Tara Giuliano - Redefining Success Through the Lens of Tragedy

When Tara Giuliano, CMO of Nuveen, shares her remarkable story of triumph and transformation, it's not just about her rise to the top of the financial world. It's a journey deeply intertwined with lessons on nurturing mental well-being amidst the pressures of high-stakes success.

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Transcript

Sara Best: 0:07

Hi everybody, welcome back to the Bossh ole Chronicles. This is Sara Best, your host, flying solo again today, and this is week three, part three, of our special four-part series for Mental Health Awareness Month. Our guest today is pretty fantastic. She also happens to be my second cousin, once removed, I'm happy to report. Let me tell you a little bit about Tara Giuliano.

Sara Best: 0:31

Tara is the chief marketing officer at Nuveen, which is a Fortune 20 financial services giant company. She has served as a member of the executive team of multiple organizations dating back to the age of 24. I won't tell you what age she is now, but she's had a very successful career, always in financial services marketing. She's a graduate of the Ohio State University, oh. She really has a global platform. Most significantly, she has found a way, through research and through personal experience, to connect financial well-being with mental health. She has a personal story to share that helps us appreciate how financial health and mental health go hand in hand, and Tara uses a lot of her global platforms to advocate for women, for diversity and inclusion and equity, for women in leadership positions and also as a staunch advocate for mental health. She'll share a little bit about her story and what she does keeping her mental health in check.

Sara Best: 1:39

A couple of things, too, just to share about Tara. She's had an award-winning few years. She was Communicator top 50 Year influential leaders in financial marketing communication in 2024. Also this year, communicator of Year year from the Association of National Advertisers. In 2023, she was CMO of the year, as voted by Wealth Management. She also recently attended the White House Tara Dinner. She will talk a little bit about that and the dress she wore, tara, is fantastic. I can't wait to dig in, so let's go.

Announcer: 2:20

The Bossh ole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, the talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.

Sara Best: 2:43

Tara Giuliano, so good to have you with us today on the podcast. Welcome.

Tara Giuliano: 2:48

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Sara Best: 2:50

So, Tara, I have to ask you know by the age of 24, you were already the director of a Fortune 100 company. You were engaged to be married. You had a six-figure income. You wrote a book. The book is called the "Little Helpful Guide to have Everything you Want by your 30th Birthday and there's some pretty powerful messages in there. Is that book still available?

Tara Giuliano: 3:17

Well, it is not still available. It was a really fun thing to do when I was, you know, much younger. It came about because, because I moved up so quickly in my career at a young age, a lot of younger women started asking me to be their mentor, and mentoring has been such a crucial part to you know, I guess I should say you know you know this, but my father did not finish high school.

Tara Giuliano: 3:46

None of my immediate family went to college, no one in my immediate family worked in corporate America, and so I did not have people in my neighborhood or people in my family that could serve as mentors in my career, and so I've really had to rely on structured mentor programs and companies, even in my business school as an undergraduate student, just finding older students that were really successful and asking them for their advice and their help, and so it's a pattern I continued to repeat throughout my career, and I still do.

Tara Giuliano: 4:19

But I felt at a very young age that I should give back to others because it was so important to me, and I kept finding myself sort of giving the same rules to live by over and over again at a very young age that I should give back to others because it was so important to me, and I kept finding myself sort of giving the same rules to live by over and over again. And one of my mentees said you should write this down, this should become a little tip book, and so that's how the book originally came about, and the publisher that I worked with wanted to add in all these other kinds of tips outside of the workplace to make it cute and marketable and some of that stuff is probably not very modern today, but I think the rule to live by around passion and confidence in what you do and around being overly prepared and walking the walk, not just talking the talk and some of those rules I still live by for sure today.

