The power of personal values in shaping your self-love and confidence

There is a particular kind of leadership that announces itself loudly, and a kind that simply gets on with it. Berta de Pablos-Barbier, Chief Marketing Officer of Pandora, is emphatically the second kind. When she describes her role, she does so without fanfare: "To shape and protect the Pandora brand, ensuring that everything we do connects emotionally with people around the world." The simplicity of that framing is, it turns out, entirely intentional.

Berta leads her work by three values she returns to so consistently they have become less a professional framework than a way of being. Authenticity, she says, "keeps me true to who I am and what Pandora stands for; real connection always starts with honesty." Curiosity "fuels innovation and reminds me to keep learning and listening to different perspectives." And courage "allows me to make bold decisions, take creative risks, and lead through change with conviction." What is striking about this list is not its contents, which are familiar enough in the language of leadership, but the evidence that she actually means it.

At Pandora, that meaning is visible in the work. Rather than the polished, aspirational unreality that dominates so much luxury marketing, Berta's team shows real artisans at work. They partner only with ambassadors who demonstrably believe in the brand. Their content listens as much as it speaks. The logic behind this approach is both ethical and commercial, and Berta makes no apology for holding both at once. "Audiences, customers and employees can always tell when a brand doesn't walk its talk," she says. When trust breaks, everything breaks with it. The authenticity is not a values exercise sitting alongside the business strategy. It is the business strategy.

This is worth pausing on, because it runs counter to a persistent assumption in corporate culture: that values and commercial performance exist in tension, that softening towards one requires compromise on the other. Berta's career is a fairly sustained argument against that idea. The brands that build lasting customer loyalty, she has found, are the ones that commit to something real and hold to it consistently, even when short-term metrics might seem to argue for a different choice. "A performative commitment will never cut it," she says, and you get the sense she has watched enough of those attempts play out to be certain.

What makes her perspective particularly useful is that she applies the same thinking inward as outward. Identifying and living by personal values is, she acknowledges, genuinely difficult, especially for women operating at pace in demanding roles. "It's hard, when you are busy and under pressure, to take the time and headspace to articulate what these values even are," she says. Getting swept into busyness, she has observed, leads people away from their purpose incrementally and almost invisibly, until one day the distance between who they are and how they are working has become significant.

Her practical advice on this is direct and worth keeping. Know your values and take the time to define what actually matters to you. Use them to guide quick decisions when things are moving fast and there is no time for extended reflection. Pause often, even briefly, because consistent small moments of recentring are more sustainable than the occasional grand reset. And choose your circle carefully, surrounding yourself with people who reinforce rather than erode the things you are trying to stand for.

The question of confidence is where Berta becomes most personally candid. "Early in my career, I sometimes questioned whether I belonged at the table," she says. It is a familiar admission, and she makes it without either drama or false modesty, as a simple fact about how confidence actually develops. "Over time, I've learned that confidence grows from experience, reflection, and self-compassion." The distinction she draws between self-love and confidence is one worth sitting with: self-love, in her framing, is the acceptance of who you are, strengths and flaws alike. Confidence is trusting yourself enough to act even when you are uncertain. The two are related but not the same, and conflating them is part of why confidence can feel so elusive. It is not a state you arrive at and maintain. It is something you build continuously, through action.

To women still finding their way towards it, she offers something more useful than reassurance: "Be patient with yourself. Confidence isn't permanent; it's built through action and self-understanding. Celebrate progress, learn from setbacks, and seek people who remind you of your worth. Above all, remember that confidence isn't about perfection. It's about showing up as your whole, authentic self."

That last phrase could easily read as a slogan. Coming from someone who has spent her career testing the idea against commercial reality, at scale, across global markets, it lands as something more considered than that. Pandora's ongoing evolution from a brand known for charms to one positioning itself as the world's most loved jewellery brand is, in Berta's telling, a direct reflection of the same journey she describes personally: iterative, honest, built on genuine connection rather than performance.

The through line, in the work and in the person, is the same. You cannot build something lasting on something false. Start with what is true, hold to it under pressure, and the rest tends to follow.

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