Anne Devereux-Mills

60: Leadership, Philanthropy, Parenting

Anne Devereux-Mills is an incredibly accomplished human. She was the chairman and CEO of a number of ad agencies in New York City – which is a massive undertaking.

She then transitioned from the corporate world to non-profit programs such as helping start a school in Uganda.

She’s had a phenomenal life journey and faced many obstacles — including being a single mom of two while battling cancer.

Anne is now the Chief Strategy Officer for Lantern, a San Francisco based start up that brings mental wellness programs to underserved populations due to the stigma of mental health, access and cost.

She is also the founder of Parlay House, a salon-style gathering of over 800 Bay-area women who meet to pull each other forward through a combination of shared experiences, meaningful content and peer-to-peer connections

I wanted to connect with Anne to better understand how she’s been able to do so much in her life – not just in one arena, but so many arenas.

As a single mom parenting, running a business in a male dominated industry, blazing trails in Uganda, battling cancer– all of that is just an incredible effort and she’s been able to it in a world class way.

I hope you’ll be reminded from this conversation how important authenticity is — and how important relationships are — and how important it is to take risks and do the hard work.

“People often try to protect what they have rather than aspire to be something that they can’t even quite imagine yet.”

In This Episode:

  • Entering the workforce in a tough economy and taking an insurance job because it was all she could get
  • Using her first job as a stepping stone to identify what she liked & disliked
  • Finding her calling in the advertising industry and working her way up through a male-dominated industry
  • How she dealt with difficult obstacles that arose including multiple battles with cancer and divorce
  • Why she used a “containment model” to survive her fight with cancer
  • The parenting method her mom and dad used which helped her become a leader
  • Importance of inherent fit between what you are good at/interested in aligning with your job
  • Coping with a “loss of identity” after being replaced at her company due to cancer remission
  • The positive and negative aspects related to persistence being one of her strongest qualities
  • Why she values committing to “small actions”
  • How she measures monetary success vs. personal happiness

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