(upbeat music) - Hi everyone.

Steve Adubato.

We are honored to welcome our good friend and colleague, Michele Siekerka, who's president and CEO of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association.

Good to see you, Michele, - As always, Steve, great to see you as well.

Thank you.

- Lemme disclose that BIA is a longtime media partner of ours.

We cross-promote each other's content.

Michele, hey, let's tee up what we're about to see.

There are two interviews that are coming up with two leaders who are women leaders in the state, and they're tied to the 11th Annual Women Business Leaders Forum that happened in September of 2025.

What is that forum and why is it so important - That forum is significant.

So, as I just said, our 11th annual, over 550 women, leaders from every level of their organizations, entrepreneurs, all the way up to c-suite, coming together to share ideas on leadership, share how we build our skills as female leaders, and then how we create the visibility to ensure that everybody out there knows what these women have to offer to our job creators across the state of New Jersey.

- The other thing you do, which is fascinating to me, you know, Michele and I have talked leadership all the time offline, and also check out their website and ours as well for some one-on-one interviews Michele and I have done in front of a live audience on leadership.

But talking about, I'm fascinated by younger leaders, those who choose to in these challenging times, step up and try to lead.

You recognized folks, it's called the Rising Star Award.

What's the award?

Who won it, and why does it matter?

- So we go to our higher ed institutions and we ask them to nominate up and coming future leaders that they can see today in their institutions, and we call them the rising stars.

Now, how many times do we say, you know, we wanna be fearful for our future, and where are the leaders?

My gosh, if you heard the resonates of the five women that we honored back in September, you'd be bowled over and you'd be like, Hey, our future's in great hands.

- Okay.

But here's what I'm curious about.

When you were recognized, and you worked with different colleges and universities across the state, - Correct, Rutgers, NJIT, Bergen Community College, Hudson County College.

That's an example of where some of the award winners came from.

- Okay.

What kind of leadership qualities did you find in these young women?

- Oh, proactivity.

The ability to put themselves out there.

Good, if not even excellent communication.

The ability to step up and command, and the most important was passion and vision for their future.

- That's interesting.

I'm gonna embarrass one of our, we have so many women leaders in our organization, top executive producers and across the board and my colleague Mary Gamba, who helps us run the company every day.

But along those lines, this particular segment is produced by a young, talented producer, Chloe Swift, who right away, when I interviewed her, I knew she was not just talented, but proactive, assertive, follow up, follow through.

But I would be lying if I did not say to you, Michele, she stood out and she stands out because sometimes I think it's the exception, not the rule.

You say what?

- Well, I say I agree, and that's why the whole idea of mentoring and mentorship and leaning back and helping those women come along is significantly important.

Look, you know, through my life, I never had a formal mentor, but I certainly deemed mentorship through the filter of people who I wanted to emulate coming up through leadership.

And I said, Hey, how does that person carry themself?

Hey, how did that handle that situation?

How can I be more like them?

And then try to absorb those types of skills?

We, we need to do that and go back and help to bring our next generation along.

- Stay on the issue of mentorship.

I often think, as a student of leadership, as a coach, as someone you know who's written about and tries to understand it, and mostly just makes a lot of mistakes as a leader, which is part of- - We all do.

- Yeah, that part of being a good leader is knowing what you don't know and knowing when you make mistakes and being honest enough to acknowledge them.

You don't find that much, and nevermind, I'm not gonna go there.

So how about this, Michele?

I believe it's a responsibility, not some sort of side thing you do.

It would be nice if you mentored this young, talented woman coming up, or young man, but this is about women business leaders, but it's not some extra thing you're doing.

It's the thing you need to be doing.

It's at the core.

So I'll get off my soapbox and then let let you talk about this.

It is not some side thing if you have time to mentor, correct?

- No, it's part of being a good leader.

Right?

One of the most important attributes of being good leader is bringing people up behind you.

Whether it's succession planning in your own organization, whether it's ensuring that around your C-suite, you've got the diversity of thought leadership so that you can get all the information you need from people who have different filters in life to help you to make the best decisions.

We don't make decisions in the silo by ourselves.

We have to surround ourselves by good people.

And so it's an imperative that we step back and we build the skills in those coming up behind us so that they can then follow us in the future.

- I'm not gonna get into the DEI discussion, but I will say this, it's striking in this day and age, when a board, an executive board, or a board of trustees, board of directors, or an executive team of an organization, it has one woman, no women, less than 10% of the executive team or the board are women.

How the heck is that happening today?

- Yeah.

You know, it's a good question.

How does it continue to perpetuate.

Because you need the right leaders up at the top to understand that, even as men, you come back and you mentor and you sponsor your strong women coming up.

We see that each and every day.

At our Women Business Leaders Forum, we had a whole half a day where we had male leaders talking about sponsorship and mentorship and what good leadership skills are and what they look for in their next generation worker.

So that's critically, critically important, and we have to continue to build that.

- Before we are introduced.

By the way, there are two interviews and speaking of talented young women, one of the interviews, I believe the second one you'll see is with Aiysha Johnson, CEO and Executive Director of the New Jersey Certified Public Accountants Organization.

Jacqui Tricarico, talk about great women business leaders, who is one of our anchors.

She's an executive producer of "Think Tank" in our production company and the executive producer and co-anchor of "Remember Them."

Jacqui does an interview, and also it'll also be followed up by Kiran Handa-Guadioso, who's CEO of the United Way of Northern New Jersey.

Those interviews are coming up.

Before I let you go, Michele, I ask you this every time.

Number one leadership lesson you have learned over the last few years being a leader is?

- Ugh, bring your passion each and every day when you put your boots on the ground.

And you only do that if you love what you do.

If you love what you do, it's never work.

It's just part of your life.

- I have to remind myself, we have a long taping day today.

This is the first of a series of interviews.

Sometimes I have to remind myself, get to where you need to be.

Put yourself in the right head space and get everything else outta your mind.

Be present.

Do you actually do that?

- Yes.

I absolutely do.

Every once in a while I feel like I'm veering off.

I'm getting a little jaded and getting a little negative.

I literally have to do a, a mind check, a reality check, and I gotta set myself back in place or I can't be the leader that I need to be for NJBIA.

- I thought I was the only one.

Okay, that's Michele Siekerka.

By the way, one more time, let's plug the, go back and look at the NJBIA website.

It'll be up one more time right now.

Some of the highlights from the 11th Annual Women Business Leaders Forum that took place on September 25th and 26th, back in the fall of 2025.

To Michele Siekerka and the team at BIA, thank you so much for being our partner.

Thank you, Michele.

- Thanks so much, Steve.

- Women Leaders in Business.

Check it out.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by NJ Best, New Jersey’s five-two-nine college savings plan.

Seton Hall University.

Hackensack Meridian Health.

Valley Bank.

New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

PSEG Foundation.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The Russell Berrie Foundation.

And by The North Ward Center.

Promotional support provided by ROI-NJ.

And by New Jersey Globe.

- (Inspirational Music) - (Narrator) Great drive fuels the leaders of tomorrow and today.

Great vision paves the way for a brighter future.

Great ambition goes places, moving onward and upward.

Great empathy finds strength in kindness and in each other, working together to create something bigger than they ever imagined.

Great minds can change the world and great minds start at Seton Hall.