Edited highlights of our full conversation.

Who is helping you be you?

Liz Taylor is the Global Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy.

Everyone has a story. Liz’s story, as you’ll hear, has a traumatic beginning. She grew up with an abusive father in a home in which there was always a loaded gun. The police were called often. She and her mother and brother and sister would sometimes have to leave in the middle of the night.

That kind of start to life leaves a mark.

We are shaped by our past, consciously or unconsciously.

Which means the person we become can be defined by circumstance. Or by choice.

Sometimes these choices are informed by the presence of a powerful partner in our lives. For Liz, that partner, as you’ll hear, was her mother.

Today, Liz's ability to so clearly and powerfully declare the kind of environment she is determined to provide as a leader, is influenced by the protection and the support that her mother provided her.

But sometimes, the choice of who we want to be does not come from the example set by someone else.

Sometimes, all we have to work with are circumstances in which we were left alone to figure it out for ourselves. Circumstances in which there was no one we could trust.

That can be a lonely place.

One in which it can be overwhelming to ask ourselves honestly, is this who I really want to be?

But I know this to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt.

There are people around you who care. People who want to support you on your journey. People who will help you find your better angels and hold on to them.

Our past shapes us. But it need not define us.

Only we do that.

We just have to ask for help.

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