Building Community and Connection in Business with Brooke Clark
Brooke Clark, Founder and CEO of Seat 1A Advisors, joins The Bliss Business Podcast to explain career visibility strategy: how executives and rising leaders can share what they know as service, not self-promotion, and build a cadence that creates connection and community.
Career visibility strategy starts with a reframe: sharing what you know is teaching, not self-promotion. In this episode of The Bliss Business Podcast, hosts Tullio Siragusa and Mike Liwski are joined by Brooke Clark, Founder and CEO of Seat 1A Advisors, a talent strategist and leadership advisor with two decades of experience, much of it in Utah’s life sciences ecosystem.
In this episode we explore:
• Why visibility is a career asset and a way to teach, not to self-promote
• How to reframe visibility when you are naturally humble or behind the scenes
• A system for staying visible while doing the work: your message, your audience, and a sustainable cadence
• How to measure whether visibility is working, client by client
• The career brand architecture process behind Seat 1A Advisors
• How courage and service turn one person’s visibility into community
Brooke’s view of visibility comes from a career spent finding the story behind the story: public relations, ten years as an agency recruiter, then building the recruiting function at a Salt Lake City biotech that grew past 600 people.
When a much-referred expert told her “I’m kind of a shrinking violet” about joining a panel, she asked what insights they could share with the audience. Within a 15-minute call, they said yes.
For leaders who are heads down, she breaks the work into bite-sized pieces: what matters to you, who you want to reach, and which rooms you need to be in. A decision-making career dashboard keeps those choices clear, and a sustainable cadence beats doing everything at once. Measurement is personal too.
The name Seat 1A comes from her childhood as an airline kid, flying alone at five and eyeing the coveted first seat. She now asks every client which seat they want to put themselves in.
That same belief, that a message earns attention by serving the person receiving it, is how Zero Company approaches paid search, social, and programmatic work for its own clients.
Key Takeaways
• (2:55) On the reframe: visibility is “really a teaching and learning experience rather than, look at me, self-promotion.”
• (6:34) On a reluctant panelist: “Everybody has something interesting to talk about.”
• (12:21) On cadence: “a cadence that is strategic and sustainable is more effective than trying to solve the whole world in one day.”
• (23:42) On her process: “I run them through a career brand architecture process. It’s a full due diligence process.”
• (34:39) On being discoverable: share your perspective over time, “leaving like a breadcrumb trail for when you want to be discoverable.”
• (37:27) On love and service in visibility: “I have to believe in what I’m talking about. It has to be in service for someone.”
FAQ
What is a career visibility strategy?
Brooke Clark, Founder and CEO of Seat 1A Advisors, describes it as deciding what you want to be known for, who needs to hear it, and which rooms to speak in, then sharing at a cadence you can sustain instead of posting or speaking constantly.
How can you be visible without it feeling like self-promotion?
Brooke Clark says to treat visibility as service. Share the insight you wish you had when you were coming up, so your story becomes a teaching and learning experience for the people who need to hear it.
How do you measure whether visibility is working?
Brooke Clark says the metrics differ for each client. One wants engagement and broad reach, another wants invitations and questions from a specific investor audience, so she starts by asking what success looks like for you.
🎙️ Hosted by Tullio Siragusa and Mike Liwski
🎧 Produced by Tullio Siragusa
When visibility is rooted in service, it stops feeling like performance and starts building the connection that lasts. Learn more about Brooke Clark and Seat 1A Advisors at seat1aready.com and at brookc801 on LinkedIn. See her guest profile, watch the video page, read the companion post, Visibility as Service: Turning Presence into Purpose, and explore more Featured Guest Series conversations.
Founder of Seat 1A Advisors
Brooke Clark is the founder of Seat 1A Advisors, a career advisory firm that helps high-performing professionals clarify their value and navigate pivotal career moments. With over two decades in talent strategy, she previously led talent acquisition at Recursion Pharmaceuticals, a clinical-stage, publicly traded biotech. There, she helped scale the company from 40 to more than 600 employees, designing hiring systems that not only delivered results but also wove care, clarity, and connection into the company’s rapid growth.
Whether advising executive teams, mentoring emerging leaders, or building high-growth People programs, Brooke believes that belonging and delight can scale when embedded in intentional systems. She draws inspiration from hospitality—seeing the hiring and employee experience as a powerful place to create resonance, foster trust, and design meaningful moments that last.
