"I'm doing it. So I'm worthy of the work." Priscilla Vega on PR, intuition, and swimming with sharks.

Priscilla Regina Vega . She’s worked for NASA. She runs her own PR company, PR Vega . And she literally swims with sharks. Priscilla is fearless, intuitive, and radiant - I’m grateful to be in her orbit. Our convo covered her viral social media wins at NASA, why she started her own PR agency, and the role that trust plays in her work.

Below are a few especially interesting tidbits. Check out the full interview on Spotify , Apple , our site , or wherever you get your podcasts. And find Priscilla on Instagram .

Priscilla, thank you so much. I’m so glad to share this episode. You remind me to be optimistic and brave. ?

“Every day that I was walking into my NASA job, I would think to myself: Okay, today's the day that they're going to figure out that I'm not qualified. [That] I don't know what I'm doing here. And? I remember one of the first things I did there - International Dance Day was coming up - and there was this robot that I was assigned to write about. And it's this massive robot designed to go to the moon. And it moves super, super slow - like every 15 minutes or something.

It's just the slowest, largest thing. And I thought: what if we sped it up? Like, we have this video, this very slow-moving robot. Let's speed it up. And we sped it up and it looked like it was dancing! We called it the “dancing robot” and we pitched it to So You Think You Can Dance - because everyone submitted videos of themselves dancing on International Dance Day - and it got picked up.

It aired on So You Think You Can Dance in the middle of the episode. They’re like, “And even NASA participated in International Dance Day!,” and it felt like the biggest win. It really gave me this level of confidence of: Okay, that's why they hired me. They hired me for my creativity and my interests.?Because I am NASA's target audience. I love space. I don't know that much about it, but I'd like to know more about it. So I just need someone to like, meet me where I'm at about space.?“

“It’s evolving as we speak. There was a time when I was known as the baby PR person - because I had babies, and that's really how PR Vega started. [My first client] was a baby brand, and they became a huge success. And then, by word of mouth, other people in the baby-brand world found out that I was doing consulting and I was helping startups, female startups.

And so the very beginning of PR Vega was purely focused on baby. And then, as my babies got older, I started exploring other brands and other options that I thought would be fun for me to promote. I found that where I was hitting my stride was when I represented brands that I used in my everyday. So it was like a clothing brand that I wore all the time. It was jewelry that I wear always. I was the walking billboard for all my clients - because I believed in what they were doing. So when I pitched them to press, I came at it from an honest spot.

Now I'm evolving into a place where? I feel like I want to do more nonprofit work. I feel like I want to work with more women of color and some diversity.?

The difficult part about it all is that typically women of color - and I'm a woman of color, and I'll say this for myself - is that we feel like we need to wear all the hats.

Like, I feel like I need to do my own design and I need to do my own PR pitching and I need to do my own marketing and accounting and all of those things because I can do it. Bringing in help is a really hard thing for me to do.?

And so I think that over this next year, I'm going to make it my goal to try to support more women of color, and try to get them to see it's okay to not wear all the hats.”

“Fear is not really a word in my vocabulary. I mean, about a year ago I decided I wanted to do something that I thought I feared - it was open water swimming. I just went out there. And I know there are sharks around me - but I just keep swimming and?it's really interesting to me that I'm not afraid.

Because I just always trust that it's gonna work out. I can just trust that what I'm doing, I do it with intention. And I'm a bit of an optimist in that way. It'll just work out, and so? I just roll with the punches.”

“ Joanna Goddard interviewed me - and she called me, and this is the first time I talked to her on the phone. I had been emailing her client pitches for years. It was all email communication for a decade. And then she had the most beautiful, wonderful questions.

I mean, of course she did. She's a phenomenal writer. She's an amazing interviewer. It was so lovely to talk to her and to just have a conversation. And at the end of that call, I even thought: did I say anything worth saying? I don't even … is this happening still? And then she gave me the date when my feature was going to go live.

And even then I didn't think it was happening. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. And it happened and this was now like what, five years ago, maybe? I still feel like it was yesterday. And I still get people that, like, we're talking about it right now. Like longevity is everything.”

“I might not be the most successful PR person - but I'm doing it. So I'm worthy of this work. I know I'm not The Best Mom, but I'm doing it and I'm worthy of my kids and everything I do for them. Whenever anyone says “imposter syndrome” or, like my clients, they're like: “I don't even know what I'm doing!” I'm like, yeah, nobody knows. No one knows what they're doing. But the point is to just keep moving forward.“