Dr. Marta Meana is a professor of psychology at UNLV. She has served as Acting President and Dean of the Honors College at the academic institution. But she never aspired to these leadership positions. Instead, she aspired to excellence in her field and her scholarly endeavors. In this episode of Net Effects Podcast, Dr. Meana visits with co-hosts Mark Bavisotto and Les Ottolenghi about starting her first agency as a copywriter to pivoting to work in clinical psychology, and how opportunities find you when you give your work and passion 150%.
Episode Highlights:
- Be intentional and the very best you can be no matter what you do. “If you go the extra mile, you’ll find that there’s very little traffic on the part of the road.” Be excellent. It will be noticed.
- Creativity is essential. In order to be creative, you have to be willing to fail. Creativity means taking chances, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
- Be a leader that leads with engagement. You don’t engage people by doing what everyone has been doing for 100 years. In some ways, there’s been a much wider engagement by a much wider swath of people in many different activities because of digital engagement.
- Leaders and people who want to innovate must lean into discomfort. Consider, “How can I use technology?” and “How do I make it great?” You have to get in front of everything if you want to make an impact.
- The importance of information dissemination – in businesses and academia – is to share knowledge and innovations so that the biggest group of people possible have access to it.
- Mentorship takes an incredible amount of generosity. Dr. Meana leads each new mentorship with the question, “Do you want to be good? Or do you want to feel good?” That’s a big distinction. Because to be good, you must be able to handle feedback. Positive reinforcement becomes meaningless when used all of the time; therefore, set ground expectations and prepare potential mentees to your mentorship style.
Other topics include meaningful feedback, awareness of interconnectedness in the community and from a global perspective, gratitude, and paying it forward through work and participation. Listen to the full episode now.
About Dr. Marta Meana: Marta Meana is a licensed clinical psychologist whose groundbreaking research has reshaped clinical approaches to the field of women’s health and human sexuality. She has published two books and close to 80 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. Her expertise has been sought by media nationwide, including the New York Times and The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Meana is also a respected administrator, teacher, advisor, and mentor. A professor of psychology at UNLV since 1997, Meana was named dean of UNLV’s Honors College in 2012
