Somewhere between success and happiness, there’s a place where you’ll find a life well lived. You can find it between the block and the boardroom, the projects and the penthouse. It’s a place where you look back at what you’ve accomplished; look around at how hard you’ve worked to get there. Then you look ahead to a future with possibilities beyond anything you ever imagined.

If you are lucky enough to find your way to this place, chances are you will meet Denise Kaigler. Her spot is on a corner of JW Foster Boulevard in Canton, MA. Not quite the corner you’re thinking of, but a corner office in the headquarters of Reebok International Ltd.

Not everyone finds this place. Depending on whom you ask, success and happiness can be polar opposites, with success often meaning more responsibility and stress, and happiness often translating into settling for less than what was the original goal.

But Kaigler has found it, and she’d much rather make you feel welcome there than tell you she’s the Senior Vice-President of Global PR and Communications for a Fortune 500 company that broke new ground in the fusion of sports, music and entertainment. You could ask her what it’s like to throw parties in two cities within a 12-hour period, but she’d rather talk about what it’s like to be work and attend school full-time.

There’s a lot you could ask Denise Kaigler, but her story is too good to spoil with questions.

Born in Huntington, WV and raised in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, Kaigler attended Laurel High School in Prince George’s County, Md. She moved to Boston to attend Emerson College and pursue a career in journalism. The old sayings about the true lessons you learn in college being outside of the classroom? They certainly held true for Kaigler, as early on in her academic career she would learn a lesson that would shape her professional future.

“When I was at Emerson, there was a bill for 200 some-odd dollars that they were ready to kick me out for,” Kaigler says. “Even though my grades were good, they said ‘no way.’”

Kaigler worked two part-time jobs and a weekend gig to finance her college tuition, along with being a full-time student. She says that although her time at Emerson was the most difficult of her life, it made her resilient, confident and a believer in hard work.

“I pushed through it, but if it hadn’t been for that experience at Emerson, who knows how my life would have turned out?”

One of three daughters raised in a single-parent household, Kaigler attributes much of her determination to her mother; a mother who, in 1978, received a fellowship to MIT to participate in an urban fellows program, and currently serves as a statistics analysis manager at NASA. The work ethic and fortitude that runs from mother to daughter would carry Kaigler through the rest of her time at Emerson, and into her first job as a press aide to a Boston city councilman in 1985.

In the four years that followed, she worked as a reporter in Columbus, Ga. and returned to Boston to work for WHDH, an NBC network affiliate. She grew weary of the reporting grind, and would go on to earn her first job in public relations as the Director of Communications for the Boston Boys and Girls Clubs in 1989.

“I had a lot of dreams then about reporting from the White House and chasing the big story,” Kaigler says. “But I then realized that the lifestyle that accompanies being a reporter is not conducive to having a stable family, and I didn’t want my life to just be about my career.”

She worked in this capacity for two years, and in 1991, she got sick of it. Literally sick.

“There was this charity event that the Boys and Girls Club was having, and that day I was really, really feeling sick,” Kaigler remembers with a laugh. “I reluctantly go, and wouldn’t you know, somebody points me in the direction of a woman that can help the Club get money.”

With a churning stomach and a flushed face, Kaigler reluctantly introduced herself to Leslie Mays, then Director of Human Resources for Reebok and current vice-president of Global Diversity and Inclusion for Pfizer. A few days later, she came home to a message on her answering machine from Mays, wanting to discuss a potential job opportunity in Reebok’s media relations department.

Kaigler says that it was a total surprise, considering she did not know how Mays got her number. But it wasn’t the only surprise. Prior to the call, she found out that her illness was due to pregnancy.

In the years that followed, Kaigler quickly established herself as a valuable asset to the Reebok family. Initially joining the company as a media relations specialist, she was promoted to a senior level position within the department within six months. In 1998, she was named Senior Director of Corporate Communications and Entertainment Marketing for Reebok's Rockport division. It would be a little more than a year before she was on the move again, this time to head the entire Global Communications department for the Reebok brand.

Seven months later, she made history within the company, and set her sights on making history for the company.

“I just love being creative,” Kaigler says. “It’s exciting to me to try and do what’s never been done before.”

Kaigler had an integral role in the launch of Reebok’s “I Am What I Am” campaign. This initiative spawned a new level of marketing footwear and apparel, using hip-hop figures as well as professional athletes in its advertising.

You could ask her about working with artists like Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Nelly and Pharrell Williams, athletes such as Allen Iverson and Venus Williams, and her place in building the Reebok brand. But don’t get it twisted; it’s all in a day’s work for Kaigler.

“I’ve not once considered myself a celebrity,” she says. “I look at my job like anyone else looks at their job.”

Although her job is like any other, very few people have experienced the times and travels that Kaigler has. Times like the 12-hour party that she helped organize to launch the 50 Cent and Allen Iverson Shoe Collections. As if that weren’t enough, AI’s launch was in Philadelphia, and 50’s was in New York City.

“It was like a 3 p.m. to 3 a.m. thing,” Kaigler says. “We had a big launch at the Reebok store in Philadelphia, and when Iverson got there around six, it was total pandemonium. Then around eight, we had to drive up to New York to throw a similar RBK party for 50. At midnight, we had this huge basketball court descend down over the crowd, and we had it set up where people were playing ball in front of the rest of the people in attendance. It was just a great experience.”

Reebok has thrown 17 of these parties around the globe, but it was just one component that fell under her umbrella of managing talent relations for the company. One of her more memorable moments was not planned at all, but it did land her in Paris. With the CEO of hip-hop.

“I got a call out of the blue concerning a trip Jay-Z was making to France to do promotions,” Kaigler says. “It literally was like a day’s notice, but I found myself in the airport in a private hangar waiting to get on a private jet with Jay-Z and a couple of other people. Now that definitely was a defining moment, but I don’t think working with celebrities is the most important thing that I do. It’s really all about taking a format and building upon it to build the brand.”

You could ask her what it feels like to be the highest ranking African-American female with the Reebok Corporation, about how it felt to sit in executive meetings with white male counterparts attempting to undermine her ability and her composure. But she’d rather tell you that while it hasn’t always been easy, it has always been all about getting the job done.

“I’ve had a few experiences,” she says. “But I can’t think of a time where I’ve been blatantly discriminated against. Unless I have proof, I don’t throw myself on the sword. Right or wrong, I don’t walk around with my race or my gender on my back. But if my race or my gender puts me in a position to standout, if those things called for me to run faster, talk louder and work harder, then it’s never been a burden.”

Ask her about one particular meeting, where an executive questioned her decision making and thoroughness in following up with another department working on a specific objective, and that when her paper trail proved him wrong, the lesson she learned about big business.

“This person’s attitude was very rude, and he was trying to make me look bad in a room full of company executives,” she says. “Everyone who was in that meeting, who said nothing about the way he chose to conduct himself was forwarded the trail of emails that proved his people were responsible for not bringing him up to speed on what my people were doing. But even with that, I learned how to take care of myself, to not depend on a cavalry to ride in to your rescue.”

You could ask her about how her neighbors brag about living next door to her and seeing her on television, but she’d rather tell you about her husband and two children that she lives for. She’d rather tell you about her many mentoring efforts within Reebok and in the Boston area for young women, particularly women of color. She’d rather tell you that her five-year plan for future success is to help young people avoid the obstacles that she encountered on her way to her special place, the one on the corner of JW Foster Boulevard in Canton, MA.

You could asker Denise Kaigler about how to get to the special place between success and happiness, but she’d rather make sure you feel welcome once you get there.