Transitioning from a MNC career to founding my own venture, I came to understand the critical importance of personal branding, a concept often overlooked in MNC environment.

In such settings, personal branding is undervalued because the company’s name and your title do most of the work. I would typically ask my assistant to connect with companies on my behalf, and with a simple request like: "The GM of our [this] Company would like to meet yours on this subject”, I could usually secure meetings with peer executives. The Company's reputation and the role opened the doors.

However, when I launched my own business, I quickly realized that neither my company's name nor my personal brand carried that same weight. I now have to rely on my first-level network to introduce me to the second and so on in order to get to the people I intend to speak to. It is a time-consuming, effort-intensive and often unproductive process which could have been avoided if I had spent earlier in my career more efforts on building visibility beyond my own circle.

Today, my advice to MNC professionals is: no matter the value of the brand of the company you work for, do invest quality time, efforts and energy in building in the market your personal brand. You will not regret it.