Leisa: Hello, I’m Leisa Holland Nelson and welcome to another edition of Women Mean Business, where we’re going to take you up close and personal with extraordinary women doing extraordinary things. My guest today is Gindi Vincent, Counsel at Exxon Mobile; Gindi, welcome to Women Mean Business.

Gindi: Great to be here.

Leisa: You’re so successful. You’re a lawyer, you’re Counsel of Exxon Mobile, you’re a blogger, you speak nationally; I know we have a lot of young professionals listening to us today – young women – who would love to know how to achieve the success you have, what advice would you give them?

Gindi: I think the biggest single piece of advice that I give everyone, regardless of their age or stage in their career, is not to let failure stop you. I feel all too often something happens, there’s a setback, and maybe it’s something you did or maybe it’s something that you didn’t do but it was extenuating circumstances; the economy or the market that you were in or just the particular project that you were handling at the time. And all too often we let a voice in our head personalize the loss or failure and stop us from taking risks; stop us from pursuing the next opportunity. Learn from the mistake, learn from the failure, but then do not stop taking the next risk. Do not go for years without exploring your new opportunities.

In my life I’ve had a lot of setbacks and a lot of failures and what I’ve found is more often than not they’ve taken me down another road that I would never have explored otherwise and that’s why I’m at where I’m at today; because of all of these detours that ended up taking me to a great place.

Leisa: Thank you very much. There you have it, extraordinary advice from an extraordinary woman. I’m Leisa Holland Nelson, President and Co-founder of ContentActive, Houston’s leading web and mobile technology company. You can find me at ContactActive.com or follow me on Twitter @LHNelson. We’ll be back again next week with another edition of Women Mean Business.