At seven years old, Sarah Personette told a stranger she wanted to be a CEO. She spent the next three decades making it happen.

Days after Elon Musk closed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, she resigned — walking away from a role she'd spent four years building, and stock she hadn't fully vested, to protect what she stood for.

In this episode of Unbossing, hosts Rishad Tobaccowala and Drew Ianni talk with Sarah Personette — CEO of Puck, the media startup the New York Times called "Vanity Fair for the Substack era."

Sarah's career ran through advertising agencies, Facebook, and Twitter. She took a demotion to join a startup called Facebook because she could see where the industry was heading. At 26, she managed a 90-person team through the 2008 financial crisis. At 33, she was U.S. President of Universal McCann.

The lesson she carries through all of it: the leaders who survive disruption aren't the ones who avoid fear. They're the ones who name it, move through it, and bring their teams with them.

She also makes the case that kindness isn't a soft idea, it's the thing that makes organizations actually perform when it matters most.