Headshots for Healthcare Executive
I recently had the wonderful opportunity to photograph Kristen Oeltjen-Bruns and she shared the key to her success:
“I found the one thing I was good at very early in life was making connections with people. I attribute a lot of my success to this – both in my career and my personal life. I’ve learned to be intentional when I meet people, asking questions to learn at least one thing about them. You never know who you’ll meet in the grocery store or the boardroom. At the end of the day, we’re all human beings and we can find some common ground, personally or professionally.”
Even though she was already working in a virtual environment, Kristen found that this really came in handy during COVID.
“My company did a lot of virtual gatherings during COVID that were focused solely on making personal connections, not talking business. I found out that someone on my team loves to garden and I was just starting to garden. Even though we grew different things in our gardens, we now have common ground. Those opportunities come up unexpectedly and paying attention is really important. When you understand what makes someone tick as a person, it gives you a better opportunity to put teams together that have chemistry.”
I asked Kristen to share a piece of advice from her experience.
“Put yourself out there and create your own opportunities in life. You can’t expect an opportunity to come knock on your door. You have to work really hard behind the scenes on all different types of things to be successful.”
“When I reached out to Alissa, I was looking to elevate my personal brand. I came across Alissa's post in Chief late one night. I was really nervous going into the shoot, but I had so much fun. I felt really good looking at my pictures. They represented the best of who I am and my personality. She captured the essence of who I am to others and that's exactly what I wanted.”
Thanks, Kristen, for sharing your advice.