Since March, Paige Soucie has been a vital team member on our Impact Maker Health Team, leading the team focused on reducing the stigma of opioid use disorder. She has helped build out and improve the team’s opioid stigma reduction toolkit for businesses and motivated employers to implement stigma-reducing policies and tools within their organizations.
“There’s something so inspiring and refreshing about collaborating with a group of individuals, all from different backgrounds, who volunteer their time, knowledge and resources to better the community.”
Now, Paige officially joins the Valley Leadership team as our Director of Marketing & Communications. She’ll help us share how VL’s reimagined leadership development model and Impact Maker are making a difference on the most pressing issues facing the state. Get to know Paige and join us in welcoming her to the Valley Leadership.
Valley Leadership: Can you tell the Valley Leadership community a little about yourself?
Paige Soucie: I graduated from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism with a double major in Journalism and Political Science with a minor in Spanish. After graduating, I knew a traditional career path wouldn’t work for me, so I pursued a consulting career in the startup world. Over the years, I’ve worked with a number of local startups and agencies on marketing, event planning, project management, operations and much more.
I love to travel as often as possible. I have been fortunate to spend a couple of years abroad, first through study abroad and second with a program called Remote Year. I also love to run, cook and spend time with my husband, friends, family and two cats, Gouda and Pepper. I recently became a Registered Yoga Teacher as well.
VL: What have you liked most about working with Valley Leadership’s Impact Teams?
PS: There’s something so inspiring and refreshing about collaborating with a group of individuals, all from different backgrounds, who volunteer their time, knowledge and resources to better the community. That’s the opportunity we have as part of an Impact Maker team. Each of the team members and contributors are passionate about the initiatives they’re working on and bring their best to the table to make a difference in the Arizona community. It’s an incredible opportunity that all of our leaders and aspiring leaders should experience.
VL: Storytelling will be an important part of your new role. What kinds of stories have made the biggest impact on you?
PS: The stories that inspire and make the biggest impact on me are the ones of people overcoming adversity to realize their dreams. These can be on a smaller scale, like an entrepreneur I interviewed while traveling in Argentina. He was determined to bring peanut butter to South America (it otherwise hadn’t existed there), so he established a peanut farm, built a business and saw it all the way through because he believed they were missing out on an incredible piece of American cuisine. On a larger scale, we see stories of people working to overcome adversity every day in underrepresented and minority communities across the country. Each of us has our own story of overcoming adversity, and those stories are what drive us all to make our communities a better place, so that generations to come might have a little bit less to overcome in the future.
VL: What Principle of Doing most resonates with you right now?
PS: The Principle of Doing that most resonates with me is Driven to Do. As a born planner, there’s nothing more satisfying to me than checking something off my to-do list. What’s even more fulfilling is being able to direct that drive towards initiatives that improve Arizona for all of us.
VL: What do you love most about living, working and playing in Arizona?
PS: Arizona has been and continues to be in such a state of transformation that it really makes anything seem possible if we put our minds to it. That paired with the year-around access to outdoor activities, whether it’s biking, hiking, running or skiing, really makes Arizona my favorite place to live.
