Your Job Title Isn't Who You Are: Rethinking Success and Self-Worth | Minyang Jiang

In this episode of Unconventional Wisdom About Conventional Wisdom, Kim Miller-Hershon sits down with Minyang "MJ" Jiang, chief strategy officer at Credibly, where she leads and implements the company's growth strategy alongside the executive team, overseeing more than 30 employees across marketing and sales and carrying responsibility for revenue generation. Before Credibly, MJ spent over eight years at Ford Motor Company in marketing, sales, and corporate strategy roles, and founded and ran GoRide Health, a Ford mobility startup serving underserved populations in medical transportation. She graduated top of her class at Harvard with a BA in literature and holds an MBA in marketing and operations from Wharton. Given any superpower, she'd choose to speak any human or animal language at will, because nothing is more disarming than showing someone you cared enough to learn how to talk to them. In this conversation, MJ challenges a piece of conventional wisdom that runs most of the early career game: that success means becoming the optimal version of whatever the environment rewards. Straight out of her MBA, she measured herself entirely by external validation, promotions, raises, rankings, grades, and she's skeptical of anyone who claims they didn't need that early on. What shifted is the question she now hands to people who ask how she got where she is. That's the wrong question, she says. The real one is "What kind of person do I want to be?" Answer that (knowing it comes in multiple drafts) and you can choose the path that moves you toward that person, instead of letting external validation quietly stand in for your self-worth and carry you further and further from meaning. One of the episode's richest threads is MJ's defense of self-doubt. People read her as confident, even intimidating, and she owns being smart and competent without shrinking herself to make others comfortable. But she insists she doesn't have it all figured out, and that self-doubt is healthy because it holds up a mirror to your deepest insecurities. Her sharpest insight: the most powerful insecurities often present as self-assurance, because they protect a core belief about who you are, so when they're challenged you'll fight to the death to deny them. Catching that in yourself, noticing when your mind flicks something away too easily or you have an answer too fast, is what lets you know when to trust your own judgment and when to seek people who really know you. Kim adds her own version: a big reaction to someone else is a mirror worth turning back on yourself, paired with the humble reminder, "who died and made you God?" On imposter syndrome, MJ is honest that it surfaces most when she's acted with genuinely good intent, only to be told she's misunderstood, and part of her wants to scream "how long have you known me?" The lesson she's learned is not to lash out, to sit with the hurt, and to borrow her kids' openness, the trepidation-but-still-going-for-it curiosity adults tend to lose. Her closing thought lands the whole episode: you're not strong because of how you feel, you're strong because of what you do. The act reinforces the belief, not the other way around, and simply showing up when it's heavy is already proof you're capable. This episode explores: The artificial constructs we hang behind our names Building your own boundaries versus living inside predefined ones Why self-doubt is healthy and a mirror to your insecurities How the deepest insecurities disguise themselves as confidence Turning a big reaction into a mirror on yourself Giving grace to others as a way of giving grace to yourself Why change management means honoring the internal process, not just executing Why "what does success look like" is so hard when it's about humans Attention as the scarcest resource, and why you can't scale time The mind grows during rest, like a muscle Ignoring the first three answers and digging to bedrock Sitting with being misunderstood instead of lashing out "You're strong because of what you do, not how you feel" MJ's perspective is a powerful reminder that confidence and self-doubt aren't opposites, that the questions worth asking are rarely the obvious ones, and that the person you're becoming matters more than any title behind your name. Her path from Harvard and Ford to leading strategy at a growing company shows that the leaders worth trusting are the ones brave enough to be alone with their own thoughts, honest about what they don't know, and willing to show up and do the hard thing before they believe they can. If you're a leader, strategist, or anyone measuring yourself by someone else's scoreboard, this conversation offers real depth, honest talk about self-doubt and imposter syndrome, and a refreshing case that strength is built by what you do, not by how you feel. Connect with me here: Website: https://www.kimmillerhershon.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmillerhershon Newsletter: https://link.kimmillerhershon.com/widget/form/aEdmdA1W5MhoMCMfy5O8 Webinar: https://webinar.kimmillerhershon.com/?utm_source=Podcast Guest Details: Guest: Minyang "MJ" Jiang, Chief Strategy Officer, Credibly Focus: Growth strategy, marketing, sales, and revenue leadership; former Ford Motor Company strategy leader and founder of GoRide Health LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/minyang-jiang-6981a148/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.