Astronaut Kellie Gerardi doesn’t just want to use her social media brand to highlight the joys and triumphs of space. As she revealed during TheWrap’s 2024 Power Women’s Summit, she also wants to use it to highlight the tremendous amount of sacrifice that’s led to her extraordinary career.
During the “Her Influence: Building Your Brand” panel on Tuesday, Gerardi spoke about why it was so important for her to show all sides of her life, both the professional and the personal. Currently, she has over 845,000 followers on TikTok, many of whom started following her around the time of her first flight in November 2023.
“I was the 90th woman in history to leave our planet. I did not grow up having representation that was visible, and even if I did, I didn’t have any ounce of understanding of what their personal lives looked like to get there,” Gerardi told moderator Shira Lazar, CEO and founder of What’s Trending and #Creators4MentalHealth. “I sacrificed 10 years of my fertility for my career. That’s how I feel. So I do think it’s a little bit important to share the other side of it.”
Gerardi emphasized that she “wouldn’t change a thing” and made it clear that the choices she made “were mine alone.” “I feel so grateful to have gotten where I wanted to get in my life,” Gerardi said.
She also believes its important to share the sacrifice that went into achieving those goals so that she can serve as an example for other career-oriented women. “I want to show the lower lows and what it takes from you sometimes, and then the highest highs — quite literally,” Gerardi said. The astronaut is currently confronting one of those “lows” as she’s undergoing IVF. However, because she is set to lead an all-women research crew into space in 2026, her last chance at treatment prior to the mission will be in January.
This glimpse into the sacrifices Gerardi made came about after Lazar asked the panelists how they balance more personal social media posts with content focused on their brands and professional lives. It’s a question that has always haunted influencers: How much should you really share? For her part, Jackie Aina, creator and co-founder of FORVR Mood, had a very different answer. Instead of combining the two, Aina takes care to keep these two worlds separate.
“My content is lifestyle, but it’s not my personal life, if that makes sense,” Aina, who has over 3.5 million subscribers on YouTube and 2 million followers on Instagram, explained.
Part of her reasoning for this is simply experience. As someone who has been creating content since 2009, Aina joked that she’s seen “every trend cycle you can think of” and has found that some people on the internet can be “spooky.” But this decision also comes down to self-awareness about what she needs to do her job well without harming her personal relationships.
“I find that, because I’m in a marginalized group myself, it’s actually incredibly important for me to experience those things in real time without outside criticism. I think my audience is very understanding of that,” Aina said. “The easiest thing I could do is literally just turn on the camera and film everything. I could do that in my sleep. But I know I would not have peace, and in order for me to do this job at my best ability, I have to have peace and I have to have balance.”
That dedication to being their authentic selves in all aspects of their brand is something all three featured creators shared. In Drea Okeke’s case — a creator, host and speaker who has over 6.6 million followers on TikTok — that meant turning down a brand deal to stay true to herself and her heritage. The unnamed brand in question asked Okeke to say the word “burger” but criticized the Nigerian creator’s pronunciation of it. After getting that note, she turned down the deal.
“If the brand does not respect my culture and the way I speak, I won’t work with the brand,” Okeke said.
For Aina, it came about when a brand asked her to do a campaign that involved a viral trend created by another Black creator. Rather than taking the money or turning it down, she worked with the brand and the original creator, ensuring that the creator in question got credit for her trend and they were both paid for the campaign.
“Those things are what I require, not what I ask,” Aina said. “I didn’t enter the space to not open more doors for other people who look like me. It’s not worth it just me being the only one getting paid.”
Watch the full panel below.
TheWrap’s Power Women Summit is the essential gathering of the most influential women across entertainment and media. The event aims to inspire and empower women across the landscape of their professional careers and personal lives. With the theme, “Aspire,” this year’s PWS provides one day of keynotes, panels, workshops and networking. For more information visit thewrap.com/pws. For all of TheWrap’s Power Women Summit 2024 coverage, click here.
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