George B. Thomas
Rather listen to this post?
Anne McDonnell is the kind of person you want on your side when you are trying to figure something out. She is calm. She is thoughtful. And she shows up with a steady, human-first energy that makes you feel like you are not alone in the work.
In this Women of HubSpot episode, I sat down with Anne, a partner development manager at HubSpot, to talk about what it looks like to build confidence from scratch, especially when you make a bold career pivot into a world you did not grow up dreaming about.
Anne shows how to turn “I do not know yet” into “I can learn,” how honesty and accountability can save you in hard moments, and how being helpful is not a personality trait. It is a practice you choose on purpose.
The moment that changed everything
Anne’s story starts with a kid who thought she was headed to Broadway. That did not happen. But it tells you something important about her early on. She always had a sense that life could be bigger than what was right in front of her.
Fast forward to college graduation. She did not have a perfect plan. What she did have was one experience that cracked her world open: studying abroad. It changed her. It gave her confidence. It gave her curiosity. And it made her want to help other people get that same kind of life-expanding moment.
Then her older sister dropped a sentence that became a turning point. Not because it was fancy, but because it was true.
“Why don't you just get a job that allows you to travel as a part of that job?”
That one question helped Anne connect two worlds that felt separate. Work and passion. Responsibility and adventure. She built a career in international education and study abroad for 14 years, helping students step into experiences that shaped who they became.
And there is another moment in this chapter that matters, because it tells you why she leads with such a protective kind of empathy.
Anne’s own family did not have the money to make studying abroad easy. One financial aid advisor saw her situation clearly, pushed for an appeal, and helped unlock support Anne should have been receiving all along.
Anne never forgot that. So she did what helpers do. She paid it forward. She fought for students who wanted to go but could not afford it. She hustled for scholarships. She looked for creative solutions. She made the path feel possible.
How she leads, builds, AND uses HubSpot
Then came the left turn. In 2020, Anne moved from global education into tech and into HubSpot. She is honest about what that felt like. She went from being the person who knew the answers to being the person asking a lot of questions.
That shift messes with your confidence if you let it.
Anne did not pretend she knew everything. She did something better. She learned. On purpose. In her off-hours, she took a digital marketing course so she could build shared language with the people she served. She got hands-on in her demo account. She built things just to understand how they work. Not so she could become someone else.
So she could show up with more value.
Today, as a partner development manager at HubSpot, she works with solutions partners who help businesses grow better. She helps partners understand product updates, program updates, and how to spot new opportunities. She thinks about how partners scale their services, how they structure their teams, and how they get results.
And when we got into what excites her in HubSpot right now, she went somewhere most people skip past.
Reporting. Data. The behind-the-scenes stuff that helps leaders make better decisions.
She is paying close attention to improvements tied to reporting and data sets, and she sees real potential in how teams will be able to bring data into HubSpot and use it more effectively. If you are the kind of person who cares about clean data and clear reporting, you would have nodded along hard in this part of the conversation. Connect with Anne McDonnell on LinkedIn.
The lesson she wants you to carry forward
Anne’s leadership is not loud. It is real. One of my favorite moments in this episode is when she talked about a mistake she made early in her career. The kind of mistake that steals sleep. The kind of moment where your brain tries to convince you that your whole future is about to collapse.
She chose honesty. She owned it. She walked into her manager’s office with accountability and possible solutions. Then she said something that every listener needs to hear at least once in their career:
“I didn't lose my job. I didn't get demoted. No one sent me home that day.”
That is a lesson. Most of the time, the mistake is not what breaks trust. Hiding it does. Blaming does. Avoiding does. Honesty, accountability, and action build the kind of credibility that lasts.
And when we talked about empowerment, Anne brought it back to something simple and powerful. She wants environments where people can show up with their best skills without unnecessary friction. She wants leaders who mirror back the best version of you when you cannot see it yourself. She wants humans who choose generosity with their time, because that generosity can change someone’s entire week.
She summed up her own approach with a question she tries to live by: “How can I just be helpful?”
That is the heartbeat of her story.
