I recently gave a speech about my career. This was a new topic for me, as I usually speak about work life balance—sharing stories about my gallery of guilt, asking for help, co-parenting and housework, and just straight talk.

I ruminated on this topic a lot. Before I went to bed and when I woke up, I’d be thinking back over my long career. How did I get here? I wanted to explain what drove me. To tell stories about taking on tasks I didn’t know how to do. To share how failures big and small trained me for each new effort. To discuss the unintentional nature of my path.

It was both stimulating and difficult to work on this speech. True to my own style, I didn’t write down a single word until T minus 12 hours to the speech. But I walked in the peaks and valleys of my career for weeks. That’s how I prepare.

The women at Target headquarters in Minneapolis loved my new speech. We had such fun! They were especially grateful for my stories of failure. It’s so hard for us to acknowledge the role failure plays as we strive to construct the strongest version of who we are in our careers.

I’m going to be doing a lot of storytelling and story listening at our Multicultural Women’s National Conference, beginning July 22 in New York City. Our theme this year is “Living Out Loud: The Power of Your Story.” Working on my new speech was the perfect preparation for this conference, where 700-plus women of all races and ethnicities, sent by their companies, will use storytelling to move our own advancement many steps ahead. We break into same-race circles to create collective stories from our individual experiences, and then we share across the races to build our action plans.

Ask your employer if you can represent your company at this important event. I would love to hear your story!