International Women's Month Series

Lorey Zlotnick is the Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Zequity Marketing. Before launching her consultancy, she led brand divisions at Disney, FOX Sports, and the NFL - guiding transformations that shaped the modern media landscape.

What I love about Lorey's story is that none of it was planned.

She wanted to be a writer. Got a degree in fashion merchandising, minored in journalism, dreamed of writing for big fashion magazines. But life had other plans. Journalists were getting laid off in Detroit and one morning she was scraping ice off her windshield with a credit card and thought: what am I still doing here? So she moved to California knowing absolutely no one.

From there, she landed at Nestle. Then the Los Angeles Times. One day she saw an ad for a job at the Disney Channel. She had no television background whatsoever. But she applied anyway. Met someone at an event who happened to run programming there. Handed him her resume. And here's the incredible part—the day she got offered the job, a rejection letter from the same company arrived in the mail.

That moment launched her entire career.

We talked about what it was like navigating male-dominated industries with no roadmap. Most of her bosses were men. There were no women's groups back then. No one showed her the way. But what struck me is how she learned just as much from bad leadership as good. Her reframe: that didn't feel right, but now I know what I don't want to be for other people.

We also got into what pushed her to finally start her own consultancy. She realized she was sitting on decades of knowledge—from the boardroom to the locker room. And she wanted to deploy it differently. Help smaller companies and founders tell their stories the way the big brands do.

Her advice is simple: evolve or die. Stay relevant. Don't be afraid to fail—because failure is what creates success. And don't leave a woman alone at the table.

Connect with Lorey on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/loreyzlotnick/

Learn more about Zequity Marketing https://www.zequitymarketing.com/

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