After building an executive career at L’Oréal, Tiffany Uman walked away from corporate certainty to create a multi-million-dollar advisory helping women lead with confidence, negotiate their worth, and redefine success on their own terms.
By every traditional definition, Tiffany Uman had already achieved success. Born and raised in Montréal, she studied marketing at McGill University before completing a Business Excellence certification at MIT and spending years climbing the corporate ladder at L’Oréal. It was the career many professionals dream of—one built through discipline, promotions, and an unwavering commitment to excellence. Yet beneath the titles and milestones, another calling was quietly taking shape.
“I could have seen myself growing in corporate for the longevity of my career,” Tiffany told me. “But things definitely shifted around six years ago when I probably made the biggest career pivot of my life in choosing to start my own business and really bet on myself.” That turning point didn’t happen in a boardroom. It happened during motherhood. “When I had my daughter, that was where things kind of shifted,” she explained. “I had this drive to do something even bigger and more meaningful.”
Like so many women, Tiffany found herself standing between two versions of success. One was predictable—a prestigious executive career with endless opportunities ahead. The other offered no guarantees at all. Armed with nothing more than an idea and a supportive partner who had built and exited three companies of his own, she chose the uncertainty of entrepreneurship over the comfort of familiarity. “He was certainly my biggest cheerleader from day one,” she said. “He told me, ‘L’Oréal’s not going anywhere. Corporate’s not going anywhere. But taking a bet on yourself doesn’t come around every day.'”
Rather than treating maternity leave as time away from work, Tiffany transformed it into the runway for a new future. Every spare hour became an opportunity to build what would eventually become one of the fastest-growing advisory practices for women navigating corporate leadership.
“I almost treated it as if I didn’t have that job to go back to,” she recalled. “I had to pour everything into this to really see how it could build traction.” Later she added, “I was scraping at the hours in the day… and when I started seeing the results we were getting from my clients, everything just clicked.” Ironically, it was L’Oréal that prepared her for the business she would one day create. The corporate world taught her that talent alone rarely determines who rises to the top. She discovered firsthand that influence, relationships, executive presence, communication, and self-advocacy often matter just as much as technical excellence.
“I had no one in my family who had been in the corporate space,” Tiffany shared. “I was the first.” Like many women entering executive environments, she believed doing exceptional work would naturally speak for itself. Instead, experience taught her that leadership requires far more than competence.
Today, those lessons have become the foundation of everything she teaches. “What got you here is not going to get you there,” she said. “Hard skills and technical skills only take you so far. There comes a point in your career where influence, advocacy, branding, relationship management, and managing up become so much more important.”
The defining moment arrived in January 2021, when L’Oréal invited Tiffany to return early from maternity leave for an executive leadership opportunity. Years earlier, it would have been the answer to every professional ambition she had held. Instead, she found herself unexpectedly unmoved.
“The moment that they shared the role, I felt very little excitement about it,” she admitted. “In comparison to what I was actively building on my own and seeing in real time the transformation that was having in women’s lives, it just couldn’t compare.” She walked away. Not because the corporation had failed her, but because she realized her purpose had grown beyond it. That decision changed everything. Today, Tiffany leads a multi-million-dollar advisory dedicated to helping mid-stage to senior level women in corporate secure new roles and promotions, negotiate higher salaries, strengthen their leadership, and build careers aligned with who they truly are. Her clients have secured more than $6 million in salary increases combined, landed $200K-$500K roles, achieved faster promotions, and all while showing up with full confidence.
Yet throughout our conversation, Tiffany rarely spoke about revenue. Instead, she spoke about freedom. “Success is very much a definition of the life I lead that is aligned with my values,” she reflected. “Being able to set a real example for my kids of betting on yourself and taking chances.” As we spoke, Tiffany was sitting in Singapore with her husband and children—a full-circle moment, having first visited the city years earlier on her honeymoon. Today, she returns not simply as a traveler, but as the founder of a thriving global business. Perhaps the most memorable story she shared wasn’t about business at all.
One evening, while putting her six-year-old daughter to bed, her daughter looked at her and said, “Mommy, I want to be a life coach.” When Tiffany asked if she knew what that meant, her daughter replied, “I want to help people with some problems that they have so that they can have a happy life.”
At that moment, Tiffany realized something profound. Children rarely become what we tell them to become. They become what they watch us have the courage to be. Before we ended our conversation, Tiffany left me with one sentence that perfectly captured both her philosophy and the legacy she’s building.
“Courage precedes confidence.”
It’s a simple idea, but perhaps one of the most powerful lessons any leader can learn. We spend so much of our lives waiting to feel ready before taking the leap, when in reality confidence is almost always the reward for courage—not the prerequisite. Listening to Tiffany, I couldn’t help but think that this is why her work resonates so deeply. She isn’t simply helping women earn promotions or negotiate salaries. She’s giving them something far more valuable: permission to stop waiting, trust themselves, and finally place the bet they’ve been afraid to make all along.
