Ep 97 From Trauma to Triumph — Victoria Pelletier on Resilience, Identity & Rewriting Your Story

Welcome back to Morning Cup of Brand Spark. This is a mirror season. And this is where we talk about the moments that don't just change our path. They change our identity too. These are the moments that force us to stop performing and start living as who we really truly are. Today I'm sitting with Victoria Pelletier, Global Vice President at Kendrell, award-winning executive leader.

number one bestselling author, board director, entrepreneur, and one of the top public brand voices and social sellers worldwide. But the part of her story we're

today isn't about all of those titles. It's about the resilience built long before the boardrooms, the journey she describes as from trauma to triumph. This is a conversation about identity, survival,

self-determination and the moment she decided that her past would inform her but never define her. So let's get started.

Hello, Victoria. Thank you for joining me today.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (01:35)
Thank you, happy to be here.

So what's in your cup today and where are you joining me from?

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (01:42)
My cup is filled with tea. I'm not a coffee drinker. Well, too early for wine. am joining you. Well, as we see, it's five o'clock somewhere, right? And I am joining you from sunny Miami Beach, Florida.

Is it really?

That's

I'm so jealous. I'm jealous of the sun right now, as we just talked about in our little pre-conversation. I would love to be where you are. So these podcast episodes are all about the real mirror in your life where something changed for you or you saw yourself differently. So if you take us back to the early chapter of your life, the one that sort of shaped your resilience, like long before your

super impressive career began. What was that like?

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (02:27)
it was horrible early beginnings for me quite transparently. So I'm, I'm born to a drug addicted teenage mother who was very abusive to me. It was in and out of the child welfare system for the first few years. Thankfully, however, I was adopted out of that environment, to, know, a loving family, but lower on the socioeconomic chain. Never had to worry about not having food or clothing, but there wasn't much else.

So ⁓ shaped me in terms of wanting to be better than either biology or the circumstance in which I was born and raised in.

Wow.

And is that where your from trauma to triumph comes from as well? Tell me a little bit about that.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (03:08)
Yeah, it's a big part of it. mean, many people joke that I should like, you know, write a memoir or should be in a movie. I mean, if you were to hear the sort of, so, you know, being severely abused, like cigarette in my eye, pushed up and down stairs, like not just a little, mean, that was bad, you know, to, I was raped when I was 14, to just even being completely ostracized for being the tallest kid. I'm not crazy tall, I'm five foot eight, but I hit this height by the time I was 10 or 11.

So was taller than everyone at that age to being smart in school, skipped a couple of grades at a time when it wasn't something that was applauded, right? Kids made fun of you for it. so there were lots of scenarios. that just, you know, I believe for me, there's a little bit, I talk about the fact that I think you can develop the muscle of resilience, but there's also an element of it that's in my DNA. Fight or flight, I am a fighter.

Yeah.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (03:59)
And so,

you know, was determined nothing is going to prevent me from achieving that goal or objective I've set for myself.

And that's where the unstoppable comes from as well. And you have sure done it, haven't you? You have overcome adversity, you've overcome that.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (04:09)
Exactly. That's right.

Yes, yes, I have both personally and then professionally and, know, as a whole other thing, just in terms of more restructures than I could count. Normally I'm sitting at the heart of it or orchestrating them, but just, you know, significant amount of change and transformation. So that's, it's very much made me who I am today.

And was there a sort of belief that you had to let go of some of that in your early life in order to rise up into the life that you have now?

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (04:43)
Yeah, I think there was a couple of steps, as you say, sort of mirror moment. You know, one for me was, you know, being abused by a mother and ultimately given up for adoption by the person who's ultimately supposed to take care of you was devastating to a little girl who felt it was her fault. And so I never felt I was good enough for a very, very long time. So that would be a moment for me to...

love the girl and later the woman that stared back at me in the mirror and recognize that I am enough. So that was one. The other is in my quest to be better than where I came from, I pursued the things I could very deeply control. so schooling, my education and my performance in work. And so my definition of success very quickly was tied into what I did from a work perspective, how quickly I rose up the ranks.

