Lessons from Building What Didn’t Exist Yet

If you don’t know, I’m a Jesus lover and I believe God has shown up in my life in miraculous ways. His timing always blows my mind. I left the previous role because I knew I was NOT losing my soul over anyone. I submitted my resignation on Dec 15^th, it was my birthday, it was also a Friday and right before Christmas – bonuses and all. Sometimes I can be hot headed and I have never been driven by money (I got smarter where that was concerned… a little).

That Friday evening, I got a call from my former boss at Pepsi, Head of Marketing, asking me to meet him the next day. That Saturday I was offered the role of becoming the Head of Trade Marketing for Pepsi in Jamaica. The Managing Director of the company had just created the position and told my former boss that I was who he wanted to fill the role.

What made this role different—and defining—was that I was the first person to ever hold this position. There was no department to inherit, no playbook to follow, no systems waiting to be refined.

I had to build the entire function from scratch, defining the role of trade marketing, creating systems and processes, hiring and developing the full team and aligning brand, sales, and execution at every retail and wholesale outlet.

And then came the part that stretched me the most. I spent three months in Guatemala, undergoing intensive training—in Spanish. I had never studied Spanish. Ever.

I had NO CLUE what this was going to entail but based on conversation, I believed this role would be about execution standards, merchandising excellence, connecting brand strategy to customer and consumer reality. I underestimated how much of the work would require learning while leading.

What I learned is that leadership often requires fluency before comfort.

That season taught me that clarity matters more than confidence, you don’t need mastery to begin—only humility and openness to learn. I learned that systems create freedom for teams and leadership credibility is built through follow-through.

Being trained and evaluated in a foreign language forced me to listen more carefully, prepare more diligently, and rely on structure, not ego. I was so stressed out vitiligo started to show on my face, my neck, my hands but I stayed focused and I got through it.

This role activated next-level leadership capabilities:

• Organizational design – building a function aligned to strategy

• Talent architecture – hiring for mindset, not just skill

• Systems thinking – creating repeatable, scalable processes

• Cross-cultural leadership – performing under unfamiliar conditions

I learned how to stand firmly in purpose while remaining flexible in method.

This experience shapes how I now help leaders build teams from vision, not habit, teach that systems are an act of care, not control. I coach women who feel behind simply because they’re in new territory and remind high-capacity leaders that discomfort is often confirmation.

This role taught me that being the first requires faith, structure, surrounding myself with the right people and lots of stamina.

Where are you being asked to lead in a space where no roadmap exists—and are you willing to trust your ability to learn fast?