Stacy Kamigaki was teaching Sunday school when a young girl gave her the opening she’d been looking for.
The class was talking about service. The girl said she wanted to become a nurse or a doctor. Then she talked about making a lot of money and giving it to people who needed it.
Stacy kept thinking about her. This girl could picture herself building a career, earning money and helping others. She’d seen examples that helped her imagine that future. Her grandmother might never have had the same opportunities.
For weeks, Stacy had been turning over ideas for her chapter in Leadership Voices. That conversation helped her bring them together. She called the chapter See It. Be It. As she wrote, she started noticing how often someone else’s example had helped her take her own next step.
She watched a colleague ask for more
Early in Stacy’s career, a colleague wanted to move from an administrative role into sales. So she put together a PowerPoint presentation, took it to the CEO and made her case.
It worked. And Stacy paid attention.
Her colleague showed her how to ask for an opportunity. She had an ambition, prepared her argument and spoke up. Watching her do that helped Stacy find the courage to raise her own hand.
Stacy went on to build a career across hardware, software and services, working through startups and company consolidations. Smaller companies and startups gave her plenty of chances to take risks and try something new. She took them.
Years later, writing her chapter brought that colleague back to mind. Stacy could see more clearly how much she’d learned from watching someone else go after what she wanted.
Now she helps others take their next step
Today, Stacy brings that experience to her work as a firm owner and fractional CMO with yorCMO. She helps B2B and technology companies grow, including businesses that can’t support a full-time marketing executive.
“We are sitting in the room,” she says.
For Stacy, that means joining the leadership team, owning marketing results, managing the budget and developing the people doing the work. She enjoys digging into how a business runs: where growth comes from, how decisions connect and what the team needs to move forward.
That last part gets personal. Before she decides how to support someone, she wants to know where they hope to go. What do they enjoy? What do they want to learn? What would they like to try next?
“I want to give others maybe something that I didn’t have,” she says.
Stacy had mentors for part of her career, but she spent much of it figuring things out without that support. Now, when she mentors someone, she looks beyond the assignment on their desk. She wants to help them build a career they care about.
She brings the same curiosity to conversations with college students and the elementary-age children she teaches. Each person gives her a different place to start. And she learns from them, too. Younger colleagues, especially, have impressed her with how openly they speak up about what they want from work.
She recognizes something familiar in that willingness to ask. Years ago, a colleague showed her what could happen when you raised your hand. Now she gets to help other people do it.
Eight leaders gave her eight places to start
Writing See It. Be It. gave Stacy time to think about those connections. Getting them onto the page took a little experimenting.
She thought she’d start with an outline. Instead, ideas showed up while she walked or went about her day. She kept her phone nearby, captured the thoughts as they came and organized them later.
“It helped me to make connections I had never made before,” she says.
She also wanted to hear how other people thought about leadership. So she sent questions to eight leaders she respected, drawing from different generations and from her work, church and community.
She expected their answers to have more in common. Instead, each person emphasized something different. One valued initiative. Another wanted clear expectations or good communication. Others talked about feeling seen.
As Stacy read their responses, she noticed that people often valued qualities they already saw in themselves or hoped to develop. That gave her something to think about. If eight people she respected could describe leadership so differently, she needed to leave room for those differences in the people she mentored.
That’s why, when someone asks which skills a new leader should build, Stacy starts with the person. What do you do well? What do friends and colleagues come to you for? What feedback keeps coming up?
Then she asks where those strengths could help. A team needs people who come up with ideas, people who question how those ideas will work and people who notice when a colleague needs support. Knowing what you bring helps you find a place to contribute. From there, you keep learning, listen to feedback and work through the conversations you’d rather avoid.
She helped a team tell its own story
Ask Stacy about a time she felt most proud as a leader, and she talks about helping a team come together after a series of acquisitions.
The acquisitions had brought together teams with different histories, cultures and capabilities. The company had outgrown its earlier identity. Stacy and her colleagues needed to tell a clearer story about who they had become and where they wanted to go.
That meant listening. Some people felt deeply connected to the culture of the company they’d joined before the acquisitions. Stacy and the team had multiple conversations with them to understand what mattered and what they wanted to carry forward.
“It was a new painting with some of their strokes in it,” she says.
People could recognize their own contributions in the new identity. Together, the team took the different messages from across the business and shaped them into a story they could all get behind.
Stacy counts the rebrand among her biggest marketing successes. When she talks about what made her proud, though, she keeps coming back to the people. They built it together. They shared a clearer sense of who they were and where they were heading. And each person could claim a part in the success.
Make time to look up
After years of raising her hand, taking chances and helping teams move forward, Stacy has some advice for her younger self: pause long enough to notice what’s happening.
What gives you energy? What’s working? What are you proud of? And where do you want to go from here?
“Not just what I want to do, but what do I want to be?” she asks.
She wishes she’d asked herself that question earlier. She also wishes she’d looked up from the next task more often to recognize the people helping her along the way, learn from them and thank them.
Writing her chapter helped her do some of that looking back. She remembered the colleague who walked into the CEO’s office and asked for a chance. She thought about the leaders whose answers surprised her. And she returned to the little girl who could already imagine a future of helping others.
Stacy has learned from all of them. Now, when she sits down with a team member to talk about what comes next, she has a chance to pass that encouragement along.
Read Stacy’s chapter
In See It. Be It., Stacy shares more about the people who helped her imagine what she could become and how we can do the same for others. You’ll find her chapter in Leadership Voices. Find Leadership Voices on Amazon →