And with that, some of that came success being defined by material possessions. And so that was a moment for me to go, like that is not how I want to be known when I think about legacy. And so I redefined success and what brought me personal and professional joy and value. And it wasn't the things I thought in my twenties, potentially that that meant around career level and status and money.

yeah.

Yeah, you rose fast. You were an executive already at 24, weren't you?

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (06:08)
Yeah, so I started working at 11. My first leadership role came at 14. And I got promoted through the ranks. I worked throughout university and got promoted through the ranks very quickly and got recruited out of the environment. I was in to be the chief operating officer for a mid-sized company at age 24. Talk about imposter syndrom. Now that many years ago, the phrase didn't exist, but the feeling certainly did.

Well, yeah.

my, I can imagine that's like throw you right into the fire, like right directly into the fire. Like don't pass go, don't collect 200. You are right there. But I imagine that that what you had gone through the trauma of your past as well helped to really shape the way you lead people.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (06:50)
Yes, and there is a there is a however in there and so yes I always showed up differently because I felt so different because I was the only at 24 I was the only woman I was by two decades Oh and by the way add to the mix that I'm openly queer I was married to a woman I'm now married to a man but I in that role I was already openly married to a woman and so recognizing that so I wanted to show up differently and

And.

Mm

Ow.

different.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (07:17)
the, you know, the diversity and create a place of inclusion. The, however, is, because of some of those factors and because of the leadership I experienced when I entered the workforce, I thought that I'm being vulnerable and showing emotion was weakness. And I didn't for a long time. And so I made this no, I was all business all the time in yet. I, again, I, I encouraged the team to create an environment that would

Yeah. Or you didn't.

Mm-hmm.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (07:46)
of that, diversity of experience, lived and work experience, but in culture. But then I showed up not showing the true emotion. I didn't tell the story of my early years. I didn't tell them why I was as driven as I was, why I didn't take any vacations, et cetera. And I got a nickname as the Iron Maiden. And now I don't, not in the way that Margaret Thatcher would have embraced that.

No way.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (08:10)
And it was just because I was again, all business all the time and I never showed yet inside like I am all marshmallow those, you know, humane society commercials with the dog starving, but that brings me to tears every time. But I didn't, I didn't let that be seen.

⁓ you

didn't show any of that. What changed and when did you start communicating that side of you as well? Like the real inside of you. The marshmallow,

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (08:33)
I was.

Yeah,

was probably in my, I realized it in my mid to late twenties, but it took a significant amount of what I'll refer to as strategic intentionality to show up differently. And, and so I heard I had the nickname and initially I interpreted it as well. That's unfortunate because I've done multiple mergers and acquisitions and restructure and I have to make difficult decisions. So I thought it was as a result of that. Uh, it was.

conversation on a Monday morning where I walked in and I was talking to a colleague and I told her I'd gone to see a weekend movie on the weekend and I don't even remember what it was but I told her that it left me sobbing uncontrollably and those little you know popcorn you know Kleenexes napkins or not and she looked at me like like incredulous and she's like Vic and she said I thought you'd the type of person who'd laugh at people who cried at movies. That Gina was a

Yeah.

She couldn't believe it. Yeah.

Aww.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (09:32)
where I was like, if that is how I am showing up and perception is reality, it wasn't my reality, but that for other people is their reality. So I need to be different. So it was uncomfortable. So I believe like have to put yourself in a zone of discomfort, to show up differently. So making sure when I started a meeting, I spent the first five minutes engaging with people, talking about their weekend, learning more about who they were and starting to talk more around emotions.

letting people see the chink in the armor and that I am vulnerable. And so I don't think I perfect, I'm not gonna ever say I've perfected anything, but it took me probably a couple of years to get really comfortable so that it became natural to just show up as, my nickname now is the turtle. I'm still very resilient on the outside, often marshmallow on the inside.

I like it. And when you do walk into the boardroom now, what part of your story walks in with you still?

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (10:26)
everything, everything has shaped me walking in. But I am unabashedly like vulnerable and emotional when the time is right. So I've learned when it's the right time to show up because in the boardroom, it isn't always depending on who's in there with me or the circumstance around it. But I bravely boldly will tell the stories as I believe it's important, show the emotions or

Yeah.

when it's right.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (10:52)
you know, be really like, you know, emotionless if I think that's called for. Although generally I'm never gonna be emotionless. I also wear it on my face. So sometimes it's a little hard to see the resting face, whether good or bad.

