No one is coming to crown you. You put the tiara on.

When you bring the locus of control back inside, you’re not denying the reality of bias or structural barriers.

You hold the remote. You choose your next move. You vote—for yourself, with your tribe, and, when needed, with your feet.

That’s what sovereignty looks like in your career.

Women sometimes tell me, “But I don’t know how to negotiate for myself,” as if it’s a fact as obvious as the sky.

I don’t buy that for a second.

As a coach who’s helped women earn over $3 million and counting in additional compensation—the issue is not that women are somehow inherently inferior at negotiation.

The real truth is that we’re operating in systems that penalize us for using negotiation skills, and we’ve been socialized to doubt what we already do brilliantly.

Paradoxically, when you bring this calm, sovereign confidence to the table, you won’t come off as arrogant. Why?

Because you’re showing them that the leader they’ve been looking for is already standing right in front of them. You’re saving them recruitment fees, reducing their mental load, and bringing clarity to the conversation.

Your self-advocacy becomes an act of service.

When I was an 18-year-old high school senior and a chronically stressed school newspaper editor, I decided that "the ask" should not be a male-only privilege.

I was an introvert, but I was also an advocate.

In a recent coaching session, a client—a Senior Director in healthcare—shared that she felt she needed to "prove herself" to secure her next promotion. 

As a language nerd, I find idioms fun, but as a highly-sensitive soul, I also know firsthand the dangers of internalizing them wholesale.

Women of color face systemic bias at work when promotion goalposts keep moving and ‘emotional labor’ becomes the excuse. In this post, I share how these patterns show up, why they’re unjust, and a free 2-minute EFT tapping guide to process anger, stress, and exhaustion — so you can reclaim power, clarity, and momentum in your career.

If, as you go to engage the room, anxiety and doubt rise in your chest... It’s easy to mistake your uniqueness as something to be fixed or tucked away—like a stained shirt sleeve you’re embarrassed to be wearing.

When your mind floods with doubt, and you wonder if you’re too much—or not enough—here’s the truth you’ve temporarily lost sight of:

You’re allowed to feel both proud and petrified. Brave and unsure.

You don’t have to resolve that tension. You get to be real inside it. That’s one of the most honest, human things you can do.

My client, Kasvi, came into our session feeling frustrated, angry, and rejected.

Her boss had shut down a well-intentioned suggestion for improving team output—something Kasvi offered in good faith to support the team’s performance.

But instead of openness, she hit a wall: “That’s my problem to fix,” said the boss tersely. (Translation: “Stay off my turf.”)

Armed with confidence-boosting tools, my client aced the technical and behavioral interviews. When it became clear an offer was on the table, she reached out to me: "How should I negotiate this?" Here's how we approached it with three key steps…

🦄 Behind the myth of a unicorn startup is burnout.

👉 But burning out doesn’t have to be your destiny when you are wizened to a few truths.

Here’s what went down in coaching today…

My client received an incomplete email about a time-sensitive project from one of her direct reports. Her response requesting the missing information was met with a terse and defensive reply. 

Moments like these have her feeling tension behind her eyes and wondering: 

• Why is my team so mediocre? 

• Is it me? Am I doing something wrong? 

• Can I keep growing my career if I struggle with people like this?

In the interactive workshop, I walk volunteers through exactly how to do peripheral vision and bilateral stimulation, two self-directed neuroplasticity tools I learned from my mentor Melissa Tiers, author of the Anti-Anxiety Toolkit. In the book, Melissa states she intends to get the reader to learn these rapid techniques to rewire the brain FAST and, within minutes, experience a palpable shift in their bodies. Which is precisely what we did in Confidence Lab.

Now is the time to start taking stock of your contributions, so you can gracefully and assertively take credit for your wins and set the stage for your career advancement in conversations before, during, and after the mid-year review. (Or, if going elsewhere is the better answer, in a series of interviews you set up in the coming months.)

I used to be a high-strung, high-anxiety high-achiever who was convinced she wasn't achieving fast enough.

Got downtime on the job? I must be doing something wrong.

Got hired at a hedge fund? My job can't possibly be safe, because I don't know enough.

Like the iPhone, learning the inner logic of our brains is user-friendly and doesn’t require a science degree. You can become skilled at using this inner logic to help you generate more confidence, get promoted, and get better paid.

In this space, we alchemize workplace anxiety, stuckness, and frustration into pragmatic groundedness, forward momentum, and therefore, gratifying self-actualization. 

20 years ago, we were graduating from Smith and had NO idea that we can grow in our careers faster than we thought possible WITHOUT
✅ Overworking
✅ Over-accommodating
✅ Or overthinking the whole thing.
Still working on that last one? You’re not alone.

A few things attendees of my past negotiation webinars have said. The next webinar “The Art of Negotiating Salary, Resources, and More” is on Friday, April 19th, 2024. Register HERE today. Or get the free resources (scripts and replay) HERE.