I started in the baggage room.

Here's what actually got me to the c-suite.

Hey Leader,

I didn’t start in the boardroom. I started in the baggage room.

Loading luggage. Parking planes at Boston Logan.

Some days I’d even pick up a shift behind the ticket counter, checking people in for their flights. If you have 5min, I recorded this video sharing more about my story below.

Now maybe you’re in that season of your career right now. Doing solid work. Showing up. Wondering when you will get noticed.

If that’s you, I want to walk through a few of the things that actually got me from that ticket counter to running a major aviation company, in case any of them are useful to you right where you are.

Tip 1: Show Up for the Promotion Before You Have It in Mind

Nobody was requiring me to smile at every stranger who walked up, or to go out of my way for people who’d forget my name five minutes later. I did it anyway. It was just who I was. I expected opportunities to show up in my career, so I showed up every day with the excellence needed for those opportunities.

A VP named Jim flew through that airport consistently. One day he stopped at my counter and said, “Every time I come through here, I see you. You’re always smiling, taking care of people.” He told me I belonged in sales.

I didn’t know anything about sales. I hadn’t been angling for it. I was just doing the job in front of me with more care than it technically required.

But I wasn’t just showing up for the job I had. I was showing up for the one I didn’t have yet.

And what happened? It got me noticed.

Your Turn: Spend one full day this week treating your current role like it’s an audition for the one you want. Not just the visible parts. All of it, even the parts nobody’s checking on.

Tip 2: Effort Alone Won’t Save You Once You’re Being Tested

Now getting noticed and staying in the room are two different games.

When I moved into sales, they handed me a $25 million quota and no playbook. My first six months were rough. My manager wasn’t interested in coaching me, she told me flat out to figure it out or she’d replace me.

The same excellence that got Jim’s attention wasn’t enough to survive the opportunity it earned me. I had to get intentional, learn fast, and become valuable to more than just the one person deciding my fate.

I had to up my level of excellence.

Your Turn: Find one meeting, one project update, one conversation where your work can land in front of someone beyond your manager and make their life easier. Visibility isn’t inevitable. You have to create it on purpose, one interaction at a time.

Tip 3: Use Your Voice, Even When It’s Harder Than It Should Be

I’ve watched this happen more times than I can count, especially to women. Someone shares a sharp idea in a meeting, gets talked over, and then watches a man repeat the same idea five minutes later to a room full of nods. It happens so often that a lot of women just start to stay quiet.

Or maybe that’s not you at all. Maybe you’re the one quietly making everyone else’s life easier in the background, holding things together, but you’ve just never spoken up and pointed it out.

I get it. Speaking up when you’ve watched it cost others something is not a small ask. But silence has never once gotten anyone promoted. Visibility did. Excellence did. Saying the thing out loud, even shaky, did.

Show up for the role before it’s yours. Don’t coast once you’re being tested. Use your voice.

Your Turn: Next time you hold back in a meeting because speaking up feels risky, count to three and say it anyway. Not perfectly. Just out loud. And know this isn’t a one-time fix. You’ll have to do it again next week, and the week after that, especially on the days it feels exhausting. Do it anyway.

Next Steps

Getting seen, staying valuable, and using your voice are three of the five things I actually walk you through in my 5-day Stand Out & Move Up Bootcamp.

The other two matter just as much: who’s really in your corner, the difference between someone who likes you and someone who will vouch for you when you’re not in the room, and how to turn all of it into a real 90-day plan instead of good intentions that fade out by mid-week.

Five days with 5 lessons. About 20 minutes a day. You walk away with a personal brand statement you can actually say out loud, a visibility strategy built for where you sit right now, and a 90-day plan to get where you want to go.

If you want the full roadmap, join me in Stand Out & Move Up →

Either way, here’s the question worth sitting with: are you being noticed for the value you bring, or are you hiding it behind good work and hoping someone’s paying attention?

Let me know in the comments.

Your Ally,
Stephanie