But it takes so much emotional intelligence that you've developed over all of these years to be able to do all of that. So that's impressive that it's brought you through this other side. For someone who might be standing in a really hard chapter right now, do you have any advice? What is like the smallest step that they can take forward toward resilience?

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (11:25)
I think there's a few things. First of all, control what you can control. Because I feel a lot of people, like there's a lot of things that are completely outside of their control and they spend far too much time with that. For me, I learned what I refer to as healthy resilience. So that tough kid was tough, but not in the best of ways. So for me, what I learned is be clear on your goal or your objective. First thing, right?

The next is to be strategically intentional around modeling the thoughts, the language, the actions and the behavior that take you towards that. Then others include surrounding yourself with like the community around you that support you. And that doesn't mean just that they love you and cheerlead for you. In some cases, that's calling you on your stuff and saying you're at the blind spots. It can mean a professional, right? If that's what you need. And it's also about giving yourself permission to fail.

Hmm, that's for sure.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (12:18)
You know, the control yourself, control what you can control, being focused on a goal, but also recognize that mistakes are going to happen, stumbles are going to come. You can't control all of the challenge or adversity that comes your way, but one foot in front of the other is progress. And so that's where I tell people that sit squarely in that, you know, as you said, difficult chapter.

And that failure is also a positive thing when you are able to learn from it. The continuous learning is what really, I am a firm believer in that as well. It's really what helps us become who we are. Like I would never take back any of the negative things that have happened in my life because they also made me who I am today. I wouldn't be as strong as absolutely 100 % inequitably driven without that as well.

And so what belief about resilience would you love to rewrite that people think?

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (13:12)
I think people think that rolling with the punches and not processing, there's a level of self awareness and self reflection that is really important to be able to process it. So just dealing with it and wearing it like it's a badge of honor that you.

that, but not having gone through the process of reflecting and understanding how it contributes to how you show up. That's a mistake I think a lot of people make. I used to make that mistake.

I really do hear you about how you show up. I think that is so critical as well. And I was in a workshop once where I sat with I can't remember how many other women and we never met each other. We never saw each other before, but it was the facilitator said, now look to the person to the left of you and write down three things you think about this person. And then you swapped and then you read them back. And I actually cried because

That person saw parts of me, that sounds weird, but she saw me in a way that I never thought other people would see me. So you're 100 % right there. People do it, even if they've never spoken to you or it's your team, they have an impression of you. You bring something forward. So being able to control that narrative a bit more and being more aware of it is hugely beneficial. That's what it is.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (14:36)
Yeah, absolutely. I

say that to others as well, even when they think about their brand, their personal brand, and doing exactly what you did in that workshop. Like, ask people around how you're perceived, because there's blind spots on for sure. You might think you're showing up in one way, but others are creating a very different narrative.

And we all have those blind spots. We cannot see what other people think. Where can people find you? Where can people learn about what you do and the work that you do?

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (15:03)
Thank you. I really appreciate it. So one stop shop to then link out for people to connect with me is my website, which is victoria-pelletier.com My youngest jokes with me that I'm really old because one I'm still on Facebook. Although so too is he I remind him and I'm not on Snapchat or tik-tok But however, your listeners learn all about the public speaking the books the stuff I do on LinkedIn Facebook Instagram

Same.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (15:29)
on the website, whatever, and ping me and ask questions from there.

Awesome. Now will definitely put all your links within the notes as well. So I thank you so, much for joining me.

Victoria Pelletier (She/Her) (15:42)
Thanks for having me.

Well, that was Morning Cup of Brand Spark with Victoria Pelletier It's a powerful reminder that resilience isn't something you're handed. It's something that you build, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of hope, and sometimes out of sheer determination to live a different life than the one you came from. Her story shows us that trauma doesn't get the final word, identity does. If this conversation gave you something to reflect on yourself,

Share it with someone who's navigating their own rebuilding season. Until next time, keep your coffee warm and your mirror close.