Nefertari Carver White has joined One Strategy Group as our newest Executive Vice President, and we could not be more excited to welcome her. To help introduce her to our community, we had three questions.
Q: What’s one piece of advice you wish you could've given yourself at the start of your career?
Nefertari: Stick it out, in the good times and the bad. Don't be too eager to advance. A mentor at my first role at Pepsi Co. told me that the journey is all about adding tools to your toolbelt. So I would go back and remind myself to be patient, pace yourself, advancement and opportunities will come when you are truly ready and the timing is right. This advice really helped me settle down at times when I may have gotten a bit ahead of myself, when I scored some really strong wins. You don’t need to chase titles or promotions. Now if you are fairly deserving, then sure, advocate for yourself. But don’t get agita and move on before you have mastered the skills that you are learning in your current role.
The same goes for the hard stretches. Another mentor along the way told me that you are still learning from challenging bosses or colleagues. When something's difficult, it's tempting to read it as a sign you're in the wrong place. Usually it's just the job of learning, and it passes. That patience, understanding how to read the tea leaves, discernment, these are the skills that will help you navigate more complex situations later in your career.
Q: What’s changed most about effective communications since you started, and what hasn’t changed at all?
Nefertari: Being authentic. Building trust. Having integrity. What's changed: I long for a time before social media and the 24 hour news cycle, when leaders could speak openly while staying strong in their convictions without fear of backlash. They only needed to speak to their customers and their team members. Now leaders have to modulate every word because they are effectively speaking to the entire world whenever they speak.
What hasn't changed: trust, authenticity, integrity. However many audiences a leader is now speaking to, and however fast the cycle moves, people can still tell the difference between someone being straight with them and someone managing them. The skill of knowing what to say, when to say it, and when to hold back, that's the same instinct it's always been. The volume and speed around it have just gotten louder and fastefr. The world has gotten noisier and more exposed, but the actual craft, earning trust through judgment and discretion, hasn't budged.
Q: What’s something leaders tend to underestimate when the stakes are high?
Nefertari: Currency in the bank. The value of currency they should have already built up before the stakes got high. By nature of the position, leaders will inherently be exposed at some point. I see a lot of leaders who are reticent to put themselves out there, they don't want to speak publicly, don't want to talk to the media, don't want to be on LinkedIn, because they want to stay under the radar. In the best case, maybe that works for a while. But eventually, exposure comes with the job.
That currency isn't just visibility, it's strong relationships across the ecosystem, so you have people who will vouch for you when it matters, and a body of work that's already publicly known and grounded in something real. It only works if it's earned. A polished profile with nothing behind it collapses the moment it's tested.
When the stakes are high, a crisis, a launch, an IPO, that is not the time to start building relationships and pushing out content. It's too late. So I always push leaders to be proactive. The time to start building currency is now, before you need it.
