LinkedIn Presents.

I'm Maura Arons-Mili, and this is The Anxious Achiever.

We look at stories from business leaders who've dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges, how they fell down, how they pick themselves

up, and how they hope work will change in the future.

Today's guest started out her career not necessarily thinking she'd get into politics.

Right out of law school, she began working with a small law firm.

In 2002, she was sworn in as a part-time magistrate judge.

But after a handful of years, she stopped feeling challenged in that job and started feeling

pretty complacent.

Keisha Lance Bottoms decided to throw her hat in the ring in a packed race for another judgeship in Fulton County, the county in Georgia

that includes Atlanta. She and others were challenging and incumbent, and she went to work all

around that county getting to know the communities within it. She ultimately lost that race, but she didn't give up.

I had this, what would you do if you weren't afraid to fail moment?

In so many ways, I was embarrassed, I was disappointed when I ran for the judgeship,

and I remember my husband saying, at the core of it all, you want to make our community better.

What better place to do it than from city council?

And so I made the decision that week to run for city council within a matter of probably a day and a half, two days.

And there were maybe eight other people in the race at that time

because I had just run this race the year before and lost. There was so much at stake, but I knew

how to run a better campaign. And I beat all of those people without a runoff, which was also

unheard of. And that is how I joined

City Council and then ultimately I ran for mayor and won. Mayor Bottoms took over as

...