Elyse Delucci is proof that being true to yourself is the key to success and one little step in the direction of your dreams can change your life.  Eight years ago, as an overworked executive dealing with outrageous corporate deadlines, two small children and a failing marriage, Delucci was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In her desperation she took a leap of faith, headed to a comedy club, stood up at an open mic night and transformed her life through laughter. From burnout to breakdown to breakthrough she reinvented herself as a standup comedian, podcaster and social media star who inspires others to live life to the fullest with gusto. 

Mix a dash of Mrs. Maisel with liberal shots of Fran Drescher in The Nanny, add in the speed-talking magic of Loralei Gilmore and finish off with the sparkle of Lucille Ball as Auntie Mame and you have the recipe for DeLucci’s special sauce. Delving into topics ranging from her Italian-American heritage, corporate experiences, marriage, divorce, food, co-parenting, motherhood and how to navigate the wonderfully messy thing called life, her New York Tawk podcast has garnered 5 star reviews and is filled with hilarious stream-of-consciousness observations with a warm confidential tone that feels like you are having a chat with your BFF. She has amassed a tribe of over 330,000 die-hard followers who regularly come up to her on the street to share what a difference she has made in their lives, and has clocked over 60 million views on TikTok and Instagram combined. She has been featured in the New York Times, The New York Post, Business Insider, Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch and more. Equal parts best friend, confidant, honorary Italian mother and keeper of the secrets to the best life tips on the planet—she is an absolute treasure.

The recipient of the SRQ Illuminator Award, presented to a woman who lights the way for others to follow their dreams, DeLucci’s joie de vivre is so  infectious, one might be tempted to think she has led a charmed life. And while in some ways she has had the benefit of serendipity, it has been at the expense of painful experiences of bullying and feeling like a fish out of water. Her story is one of overcoming judgment and misperceptions, showing people how to rise above everyday challenges with grace and humor and most of all—embrace being themselves.  

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Staten Island in a middle class Italian-American family, she spent her days playing with other kids out on the block but it was not a fairytale experience. “I was bullied. Even though I had the same accent as those kids, I had a funny sounding voice. We would play cops and robbers and the kids would make me the robber and throw rocks at me. I was always so in my own head, I wouldn’t ever really get that that was bullying. I’ll never forget my mother would stand on the terrace and scream over our gray Monte Carlo, ‘What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know they’re not being nice to you?’ But I was just happy to be included,” she says. High school wasn’t much better. DeLucci recalls “My senior prom, I didn’t have a date. I wasn’t popular and there was a guy, he was the captain of the football team, very popular. He had a girlfriend for a long time and they broke up and as a joke he asked me to go to prom on one condition—that I brought a friend to the after party so he could meet her. That’d be so insulting to most people, but I didn’t care. I was like, ‘All right, sure.’ And then I filled a limousine with all of my other friends that didn’t have dates, and we all just partied together.” 

DeLucci notes that the bullying helped her to realize the power of authenticity and develop a thick skin which came in handy later in life. She says, “I think when you’ve had a lot of shitty things happen in your life, you just learn to make the best of them. Then you get out into the world, and realize it’s a much bigger place. People will talk and make their assumptions, and who cares? You run into trouble when you care about what other people think. I’ve always just been like, ‘I’ll make the lemonade out of the lemons,’ and I think that worked for me.” 

Being “different” turned out to be her secret weapon and was the key to her resilience and willingness to see the positive side of challenge. In college she decided “I’m going to have seven internships. I’m in Staten Island, Manhattan’s right here. And I worked, worked, worked. At the time, interns didn’t get paid. I can’t believe, by the way, what I hear they make now. They get $30 an hour, these interns, I’m just like, I watered plants for nothing.” 

After she graduated, DeLucci got a job selling advertising in the “boiler room” of a publishing company and found her niche in bringing print magazines online for top publishing houses. Eventually arriving at NASDAQ, one of the world’s largest financial exchanges, she rose through the ranks to become head of digital revenue and strategy. Early in her Wall Street career she was told that if she wanted to get promoted she would need postgraduate study to have a larger institution “validate” her. She completed a Harvard Business School program in Digital Strategy while pregnant with her first child and another at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in Managerial Economics and Leadership while pregnant with her second child. 

DeLucci was highly successful, credentialed, at the top of her game and yet, the “different” thing reared its ugly head again. Despite all her hard work and achievements she was once again criticized for just being herself. It became glaringly obvious when her company tasked her with interviewing tech CEOs on camera. She says, “I sounded very…I just sounded however I sounded.” And that sound is not what her company wanted so they sent her to a vocal coach, a Shakespearean actor, who told her, “With that voice, the only thing you’re going to do is be in a commercial for Ragu.” She says, “When I was on Wall Street, I had to be undercover Italian. They liked my resume, they liked my personality but they had me dress a certain way. They gave me voice lessons, like elocution lessons. I had to tone everything down. I played a role. I wore pearls, and I like pearls, but not the pearls that I had to wear for work. But I did it. I did whatever I had to do. I did it because that’s what they told me to do. To my core, my deep core, it never crushed my spirit. You’ve got to do what you got to do until you don’t—and then you can do your own thing.”