Sara Best: 5:03

I love that. I love that, just so we're clear, it's called "The little helpful guide on how to have everything you want by your 30th birthday and, quite honestly, well, you just explained how this all came to be, but by the age of 24, you were already working at a director level in a Fortune 100 company. So I would offer to Tara we have the opportunity to have you take the predictive index, because we like to know what's the behavioral drives, what's the magic, the superpowers this person has. You're a strategist, you see the big picture, you like to get results. You're action-oriented, competitive perhaps, but you're very proactive. But you also keep an eye on efficiency and detail and accuracy.

Sara Best: 5:47

So there's speed to market there's, which is probably accounts for a lot of why you have been successful and why you were successful at such a young age. So let's let's kind of start there. If we can let's dig in and have you talk a little bit more about how you know, how your career progressed. I think the thing I'm most interested to know, Tara, as we know, this is Mental Health Awareness Month. That's a lot for a young woman to take on. I've listened to a lot of your podcasts you've done on other episodes. You had a way in which you did this, where you embraced challenge, you weren't afraid to say no, you weren't scared to let go of something you were comfortable with. Maybe just let's dig in there.

Tara Giuliano: 6:30

Sure. So, like I mentioned before, I constantly tried to find people that I could emulate their success. Because, again, I didn't have that in my community. Growing up I didn't have a lot of rules in my household. My parents are old hippies and you know I think that provided a wonderful environment. But I sort of am so controlling and contrived with my day- to- day and my schedule and you know how I've gone about everything, probably as a result of not necessarily having that in my upbringing.

Tara Giuliano: 7:09

And so my dad always taught me that education was the most important thing that I could do to kind of get out of the community that I was in and to pave a new way for myself. And it was very wise of him as someone who hadn't gone, you know, hadn't finished high school and hadn't gone to college, but knew the criticality of that and really pushed me on grades and on college and I didn't know how to navigate any of that. I really just kind of figured it out on my own. I didn't apply to more than one college, I only applied to Ohio State. It was the only college I applied to. I just didn't know how to do any of it. Is there any other college?

Sara Best: 7:50

Oh, I'm sorry oh wait, no. Great, yeah.

Tara Giuliano: 7:53

You know, with the grades and the financial situation I was in and my test scores, I probably could have, you know, really expand my horizon there, but I just didn't know any better and sure. And so as I kind of got into school, as I got into early parts of my career, I've just always had to kind of like wear a mask, not really tell people about you know where I was from or you know my situation, and just kind of assimilate. But find these successful people that I could emulate I could learn from, find these successful people that I could emulate.

Tara Giuliano: 8:26

I could learn from I could grab onto. And the reason why I got the director role so young in my early career was because I formally signed up for a mentorship program. I received a female mentor that said are you willing for me to be radically honest? I said yes. She just let it rip in terms of if you want to be a manager, which was my goal at the time here's all the things you need to do differently you need to dress like a manager, you need to walk like a manager, you need to build your network, not just sit in your cube with your head down doing good work. And all this advice she gave me, which would have been hard to hear at the time, was critical. And then I said, well, help me to introduce me to folks, help me, you know, learn the ways.

Tara Giuliano: 9:10

And while now you know modern day, we would say, well, we shouldn't have to assimilate to the corporate environment or we should be able to be ourselves, you know this was this was early 2000s where you know kind of putting your head down wearing that mask, and you know seeing what's around you and emulating that. That was a path to success.

Tara Giuliano: 9:40

I had a hand up for roles that might be open and started volunteering for things outside of my actual day work to show that I had all different kinds of skills and that I had managerial skills and eventually, as roles opened up, these other senior women thought of me and arguably placed me into some of these roles even without having an interview, because I had done the hard work to kind of build my network and raise my hand and do all the things that I learned from others. And so I've always had this innate curiosity which has helped me both learn business, you know, learn the business but also be willing to learn from others. And so a very senior woman at my, my first company I ever worked for, pulled me up a few rungs of the ladder which even the company said we can't do that and she said too bad, I want her in this role. And that first company was in Ohio. I'd grown up in Ohio. I had big visions for myself of kind of moving beyond Ohio in my career and in my life. I was an international business major in Ohio State but yet had never left the country. So why I chose that path I'm not really sure, but I always joke. I probably saw it on a movie or something. And so I wanted to work in a global company and a recruiter called my mentor at Nationwide, that first company I worked at and said are you interested in hearing about this opportunity in Chicago? And she said no, but I know someone who is, and so she referred me. Even though I was working with her at the time. She knew it was the right career move for me and something I'd be very interested in, even though I was completely underqualified and too green for the role they were looking for. I just interviewed. Very well, I had her as a referral source and you know.

