Young Pros Spotlight
Naomi Naik
What is your role / current company?
Associate Director, Growth Analytics/ Omnicom Media Group Holdings
If you could offer one piece of advice to other young professionals, what would it be?
Don’t wait for someone else to give you permission to become the person you want to be professionally! Early in your career, it’s easy to think there’s a prescribed sequence: get the right title, earn the promotion, become an expert, and then you’ll have the credibility to pursue bigger ideas. I’ve learned that a lot of growth happens in the opposite direction: take on the project before you feel completely ready, develop a point of view outside of your job description, build relationships beyond your immediate circle, and create things that demonstrate what you’re capable of. Your career is bigger than your current role, and the more you treat yourself as the architect of it rather than the recipient of it, the more opportunities you create.
What has been your proudest professional achievement to date?
My proudest professional achievement has been growing from someone who could produce strong analysis into someone who can shape the strategic conversation around it. One of the most rewarding parts of my current work has been taking complex healthcare and marketing data, identifying the story underneath it, and using that to influence how senior stakeholders think about growth and investment. I’m proud of the fact that I’m no longer just answering the question I’m given: I’m often helping define what the right question should be. That shift, from analyst to strategic partner, has probably been the most meaningful marker of my growth so far.
How has mentorship played a role in your career journey?
Early in my career, I thought mentorship was primarily about learning how to be better at the job in front of me. As I’ve progressed, I’ve realized the best mentors do something different: they help you understand which skills are worth developing, where your strengths are more distinctive than you realize, and when you may be ready for an opportunity before you’ve fully convinced yourself that you are. That has been particularly meaningful for me because my career has evolved across analytics, strategy, marketing, and healthcare. Mentors have helped me see those experiences not as separate chapters, but as a point of view I can uniquely bring to the work. And now, as I become more senior, I think about mentorship as something I have a responsibility to pay forward. I try to give junior colleagues not just tactical advice, but context so they can build their own POVs: why a decision is being made, how to navigate ambiguity, or how to advocate for an idea. Because ultimately, good mentorship doesn’t just help someone succeed within the system; it helps them learn how to navigate it with agency.
What is your dream job? If money were no object, what would you do?
Honestly, probably still analytics. I love the field. But if I could pick something purely for fun, I’d be an analogist: giving analogies for a living, the way philosophers did before modernity turned everything into specialists.
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