Episode 5: Why I chose an alias for my last name

Getting married at 40 posed many new challenges (and opportunities!): one of them being what to do with my new last name. I wanted to take the surname of my husband, but I also wanted to be mindful of my own brand that I’ve built over these first four decades of my life – as well as my entire professional career, nearly two decades at the time. If I had to legally chase my name (again, my choice), as a marketer / brander, I wanted it to be to my advantage. Changing from Smith (my maiden name) to Johnson (my new legal surname), wasn’t much of a difference, short of 3 extra letters and a move up in the alphabet. Johnson is just as common as Smith – so I got no change in uniqueness there from a business perspective. So I had the brilliant idea of adopting an alias my husband has on social media. This video is about the thought process surrounding that decision – including understanding whether or not that was legally possible to do and how to help people understand the difference between my new legal last name versus my public, business-oriented alias last name.

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