In this episode, I speak with Virginia “Ginny” Clarke, a former leadership staffing at google and a former partner at Spencer Stuart, an author, a leader, and a podcaster. Ginny Clarke is an executive recruiter and career advisor. She is former recruiting and diversity and mobility director at google where she has led non-technical executive recruiting as well as diversity and internal executive mobility. Ginny is based in Mountain View, CA. Before Google, Ginny was a partner at Spencer Stuart, based in Chicago. She worked in the firm’s financial services and led Spencer Stuart’s diversity practice for a total of 12 years. After leaving Spencer Stuart, Ginny wrote Career Mapping: Charting Your Course in the New World of Work, empowering individuals to strategically navigate their careers. After the release of Career Mapping, Ginny formed her own executive search and talent management consulting firm. I talk to Ginny about the difference between activity and impact. Ginny shares her experiences from google, teaching her team to differentiate between doing for the sake of doing, and doing for the sake of purpose. We also talk about the importance of pausing to think and leaving yourself space to be, in a fast-paced, rapidly changing world. I loved what Ginny had to say about differentiating between fear and uncertainty. Ginny has shared that she has been meditating for years and talked about the need for top executives to learn to distress not only for the purpose of their own mental health but also for the purpose of truly thinking things through.