Tara Giuliano: 11:28

Next thing, you know I was packing my bags and moving to Chicago to be part of a very global company where I was running the America's marketing organization. Still, you know, very young, under the age of 30. And I got to travel the world. I got to be part of a really large global European company for some time and until I wanted to start my family, that really worked great for me and I took a career move to a different firm where I had a different work-life balance for some time and kind of pivoted. And since then, really, opportunities have just presented themselves to me because I've continued to build my network and my brands and you know I've now gotten to the point where I am the chief marketing officer of a large global asset manager, which is the dream job, and a senior woman said to me a couple of years ago you have the job.

Tara Giuliano: 12:27

Now you can take off the mask. So let's take off the mask. You don't have to put the head down and, now, let's tell your story. Now, let's show vulnerability, because that's how you inspire others and that's how you create followership. Then that's how you unlock real value as a leader. And it's some of the best advice I've ever been given and it's brought me so much joy, even through the hard times in the last few years that I've gone through. It's brought me so much joy to be vulnerable because people have. It's been an outpouring of people. You know that I've worked with over the years that I work with today, people that I know from the industry family. You know people just coming out and thanking me for admitting. You know where I've come from, the hardships that I've had to face to get here, and you know the personal family struggles that I've had as well.

Sara Best: 13:21

Oh, Tara, that's so incredible and you led us right to where I hoped we would go, which is an opportunity for you to share an incredible, significant loss you experienced in your family. This is Mental Health Awareness Month. If you would share the story of your beautiful brother, Luke.

Tara Giuliano: 13:39

Yeah, so, as I sort of set it up, we had the same family upbringing but yet took different ways, sort of out o f the situation. And while I took the path of like I'm going to achieve, achieve, achieve and kind of get out of here, you know he, he was a brilliant artist and musician and use creativity as his kind of outlet in life, but eventually fell to alcoholism and, you know, depression and ultimately took his life over five years ago and it was a huge wake up call for me and you know the path that I had been on in life and just running, running, running as hard as I was, and, of course, a lot of guilt that you feel for time that you wish you spent or things that you you wish that you did different. Um, but you know it, it I've been using the opportunity of, of course, to memorialize him and honor him. Um, we spread his ashes all over the places in the world that he wanted to go, and it was actually a request he made in his life. Was that someday, you know, I hope you feed me to the fish and the Great Barrier Reef and that you, you know, take me to the mountains of Alaska. And so I've very much taken that to heart and honor him.

Tara Giuliano: 15:15

But it's also a wake up call for me. You know, in all the hours I spend working and you know I work in the financial services industry and you know I am a chief marketing officer. But what does that really mean? What am I really doing? And you know I'm very lucky that I work for a mission- driven company that is serving both not- for- profit workers, but also just Americans and international investors around the world and at the end of the day, we're trying to create products and solutions that brings that financial stability to people and to communities and that has, as our research has proven, innate linkage with mental health.

Tara Giuliano: 15:57

And my brother. He had taken out tens of thousands of dollars in debt and the last phone call he made before he took his life was to the collections agency. That is how much that weighed on him. And you know I made this connection is like I'm here every day, I'm working and yet mental health issues. Either way, we know that those two things are very much linked and also, by the way, physical health is linked to those things. And so now I have this platform where I can partner with all of my other financial services companies in the world and the CMOs that I'm a part of many networks with, to kind of tell the story as well as to our large financial services clients and partners. And so I've been a little bit on a mission, and certainly Mental Health Month is really important to me to continue to tell this story to the world.

