships. Strong business development professional with a MBA focused in International Marketing and Finance from DePaul University.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive into the main part of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit more. Can you share a bit of your “backstory” with us?
I was born and raised in Crown Heights and Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. I attended LaGuardia High School performing arts as a voice major. In my senior year I was awarded the Posse Scholarship, and Inclusive Leadership Scholarship, to attend Vanderbilt University. I left Nashville, TN and moved to Kaukauna, WI where I was an Account Rep at International Paper, Nicolet, Specialty Paper plant. After a few years, I took my talents to Chicago, where I joined Motorola’s Global Brand Strategy Group and travelled the world. I spent significant time in Korea, China, Brazil, Italy, UK and UAE. This time, as you can imagine, allowed me to see and truly understand that culture mattered and as a marketer, I needed to be constantly informed about culture and how our product would be having both a positive and negative impact.
During my time at Motorola, I obtained my MBA from DePaul University in International Marketing and Finance.
After almost 8 years at Motorola, I returned to NYC and began my career at UWG as an Account Director and Head of Brand Integration and Entertainment. This role allowed me to learn the client service part of the business along with bringing my mobile and digital first knowledge to the agency and our clients. Both Byron and I knew that digital would drive the engagement of communities and would need to be culturally relevant.
I loved the business so much that my family and I bought the controlling stake in UWG in May 2012 when founder Byron Lewis retired, and I have been Chair and CEO for 10 years. I am so proud of the heritage of the agency, but also of the innovative, smart and empathetic team I have built to take on the challenges and the triumphs of the communities we serve for today and the future.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us the lesson or take away you took out of that story?
While I was launching the Motorola Rokr E1 we worked with some pretty amazing artists like Common, Questlove, Iggy Pop and the unbelievable Madonna, it being the first mobile phone with music embedded with 100 songs from Apple in September 2005. Madonna was releasing new music and we decided to use her song for the campaign. Well, we were only supposed to use a snippet of the song and not the entire song but somehow the entire song was released worldwide during the launch event. Needless to say, a lot happened to get the music down and relaunched. Lesson here “Don’t leak an unreleased Madonna song ☺ ”. Very stressful moment and I truly recognized that closing the communication loop is imperative to have excellent outcomes.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson” quote? Can you tell us a story about how that was relevant in your own life?
Decisions about are made in rooms without you! Everywhere you go, there you are!
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?
There are so many but here is a short list:
Jonathan and Dorothy Nelson — Parents, what more do I need to say?
My husband and two boys — My “why” for making the future better for 3 Black men.
Elena Panizza — My fantastic boss in Milan Italy taught me to truly be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Michael Ainslie — My Mentor from college, Former CEO of Sotheby’s, continues to show me the ways of a CEO.
Byron Lewis — Founder of UWG, he taught me vision and mission is critical to sustainability and purpose drives everything.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
We were purpose driven before purpose was a thing! We are consumer/customer- centric, and our relationship is always reciprocal with the communities we engage.
Are you working on any new or exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?
I am excited about working with student athletes and am proud to be working with the first NIL Summit in Atlanta at the College Football Hall of Fame, June 13–15th. I am excited for these young athletes to be equipped with tools and resources to become content creators, investors and hopefully entrepreneurs. It is important for them to know their worth now that they can monetize. Helping young people succeed is paramount for our future and college athletes are a special community of dedicated, talented, smart and savvy people that deserve our support after years of denial.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I certainly hope I have. I am oversubscribed but it is so hard for me to say no, especially when it comes to our community’s youth.
I serve on the following boards:
DPAA DEI Board — I recently did a webinar on how to attract and retain diverse talent
Posse Foundation, NY advisory Board
Eagle Academy Foundation
Brandeis University — DEI committee and Academy Committee
Member of the Brooklyn Links, Incorporated- Fundraising Chair for Salute to Youth Scholarship Program
UWG has a long history of giving and community. We support HBCU’s, minority businesses through supplier diversity, and support nonprofits in any ways we can.
Ok. Thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main part of our interview. This may be obvious to you, but it is not intuitive to many people. Can you articulate to our readers five ways that increased diversity can help a company’s bottom line? (Please share a story or example for each.)
- Risk Mitigation 1 — effective diversity programs can serve as a mitigant against lawsuits and other costly compliance related issues.
- Risk Mitigation 2- effective diversity programs can protect a brand against costly “Public Blemish Incidents.” In the case of Cooper v Cooper and the Central Park Bird Watching incident, Franklin Templeton lost over $12B in market cap in under three days.
- Organizations that increase levels of inclusion in their culture are proven to increase levels of engagement which directly impacts workplace safety, reduces employee turnover, improves employee productivity, customer loyalty and profitability.
- For complex business challenges (not run of the mill issues), teams with diversity of demographics and culture/backgrounds consistently provide superior solutions when addressing these complex business issues.
- In B2B and B2G Sales, corporate, government and other buyers are demanding suppliers to have strong diverse workforces, supplier programs, and are also now demanding that client service teams have diverse representation; those organizations lacking these fundamental requirements are not even being afforded the opportunity to compete for RFP deals.
What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees to thrive?
During this time employees are asking for environments that are inclusive and safe. Creating safe space for employees to express themselves and create community is so important. Whether you have ERG’s clubs, buddy systems, mentorship programs, happy hours or safe space hours — it is important especially in this hybrid environment that we understand where people are not only with the work but with their complete selves. Lastly, being very thoughtful, that mental health is real!!!!
What advice would you give to other business leaders about how to manage a large team?
Large teams must be managed in smaller teams. The best thing to do with large teams is to understand what is common and should be addressed universally as well as what is special and should be managed at the department, competency, or regional level. Once this is established, insert a feedback loop so best practices, innovations and learnings can be shared at both the large team level and small team level.
This allows for better metrics, faster problem solving and stronger performance.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in business, VC funding, sports, and entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this 🙂
Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka. I am so proud of their strength, resilience, and brilliance. They are truly inspirational, and it would be an honor to spend time with them.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Thank you for these excellent insights. We wish you continued success in your great work.
Monique Nelson Of UWG On Why Diversity Is Good For Business was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
