Your brand is only as strong as the leaders who carry it   

At the Exceptional Women Alliance, we enable high-level women to mentor each other to achieve personal and professional happiness through sisterhood. As the nonprofit organization’s founder, chair, and CEO, I am honored to interview and share insights from thought leaders who are part of our peer-to-peer mentoring.  

This month, I introduce to you Alma Derricks. With broad experience ranging from strategy partner at Deloitte to global sales and marketing leader at Cirque du Soleil, she is the founder of REV, an award-winning strategy consultancy that crafts and launches distinctive campaigns and new ventures for the world’s most coveted brands. For decades, she has helped companies define who they are, what they stand for, and how they show up in the world. Lately, her work has taken a more intimate turn. She’s been called on to create immersive mentorship programs for dozens of high-potential, emerging leaders—the MVPs who are shaping the future of Fortune 50 organizations. The themes that emerge in private conversations are candid and illuminating for their chief experience officers. 

Q: You’ve created new businesses and customer strategies for a who’s who of major brands including Cirque du Soleil, Star Trek, Amazon, and Verizon. What’s the connection to next-generation leaders? 

Alma Derricks: What most executives understand intellectually—but often underestimate in practice—is that a brand doesn’t live in positioning statements or buzzy marketing campaigns. A brand lives in its people. Great brands have a strong, clear, and consistent core identity and they have leaders at every level who know how to carry that identity with confidence and courage.  

While companies typically place a great deal of emphasis on developing technical mastery, they are far less deliberate about developing leadership identity. They promote people, increase their scope, and then assume confidence will follow. But it rarely does. Confidence is built through clarity about expectations, authority, and guardrails. 

Q: Why are senior directors and vice presidents so critical? 

Alma: They’re the people companies rely on to run complex initiatives, calm chaos, and quietly raise the bar. They’re ambitious, capable, and trusted—sometimes more trusted than they realize. These young leaders are literally the future of the company. 

They usually don’t stumble because they lack technical skill. They stumble because their internal sense of identity hasn’t caught up with the responsibility they’re being asked to carry. They know how to execute. What they’re unsure about is who they’re expected to be. 

Q: What themes keep coming up in the private conversations you’re having? 

Alma: While they can appear to be confident and on track, many are wrestling with self-doubt, hesitancy, and a fear of being exposed as “not ready yet,” even when their performance says otherwise. And despite these damaging internal monologues, they typically aren’t comfortable asking for help. 

These leaders aren’t struggling with competence. They’re struggling with permission—permission to take up space, to speak with authority, to disagree in the room where decisions are made. They soften their language. They over-explain. They second-guess themselves. They wait for validation instead of setting direction. That’s not a skill gaps. That’s a confidence gap. 

Q: How does this connect back to the brand? 

Alma: A brand is a promise. Internally, that promise is carried by leaders long before it’s carried by marketing. Everyone inside the organization understands what the brand stands for and how decisions get made. The strongest companies I’ve worked with are led by self-assured people who have internalized the brand’s identity so deeply that it becomes instinctive. When a leader lacks confidence in their own authority, the brand shows up inconsistently. Decisions get hedged. Messaging gets diluted. And core values get compromised in moments that matter. 

Q: What does effective development look like, then? 

Alma: It’s not about “fixing” people. It’s about helping them integrate who they are with the authority they now hold. That means developing executive presence not as performance, but as alignment. Courage not as bravado, but as clarity. Confidence not as ego, but as ownership. When leaders understand their own internal brand—what they stand for, how they decide, what they will and won’t compromise—the external brand becomes stronger by extension. 

Q: What’s at stake if companies get this wrong? 

Alma: Future leaders are watching how leadership actually works, not how it’s described. When high-potential talent learns that safety matters more than conviction, a brand slowly loses its edge. If the people carrying a brand internally feel uncertain, constrained, or invisible, that will eventually show up in the market. 

The question every senior team should be asking is “Are we actively cultivating leaders who know who they are and have the confidence, presence, and grace to inspire their people?” If you want a brand that holds under pressure, you have to develop leaders who do the same. 

 Larraine Segil is founder, chair, and CEO of the Exceptional Women Alliance.