Sara Best: 17:11

Oh, I just saw this morning a a video that you posted on LinkedIn, just like maybe yesterday or a very short time ago. We'll make sure, Tara, that we link to that in the show notes so that people. It's a short video but it's powerful and it highlights, you know, the platform that you're speaking about. That's a nice segue into. I mean, this has been an award-winning couple of years for you. You have been recognized as a Communicator of the Year by the I think it's the association of, it's ANA, what do we call that?

Tara Giuliano: 17:41

National Advertisers, yes.

Sara Best: 17:43

Yeah. Association of National Advertisers. You were a Chief Marketing Officer of the year and I think even in 2023, there were other awards. Your story and your efforts and your impact now are reaching broad audiences. Now you're on the board. Tell us about your engagement with the Kennedy School at Harvard and what they're doing with this platform and this research you're talking about they're doing with this platform and this research you're talking about.

Tara Giuliano: 18:19

I am part of the Women's Leadership Board at the Kennedy School at Harvard and they have a program specifically around you know women and policy and gender equality, and my parent company, TIAA, has a proprietary institute where we conduct research on. Actually, the TIAA Institute is who, under my executive sponsorship, created the study to actually show the innate linkage between mental health and financial wellness. But TIAA Institute also conducts research on longevity, on all kinds of topics, because they all end up relating back to retirement and relating to investing, and so they have a partnership with Harvard where Harvard researchers are helping us with our proprietary research. And they asked that I be the sort of if I would like to be one of the female leaders representing the company on the board. So I got to spend all day yesterday with two ex prime ministers, some of the world's leading females in Africa and other developing nations, on programs to really bring more gender equality to life. So really, really special and I'm looking forward to doing more there.

Tara Giuliano: 19:27

I also had the privilege of speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year on gender equality as well, with the female quotient, and that was specifically why women are uniquely suited to lead in corporate settings, and you know I really had to do a ton of research to think through why women, and you know I spent a lot of time thinking about the investment management industry specifically, where I am why women are important assets on executive teams, and there's a ton of research out there that show that, you know, corporations that have women on executive teams produce higher profits and have higher engagement with employees.

Tara Giuliano: 20:11

And so you know I talked about a lot of that. But also just from a brain functioning perspective, we make decisions differently and we think through all aspects of a problem before making a decision, and you know the male brain really fires in that one particular area where that decision is being made, and I think we need both right. One is perhaps more effective and one is more efficient, right. And so the culmination of those two things is the power of teaming, I think, between male and female. So definitely, in addition to mental health being a huge platform for me, another big platform for me is advocating for women leaders, particularly within a very male-dominated sector that I work in.

Sara Best: 20:59

I love the sound of that. It's music to my ears. I'm going to ask you, Tara there's been incredible experiences, incredible growth, the status that you've achieved, it's powerful and it's not lost on me that you're using the status you know to achieve the advocacy and to be that person that you want to be. Can you tell us about what are some of the challenges you personally have dealt with? You know, have you ever experienced depression or when has it been hard for you? And then I know I've certainly read up on what you do like in the morning, your morning routine. What are the things you do to combat the stress, the being worn down?

Tara Giuliano: 21:42

I think I've been on an airplane almost every week since January 1st. You know I work long hours, I'm a mom, I'm a wife, I'm a family member, I'm on a lot of boards, so it's, it's a question, I get a lot. It's like just how can you do all of this? And for me, the gut check and losing my brother has been to really make sure that I have my own mental health in check, and as my daughter, we run on the anxious side, so I have always had more of the anxiety side of the equation than depression, and so the best ways that I can manage my, for me, my anxiety is my morning routine, and so I always recommend the "5am club or morning. You know there's there's several different books out there that are of the same ilk, but the only real time I have to myself to be in quiet is very early in the morning, and so I have this sort of power hour, as I call it, where I get in sweaty, exercise, I meditate, I journal, I try to read something inspirational or something that can help me learn, I walk my dog and I get sunlight and I get nature first thing in the morning and fresh air, and really take that all in I juice, try to fill my body with something healthy to kind of kickstart, start my day, and that hour makes all the world of difference because I can very much notice the days that I don't do it. So for me that's important.

