Episode 32: Dr Valerie Young and Rachel Lounds

The term “thought leader” is vastly overused. But when it comes to Valerie Young, she’s that — and more. Widely considered the world’s foremost expert on impostor syndrome, Valerie is uniquely qualified to help organisations, workshop facilitators, coaches, and individuals to stamp out impostor syndrome. Valerie earned her doctoral degree in education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1982. Her research sought to understand why so many bright, capable women (including herself) felt like frauds. Then (as now), most impostor phenomenon research is done with university students. Instead, Valerie chose as her subjects professional women — a majority women of colour. And unlike psychologists and academics who offer largely therapeutic solutions to impostor feelings, Valerie used her training as well as her findings to create educational solutions to impostor syndrome. Taking impostor feelings out of the realm of therapy and creating educational solutions has proved tremendously effective. (source The Imposter Syndrome Institute and if they don’t know what they’re talking about then who does?)

Rachel Lounds returns for her second episode on The Imposterous and we welcome her back with all the self doubt and insecurity of Season One and then some. Prior to becoming a regular on The Imposterous, Rachel enjoyed a long and rich career in production and creative services in such esteemed agencies as Droga 5, McCann and LeoBurnett, and after enough time in those agencies Rachel took a pause and quit. Since 2020 she has been a Certified Life & Mindset Coach, Imposter Syndrome Specialist. Rachel is on a quest to help people in media and advertising who want to overcome negative thinking, lack of self-confidence, and imposter syndrome so that they can become the confident, courageous, phenomenal leaders they know in their heart they can be. In other words, she actually knows what she’s talking about.