The pace of managing her fast tracked career and maintaining her “cover” alongside raising a family was grueling. “I had a very full life and two babies seventeen months apart and a husband, and an apartment that we renovated and this beautiful job. I was working some days, nine hours, some days, fourteen hours. I was traveling all over the world, and I was really starting to break. I mean, really break down. I was the primary earner of my household, my husband had a job and we had a very 50-50 thing. He wasn’t one of these guys that were like, ‘Yeah, make me coffee.’ He was very there, but it was just too much on me. And our marriage started to dissolve. I called my Aunt and said, ‘I’m working all these hours, my marriage is falling apart.’ And I’ll never forget her saying, ‘Don’t let work become who you are. Don’t become all work consuming.’” 

In an effort to help relieve some of the pressure DeLucci looked for an outlet doing something she had loved as a child. She says, “Before I got into performing, I would love to watch all the old musicals. I would go to the theater. I would always go to shows.” So she decided to sign up for classes at The People’s Improv Theater (The PIT) in New York City. Her instructor encouraged her to try stand-up comedy but she felt she had nothing to talk about. And then one night, she did. She says, “I had a fight with my husband. It was 11 o’clock at night, and The PIT had an open mic night. And I just showed up there. It was just a weird thing. I did five minutes just about the stress of my work and the pressure. I didn’t have a set. I didn’t have anything prepared.”

The rush of performing gave her a platform—a place to share and be unabashedly herself. And the freedom she felt led her to make other changes in her life. She says, “I started working in the clubs, and became a stand-up comedian. Left my job and got divorced. I just totally reinvented myself.”

Delucci was finally doing what she loved and following her dreams but just as she was settling into her new adventure, immediately she was faced with an unexpected situation that would test her resolve. She says, “When the world shut down with the pandemic, I was like, ‘Well, this is great. I’m homeschooling my two kids, I’m in a tiny apartment in Manhattan, two bedrooms, one bath, three girls. What a horror.’ And I was losing my mind. I left this corporate job to do stand-up comedy, and now there’s nowhere to do it, so I guess I’ll just go online.” She asked her younger sister to teach her “how to TikTok” and built a social media following.

She traded Wall Street for authenticity and her fans are grateful she did. DeLucci notes that her pre-comedy background was not wasted and still informs her life in a myriad of ways. “The benefit of having the corporate background is I’m so disciplined. Every day I wake up at 6:40am and write every single day for an hour to two. If something comes out, great. If it doesn’t come out, fine. I do it every day as if I have a boss and I have to turn it into him.” Still, she recognizes how much better her life is now and is grateful for the freedom of expression and purpose. She says, “If I didn’t leave that world, would it be the worst thing? No. I mean, I had a wonderful job, my salary was fabulous, the benefits were amazing and you get your time off. But I didn’t want to spend 40, 50, 60 hours a week pretending. I didn’t want to spend all this time just trying to put money in a 401(k) and having to have all these fake conversations. This is way better. I mean, you meet some brilliant people in the corporate world, but I meet equally brilliant comedians. They have a different kind of brain, they think differently, and they’re brilliant.”

Delucci has gone from toning it down to gleefully living out loud and she’s having a ball. She has a talent for transforming everyday humdrum into an adventure and her fans revel in her unbridled delight in life and ability to squeeze lusciousness out of the mundane. From where to buy the perfect caftan, to the virtues of painting your living room pink, to why you should carry aluminum foil in your purse, to the proper technique for sauntering around your living room, the restorative properties of cheese or the hilarious New York Tawk Word of the Day— she is the poster girl for following your dreams and living authentically. (Note, Don’t let the Schmegges get you down). For those looking to break free and change their lives like she did, DeLucci first advises going easy on yourself in times of transition. “When I first got divorced, I spent six months crawling around my floor in a kimono. I was crawling, I was crying, I was overeating. I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing, the wrong thing, but I had to give myself some grace. You’ve got to give yourself that grace,” she says. Once the dust has settled it is time to tackle practical matters. “Get yourself straight, get your money in order, your finances, and then focus on all your own stuff,” she advises. Then comes the exploration process. Examine your options and see what’s out there with a sense of curiosity. DeLucci says “The ROI of being curious is a life well-lived.” And finally the most important step of all, go for your dreams. “You just have to just take the leap. No risk, no reward. It’s a corny little saying, but why wouldn’t you do it?” 

Elyse has become coach, cheerleader and gloom-chaser extraordinaire. Life may be rough but it can be funny as well so why not focus on the absurdity of the bad and celebrate the good things. She celebrates being human and acknowledges that while being human can be sad, sometimes it’s also really funny.

“At the end of the day, all the mishegoss, prices of things, all the shit in the politics, and friends, and all the stupid nonsense. At the end of the day, it’s really just about being normal, your family and keeping it together. Everybody goes through stuff. Somebody told me years ago, ‘If everybody put their problems in the center of the kitchen table, you would take yours back.’ Everybody goes through the same thing. We’re all human. So I feel like I take the things that are frustrating, or upsetting, or have been darker in my life, and I try to find the humor in them. And that’s what comedy is. I mean, that’s the essence of comedy and that’s what us comedians do.”