Tara Giuliano: 23:16

The other thing is I live in a city, I work in cities, and so I also have a home, a lake home that I've recently purchased. And you know, going there and just being in quiet and being in nature and you know, hiking and reading and being with my family is also, I feel like I crave it, my mental health craves that, and I really get in tune with all that's around me and I feel that some weird way, my brother's legacy is the reason I purchased this home, because it would have just been his happy place, because and I call it my happy place because he was just such one with nature and we have a creek and we have bald eagles that live on our property and it's just a really special way to kind of unwind and think, you know, and relax well, and I love the fact that he's who you think about when you're there.

Sara Best: 24:13

His happy place is your happy place. That's amazing.

Tara Giuliano: 24:17

I think the other thing is just, you know, as a manager, I am more than open and encouraging of people openly talking about mental health, and I think that's also rare. You know, we recently have offered to our entire company, all managers, all leaders to take mental health training. So we have mental health first aid available to all employees at no cost to them, across TIAA and Nuveen so TIAA is our parent company We've really done a rallying cry to leaders and managers to ask them to take that training so they can understand signs with their employee base of people that may be may be struggling and also learn what to say or what to ask or what not to say or what not to ask, right as a nonprofessional. Right as it relates to mental health. And so I think we have a duty in in the private sector, as leaders and managers, to be open about this.

Tara Giuliano: 25:20

That's been one of the biggest things that I've seen, as I've started to tell my story in a very open way, is people have reached out and say, wow, I haven't seen a lot of senior executives just be willing to so openly talk about this, and you know that that's what they used to say about cancer, right, if we go back decades. It was the C word. People wouldn't openly talk about it, so you couldn't, so we couldn't openly prevent it. Now we all talk about ways to prevent cancer on a daily basis, right? Cancer prevention, whether it's what we eat, whether it's what we do. You know, it's very open dialogue, dialogue. The first way to prevent suicide is to openly talk about suicide, and unfortunately, the societal norm is not to do that, and that's another big thing that I think we need to change if we really want to prevent it.

Sara Best: 26:07

Yeah, and I would have to say, Tara, as a family member, a cousin of yours, I really marveled, and continue to marvel, at how your family has openly shared about Luke. You've invited us into the story of his life. You've allowed us to help you celebrate his life in a variety of ways, but you're fierce advocates for the dialogue and you've invited us to be part of walks and other. You know fun or, I'm sorry, good awareness raising events in the spirit of let's bring it out of the darkness and into the light. Yes, pretty powerful.

Sara Best: 26:43

So it's been an award winning couple of years. You are jet setting all over the world. It's some really amazing and unique experiences which I can tell you don't take for granted. You know you're seeing each of these as an addition to your platform, but you're joining with people, you're expanding your network. You recently were invited to and attended the White House Correspondents Dinner. I think it'd be fun for our listeners to just understand and know a little bit about that experience for you. By the way, the dress you wore was stunning. You and your husband looked amazing.

Tara Giuliano: 27:21

What was that experience like? Yeah, so I feel really privileged to be able to be a guest of CNBC, given all the work that we do with them, to be able to have that invitation. But you're right, the first question was oh gosh, what do I wear? So that was an interesting. You know there's a.

Tara Giuliano: 27:35

There's a lot of protocol around that. You know you must wear a full length gown unless you're a celebrity. A lot of people tend to wear red, white and blue as a nod to the president. So I figured that part out. But you know, my husband and I described it as it's like you're at a high school prom but you didn't go to the high school. So a lot of people know each other, obviously, and in those media circuits, and of course we had, you know, governors and senators and the president and the vice president, of course, in attendance as well. But yes, I mean just to be in the room and to be part of it and to have a lot of laughs with both Colin Jost and the president. I sat at a table with several other really powerful CMOs and heads of marketing from important companies like Google and TikTok, and so that was also an amazing experience. So, yeah, just a little bit of a pinch me moment, definitely a bucket list item.

