Bold Women Leaders Build the Rooms They Once Needed
When I was 25 years old, I started MassMedia with more belief than experience. I didn’t have a deep bench of investors. I didn’t have a legacy name attached to mine. What I had was passion for my craft, a belief in myself and a conviction and willingness to walk into rooms that scared me to death.
Twenty-eight years later, I learned something that no MBA program could have taught me: rooms change everything.
In the early years of building MassMedia in Las Vegas, I spent more time asking for meetings and pushing my way into rooms than being invited to them. I walked into boardrooms filled mostly with men, pitching marketing, advertising and PR with burning ambition and a thick skin I had to grow quickly.
Some rooms felt welcoming. Some scared me to death.
Some rooms felt transactional. Some rooms were collaborative and life changing.
Some were testing me. Some changed my life forever.
But every room taught me something.
Rooms are where:
Partnerships are formed.
Capital is allocated.
Narratives are shaped.
Confidence is either built or broken.
As a young female founder in the late 1990s I learned quickly that if I wanted to get in the room and have a seat at the table I had to be prepared, sharper, more strategic, and relentlessly results driven. There was no margin for mediocracy.
Over the past three decades MassMedia has grown from a small Las Vegas start-up into an integrated marketing and PR agency with 30 employees and more than $15 million in annual revenue serving major brands nationwide. But the growth that matters most to me today is not for myself, it is for people.
It’s the young account executive who found her voice presenting to a very important client. It’s a media buyer, who crafted a buy that delivered results beyond our wildest expectation. It’s the women in my community who are just starting out and the women who I grew up with who now run divisions, departments and companies of their own.
When I started to think about almost 30 years in this business and how I wanted to cross the finish line, it wasn’t about more material possessions, or a profit number. It was about creating a deliberate rooms for women.
This is why I founded the Las Vegas Women’s Marketing Collective. It’s not just an event series; it’s a deliberate room.
A room where:
- Women at the top of their industry share the truth about leadership.
- Emerging professionals see what’s possible.
- Next generation students find access.
- Collaboration replaces competition.
Because when ambitious women come together, not as rivals but as peers, something shifts. Ideas form. Courage grows stronger. Businesses expand and confidence compounds.
For years, I focused on building rooms for clients: strategic planning sessions, campaign launches, crisis planning rooms. Today I am equally focused on building rooms for women marketing leaders.
At 25 years old I was trying to prove that I belonged in the room. At 54, I am intentional on who I bring into it. This is the power of experience and the responsibility of leadership. Founding MassMedia taught me resilience and some failures taught me discipline. Building the women’s collective has reminded me of something deeper.
Success is not just about building a company; it is about building people.
Rooms are where that happens.
So, on this International Women’s Day, my message is this:
If you don’t see the room, you need to build it.
If you’re already in the room, widen it.
Rooms shape careers, rooms shape companies and rooms shape communities.
And when women gather with intention, rooms can become movements.
Paula Yakubik is the Founder & CEO of MassMedia and the Founder of the Las Vegas Women’s Marketing Collective.
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