MOMS IN THE C-SUITE
time with the boys for her husband, who
handles 75 percent of the boys’ schedule,
which now includes tutoring, soccer, and
Taekwon-Do.
Her husband may do more pickup, but
they are a united front when it comes to
following the rules of parenting, says Sun.
For Sun it is easy to mentally hang her
CEO hat at the door and have fun, thanks
to a “marriage that just gets stronger every year,” she says. “I’m serious and he’s
not, that’s why we work so well,” she says.
Sun says she is also blessed by the
hands-on involvement of her in-laws, who
live just 20 minutes away. Her husband’s
mother and father, who recently retired,
try to get as much time as they can with
their grandchildren—and are always ready
to assist with the boys’ activities and host
a weekly sleepover, which has created a
Friday date night ritual for the parents.
…and support at work
Sun also has invested in support at work, in
the form of “high-level” talent, which has
propelled her efforts to grow BrightStar
smarter and faster. In 2013, she tapped
Thom Gilday, former chief financial officer of Celebration Foods, to serve as
president and chief operating officer of
BrightStar Group Holdings. Gilday, who
joined the company the previous year as
CFO, quickly became Sun’s “right hand”
and business “savior,” she says. The two
executives share core values and a passion for the business that are completely
aligned, along with a trust level that has
given Sun the freedom to focus on strategic planning, while Gilday concentrates
on day-to-day operations.
Sun works constantly to “delegate to
elevate,” a principle she follows fervently
after reading Traction by Gino Wickman.
This approach, she says, gave her permission to “not do the stuff I don’t like” and
more time to be the visionary and face of
the brand. These days, Gilday’s and Sun’s
invaluable executive assistants are the only
two BrightStar employees that report directly to the CEO.
Sun has allowed the delegate-to-elevate
concept to inform all facets of her life. She
prioritizes her time and energy on what will
have the most impact on the business and
that will benefit relationships with family,
friends, employees, and colleagues. Tasks
or transactions that she doesn’t do as well,
that don’t add value, or duties that she can
afford to have someone else do (house
cleaning, grocery shopping, and checking
26
“I intentionally
put people
around me who
were going to
give me the right
advice, at the
right time,
and then I
listened to it.”
emails, for instance) she leaves to others.
“The constant rigor of doing that has
allowed me not to feel like I am having to
make tradeoffs, but that I am striving to have
a more balanced and fulfilled life, which
applies whether you are male or female,”
she says. As a result, Sun says she has more
time for family and friends and personal
and professional development—and says
she is living a more fulfilled life today, in
her mid-40s, than she was a decade ago,
or even in her early 40s.
Making her own choices
From the start, Sun has been thoughtful
about her choices, driven partly, she admits,
by memories of a workaholic father, who
was physically and emotionally abusive.
“I didn’t have the best of childhoods,”
she says. Her determination to work and
raise her family differently is evident in
the makeup of BrightStar’s first board of
advisors. Along with financial, marketing,
and banking specialists, she sought the
guidance of a female franchising entrepreneur who also had a family.
“I wanted people who were supportive
of those choices, not those who would tell
me that I could have grown 10 percent
faster if I missed two vacations with my
kids,” says Sun. “I intentionally put people
around me who were going to give me the
right Y