TED Chief Program & Strategy Officer: Career Growth Secrets ‼️ GUEST!! Monique Ruff-Bell | Ep. 447

Do This, NOT That: Marketing Tips with Jay Schwedelson

GURU Media Hub

Growth, Education, Email, Business, Revenue, How To, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Profit, B2b, B2c

5 • 715 Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If your career path feels like a loop instead of a launchpad, this candid convo is your blueprint for building something smarter on purpose. Jay Schwedelson and Monique Ruff-Bell - Chief Program & Strategy Officer, TED - get into how to stop waiting for permission, add new lanes to your skill set, and turn curiosity, courage, and "how can I help?" into real leadership opportunities.

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Connect with Monique on LinkedIn and use her Linktree to dig into her talks, leadership insights, and ways to learn from her work.

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Best Moments:

(01:09) Monique traces a 25 year journey across events, media, and fintech into a TED leadership role created specifically for how she operates.

(02:57) The lightbulb moment where she rejects a single lane career and starts intentionally stacking cross functional skills to become executive ready.

(06:09) A playbook for embedding with sales, joining calls, shaping packages, and becoming the revenue partner everyone wants on their side.

(09:01) How offering help first naturally turns senior relationships into real mentorship and sponsorship without the cringey formal ask.

(14:30) The story of jumping too fast for a new role, why it backfired, and how it reshaped how she evaluates growth and red flags.

(16:32) Behind the scenes at TED on why powerful talks are built around one sharp idea, supported by story, rigor, and serious coaching.

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Check out our 100% FREE + VIRTUAL EVENTS! ->

Guru Conference - The World's Largest Virtual EMAIL MARKETING Conference - Nov 6-7!

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Check out Jay’s YOUTUBE Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@schwedelson

Check out Jay’s TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@schwedelson

Check Out Jay's INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/jayschwedelson/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast from marketers.
0:05.4	We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode.
0:11.6	We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out.
0:15.9	Do This Not That podcast, and we have an awesome guest, an awesome human being here.
0:38.1	All right, who's here? Monique Ruff Bell. She has a cool job. She is the chief program and strategy officer at TED. You know, Ted. Ted's the thing where you watch the talk. She's like, oh, my God, I'm going to change my life in the next 10 minutes. It's the most amazing thing on the planet. But Monique is amazing. She was just recently recognized by Bisbash as one of the most influential leaders of the year. Okay, she just has this
0:44.9	drive, this perspective about careers and the direction she's taking her own career. I can't
0:50.9	wait to dig into it also. Monique, welcome to the show. Jay, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. All right. This is going to be fun. All right. Before we get into what I want, what we're going to talk about, which is this idea of intentional career building. Can you tell everybody, how did Monique become Monique? What do you do? Like, what's your gig? Monique became Monique because of intentionality. So when we get into the full conversation,
1:14.2	that'll be great. But I have been in the events conferences space for over 25 years now,
1:21.6	working in every industry imaginable from association to media, to to for-profits to trade shows to doing
1:32.3	you know 15 20 shows a year at you know summit business media and so i have a plethora of experience
1:40.9	in various industries and through that process ended up at Money 2020 as the vice president of events,
1:49.0	overseeing one of the largest fintech events in the USA.
1:54.0	And then moving over to TED first as their head of conferences.
1:58.0	And then I got promoted into the chief program
2:01.8	and strategy role, which was created for me.
2:05.2	So I'm the first to be in that particular position.
2:08.8	But it was all about making sure I was seen
2:12.2	as not only a keen operator, but a business strategist.
2:17.0	You know, I think it was really interesting.
2:18.5	We just talked about the fact that this position was created almost for you and based
2:23.5	on the fact of everything that you were doing and what they recognized in your abilities and
2:28.2	all that.
	...

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