Megan Man, group creative director at Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co., was the keynote speaker at the Northwestern Mutual Luncheon: Becoming a Boss (Lady) during Milwaukee Young Professionals Week in April. She leads a team of more than 30 designers to create financial wellness products for Northwestern Mutual’s LearnVest division, and previously spent seven years at Huge leading design initiatives for brands like Google and American Express.
“Directing is different from doing. Making great work happen through other people takes so much time and experience. The more you start to trust your team and empower your team, the happier they will be and you will be.”
“As women, how do we be decisive without being labeled aggressive, bossy, cold, tough? It’s something that some people might push you to be a little softer spoken or figure out different ways to sell your ideas. In the end, you just got to do what you got to do – sometimes, it takes being upfront to get your work out there and to get people to take you seriously.”
“When I went back to work from maternity leave with my oldest child, I was back to working 60 hours a week and I reached a point where it was making me hate my job. As a mother, you need to make a decision about setting your boundaries and making sure you have your priorities straight, and that your team knows your priorities and that you work at a place that really respects those. Otherwise, it’s just going to burn you out.”
“Put yourself first. Figure out what you need and you’ll be surprised, as I was, to see that there are places out there that will create roles for you if they respect your work and they want to have you.”
“Since I’ve been in my design leadership role, I realized that not only is it important to design great products yourself – that is really satisfying – but it is also just as satisfying to get great work out of other people.”
