When women leave toxic workplaces or step out of roles that chronically undervalue them, it's saying: I will hold the remote to my own career, and I will use it. You have that remote too. The question is, what do you want to do with it?

If you're a woman of color with career ambitions in a male-dominated industry, you intimately know the resource everyone says you're short on: power. But you still govern your own choices, especially when the system is built to make you feel like you don't have any. So how do we put this power into action? I call it the Three Votes Framework. 

Do you ever feel "desensitized" to your accomplishments?

Like everyone who matters probably already knows, since they're CC'd on your Monday updates or sit in on your monthly strategy sessions.

So it feels redundant, maybe even cocky, to restate the boringly obvious magnitude and impact of your contributions (which, in your mind, substantiate why you should've been promoted last review cycle, and you feel frustrated that the promotion went to Disappointing Steve instead of you).