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“5 things I wish someone told me before I became a CEO” with Emma Andrews, Founder and CEO of Mavens & Moguls

Phil La Duke
11 min readAug 14, 2019

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An interview with Phil La Duke

As a part of our series about strong female leaders, I had the pleasure of interviewing…Paige Arnof-Fenn is the founder & CEO of global marketing and branding firm Mavens & Moguls based in Cambridge, MA. Her clients include Microsoft, Virgin, venture-backed startups as well as non profit organizations. She graduated from Stanford University and Harvard Business School. She is a popular speaker and columnist who has written for Entrepreneur and Forbes.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

I did not plan on starting a company. I always wanted to go to work for a large multinational business and be a Fortune 500 CEO. When I was a student I looked at leaders like Meg Whitman & Ursula Burns as my role models. I started my career on Wall Street in the 80s and had a successful career in Corporate America at companies like Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola and worked at three different startups as the head of marketing. I took the leap right after 9/11 when the company I worked for cut their marketing. I had nothing to lose. Being an entrepreneur provides me a platform to do work I truly enjoy with and for people I respect. I get to set my priorities, I have time to travel and hang out with my inner circle, and work out every day. It has been a journey to get here but I am lucky to have found it. I love the autonomy, flexibility and the fact that I know every day the impact that I have on my business. When I worked at big companies I always felt the ball would roll with or without me, that if I got hit by a bus someone new would be in my office right away. Now my DNA is in everything we do and I can trace every decision and sale to something I did or a decision I made and that is incredibly gratifying and fulfilling. Like most entrepreneurs, I am working harder and longer than ever and I have never been happier. Working for yourself and building a business you started in incredibly rewarding and gratifying. It has been a lot of fun, I joke that I am the accidental entrepreneur. I knew I had made it as an entrepreneur when Harvard wrote 2 case studies on my business a few years after I started it, we were very early to pioneer sharing resources on the marketing front (before my company it was really only done with HR, legal and…

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Phil La Duke
Phil La Duke

Written by Phil La Duke

Author of “I Know My Shoes Are Untied. Mind Your Own Business”, “Lone Gunman. Rewriting the Handbook on Workplace Violence Prevention”, and “Blood on my hands

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