Sara Best: 28:33

Oh, we get to live a little bit through you on that. Thank you, I love hearing about that. What can we anticipate next for you? What's coming down the pike for you? What's up next?

Tara Giuliano: 28:45

One of the things I'm really trying to do is to think through the next generation, so the demography of this country is changing rapidly right 80% of new labor force is Hispanic.

Tara Giuliano: 28:59

My industry in particular is one that has largely sort of ignored the Hispanic demographic when we think about investing in our products and our retirement solutions investing and our products and our retirement solutions so it's something that's high on our mind of understanding the needs and the desires of this new demographic and new population and how we need to change as an industry accordingly. I think also, just if you look at age, we know that the Gen Z and Alpha they are going to want something very different from a financial services company than our traditional models. You know, which are, you know, largely an older. You know financial advisor, many times male, providing you with advice. They are, you know, doing things instantaneously on their phone, and so what does that mean for the future? Are you know, doing things instantaneously on their phone, and so what does that mean for the future of you know financial advice and how that's provided and how we help people make really smart decisions and make sure that they have what they need for retirement?

Tara Giuliano: 30:06

I think that's also going to look very different, let alone some of these big world issues like climate change, and you know things related to nature and things related to community resilience and you know mental health fits right alongside all of that. I think you know big companies like mine have a role to play in thinking through. As the world shifts and as the demography shifts, you know we need to shift and we need to be there to help people. Because, as we said, you know from the start, financial stability is sort of at the heart of all of it.

Sara Best: 30:38

Yeah, oh, it sure is, man. I, I just I feel like we could continue to unpack the relationship between financial health. But you know, first of all, thank you, Tara, for sharing your personal story. I just personally want to say thank you for your savvy, for the amazing way you deliver your intellect. You're a smart lady, really smart, but you're honest and authentic too, and I would say thank God you're a strategist, because these are big challenges you just described. This is daunting and probably feels daunting to a lot of people, but you're exactly the kind of person to take this on, because you won't stop, you'll figure out a way.

Tara Giuliano: 31:18

Thank you. I don't know how you did it, but I feel, in a very short amount of questions, you somehow nailed my profile. So I was very, very pleased to see that and very curious, honestly, how that methodology worked. But it was a lot of fun doing it and, yeah, I mean there's a lot to do, but because I am disciplined and focused and you know all those characteristics that you noted, I'm not going to give up anytime soon.

Sara Best: 31:43

So oh, thank God for that. What do you do for fun, like what brings you joy?

Tara Giuliano: 31:48

I am a voracious reader and I think you know one of my babysitters as I joke when I was young was the library. I just loved piles of books. We would be on vacation somewhere, you know, or camping or something, and my parents would be trying to get me to do the activity and I just wanted to keep reading and I don't feel like that's stopped. So you know, I'm constantly having my nose in a good book on planes and on trains and everything else that I'm doing. I love to do yoga, I love to travel. Those would be some of them.

Sara Best: 32:24

Yeah, you do travel a lot with your family. I see on Facebook it's great to see the places you go and the way you always envelop your daughter in everything that you're doing. That's pretty powerful.

Tara Giuliano: 32:34

We're definitely adventurous, so when we go somewhere, we're not just sitting on the beach, we're go, go, go, explore, learn develop Tara.

Sara Best: 32:42

Thank you so much once again for joining us.

Tara Giuliano: 32:44

Thank you for having me.

Sara Best: 32:45

Yeah, we wish you the best and I'm going to be watching. There's going to be more to tell in your story. I'm 100% certain of that. Thank you so much.

Announcer: 33:02

So we'll see you next time on the Boss hole Chronicles. Thanks everybody. We'd like to thank our guests today on the Boss hole Chronicles and if you have a Boss hole Chronicles story of your own, please email us at my story@ the boss hole chronicles. com. Once again, my story@ the bossholechronicles. com. We'll see you again soon.