In this CCBJ interview, Olivera Medenica, a partner with Dunnington, Bartholow & Miller, discusses her decidedly non-traditional career path and approach to leadership.
“I never sought to be a leader and it was never an aspiration of mine,” Medenica says. “However, I do have ideas and like to implement them. I do see things I would like to fix, situations where I’d like to intervene and projects I want to participate in. So I guess by virtue of that aspect of my personality, I just ended up taking on leadership positions. Life leads you from one step to the next.” She continues with an anecdote about a video of a young Steve Jobs, who thought the best leaders do not set out to lead. “That is really me,” she says. “I never aspired to be a leader but I have ideas and if things are not going the way I want them to be done, I’m going to address it.” This has colored her approach to recruiting and nurturing talent, which means finding talent who are both likeable and productive. “If you can see immediately that it’s going to be very difficult to work with the person then there is no fit,” she says. Read more from Medenica at CCBJ.