turning conviction – A three-decade marketing leader says her “gift” didn’t disappear when her corporate “duty” began. Instead, she practiced it in the early mornings until it could eventually lead her job—and later, her exit from the C-suite.
Graduation season tends to bring a familiar kind of anxiety: students ask how to land the dream job. how to grow at a new employer. and how to move from what they have to do toward what they want to do.. The questions may sound new from the perspective of a first job. but the tension they point to is the same one many working professionals carry—getting through the day while trying not to betray what they feel called to build.
Najoh Tita-Reid. a veteran marketer with roles that include former global chief growth officer at Mars Petcare. former global CMO at Logitech. and former VP of marketing at Bayer Consumer Care. recently walked away from that corporate track.. She did not describe the work itself as the problem; she said she left because her conviction became bigger.
She frames the central mismatch as a lived experience of two forces: duty. the work that keeps the lights on. and conviction. the work she feels pulled toward.. For most people. she suggests. those two can seem as separated as “east and west. ” with the common belief that they rarely meet.. Her counterpoint is that they can coexist long before they ever fully align.
Tita-Reid described spending years treating her conviction and her duty like a “game of catch-up. ” not a choice between one or the other.. She said her corporate duties were already fully absorbing her attention while the ability she calls her conviction—what she describes as being able to “peek around the corner and see change”—was still developing.. Over time. she began to recognize that ability the way she compares it to a “canary in a coal mine”: a sense of shifts long before they become obvious.
What made that realization different, in her telling, was timing.. By the time she could recognize herself as a “canary. ” she was already deep into her marketing career and felt her conviction skills were comparatively underdeveloped.. So she began waking up at 5 o’clock to do the conviction work before the day-job work started.. For her, that meant teaching herself AI from independent instructors—on her own time, and on her own dime.
In her account, the duty kept her solvent while the conviction kept her alert.. She said those newly developed “canary” skills started feeding into her marketing work. helping her rise through the ranks until she felt the two forces were “equally yoked.” At that point. she said she shifted from seeing conviction as something separate from her job to realizing it could lead her duty—curiosity becoming her responsibility.. That is when she decided to leave the traditional corporate train.
The same idea landed for the author of the message shared alongside the conversation. who describes a personal version of that gap between skill and interest.. A few years into their career. they say they realized their own conviction—an insatiable curiosity about the social sciences and how they apply to behavioral adoption.. They describe starting from a position where their duty skills were already ahead: they were running a full department at an advertising agency before they became fully aware of what they wanted to study. teach. and practice.
They say they followed Tita-Reid’s approach by working on that conviction before and after work—reading nonstop and naming the scholars they studied: Kahneman. Ariely. Thayler. and Lowenstein.. They also describe teaching classes on weekends, at night, and in the early mornings.. They say they even got a doctorate while working their day job. describing this as a process that lasted over a decade until their conviction and their duty were at parity.. At that point, they said, they allowed conviction to lead.
The practical takeaway they offer is direct: “Do your duty while developing your conviction skill set.” The guidance is to work the 9-to-5 and the 5-to-9 so that. over time. the 5-to-9 becomes the 9-to-5.. They emphasize that they see this as “not a side hustle. ” but an investment—investing in oneself today to realize the interest tomorrow.
Because of those years of investing in themselves alongside investing in their job. they say they are now living in their gift.. They describe teaching at the University of Michigan. working with major brands including Google. TikTok. and McDonald’s. and putting ideas into the world through platforms like the article itself. books. and stages.. They end with a financial metaphor they tie to their own path. calling it “compound interest” that they say is available to others too.
Tita-Reid’s conversation is available in full through the latest episode of the From the Culture podcast, introduced with a description that frames the show as exploring how organizational culture enables companies to thrive, teams to win, and brands to succeed.
The thread tying these accounts together is timing and repetition: when Tita-Reid recognized her “canary” ability was underdeveloped compared with her duty skills. she built conviction in the early morning for years. then brought it into her marketing work until the two became “equally yoked. ” and only after that did she leave the corporate C-suite—an arc mirrored by the author’s decade-long routine of reading. teaching. and completing a doctorate while keeping their day job.
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