March 17, 2026
March 17, 2026
Mission North’s Sponsorship Program was built with a clear purpose: to develop high-potential mid-level leaders and broaden leadership diversity within the agency and across the communications industry. Each participant receives a year of focused professional development, access to senior leaders across the company, and guidance from a rotating group of external mentors. Clarissa Marzan, an Account Director, was the program’s second participant.
She joined expecting structure, exposure, and a chance to grow. What she found was something more lasting: new confidence, broader perspective, and a different way of navigating pressure, uncertainty, and leadership itself.
Looking back, Clarissa says the program's impact wasn’t always obvious in the moment. But over time, it reshaped the way she communicates, how she approaches challenges, and what she expects of herself as a leader.
What was your first impression of the program?
Honestly, it was a confidence booster, and not in a vague, feel-good way. I work remotely, so I don’t get those informal moments to connect with people across the company. Certain conversations that might feel easy for someone in the SF office—like just DMing Co-CEO Tyler Perry—took real courage for me. That changed. I stopped overthinking it and started having the conversations I needed to have.
You had three external mentors over the course of the program. What did that outside perspective give you?
Each of them showed up at exactly the right time for me, almost like the program had planned it that way, even though it hadn’t. One of my mentors, Carol, came in while I was navigating a particularly challenging client relationship. I joined one of our calls two minutes after receiving a difficult email from a CEO client. It was my first real “I need you now” moment. She immediately helped me reframe it. She asked, “How can we provide the solution? How can you take a C-minus situation to a B-plus?” That shift in mindset was game-changing.
Was there a moment when the impact of the program only became clear later?
Definitely. It really clicked for me during a performance review. Early 2025 brought several intense challenges all at once. In the past, any one of them would have thrown me off completely.
But this time, I felt calm in the middle of it. That was new for me. I used to get swept up. Over the course of the year, I had spent so much time talking through hard situations with senior leaders and mentors that I started to internalize a different way of responding. I became better at separating what was in my control from what wasn’t. I stopped treating every setback as evidence that I had failed. Looking back, I realize I had handled more than I thought I could—and with a lot more steadiness than before.
What surprised you most about yourself?
The program was self-directed, which meant I had to keep asking myself: What can I learn from this? I thought that would be easy for me. It wasn’t. I’m usually very heads-down, focused on doing the work. But being given the space—and really, the expectation—to slow down and reflect showed me how much there was to uncover in situations I normally would have moved past quickly.
Bill Bourdon has always said that one of my strengths is asking good questions. I think this program helped me fully grow into that. I stopped worrying so much about whether a question sounded smart enough or relevant enough, and I started trusting that curiosity has value on its own. It leads you somewhere, even if you don’t know exactly where you’re headed.
I stopped worrying about whether a question was relevant or smart enough, and I started trusting that curiosity has its own value.
How do you approach work differently now?
Performance conversations are probably the clearest example. I used to avoid them, and when I couldn’t avoid them, I wasn’t always as direct as I needed to be. Now I have those conversations sooner, and I think about them less as a verdict and more as a dialogue. If you want someone to actually grow, they need to feel like part of the process.
The other shift is more internal. I used to think six steps ahead, get anxious about a problem I imagined was coming in step four, and try to solve it before I’d even gotten to step two. Now I’m much better at staying with what’s in front of me. A lot of the time, the thing I’m bracing for never happens—or it turns into something else entirely. I’ve now learned to stay on step B before spiraling about step D.
What’s one piece of advice that has stayed with you?
I’ve learned that more people have blind spots than you think. I used to assume that if something wasn’t being addressed, someone above me must have already seen it and decided it wasn’t an issue. Now I’m more willing to raise things. Surfacing something isn’t disruptive—it can be genuinely helpful.
I’ve also learned a lot about managing junior staff. I’m better at asking open-ended questions instead of jumping straight into fixing issues. I want to understand how they’re thinking and how they’re connecting the dots. And I’ve become more comfortable giving people work that stretches them. Discomfort is often part of growth. I have benefited from that kind of challenge in my own career, and now I’m more intentional about passing that on.
I’ve gotten more comfortable giving people things that are hard, because I know that discomfort is how growth happens.
If you had to describe your growth in one word, what would it be?
Unafraid. I used to carry around this low-grade sense of fear. Now there’s more trust: in myself, in the relationships I’ve built, and in my ability to work through whatever comes next. I don’t take every difficult outcome as a personal failure anymore. Sometimes things don’t work out, and that doesn’t mean everything is broken. You rebuild. You learn. You keep going.
