Jamie Lee is an executive coach for smart women who hate office politics. She helps them get promoted and better paid without throwing anyone under the bus.
All tagged female executive coach
You want to expand your career, maybe even pivot into something different and bigger — but the thought of networking events, office politics, or chasing superficial connections makes your skin crawl.
This playbook is for you: the ambitious but introverted professional who has valuable knowledge to share, wants to keep growing, and refuses to play the schmoozy, transactional game.
In the best of worlds, she could create abundance even without the billionaire. She could found a company, grow it, and guide it to a successful exit event that generates significant returns for herself and her shareholders.
So together, we crafted a negotiation script that anchored her starting salary above the stated range. We aimed for 4X her current pay.
Let’s be honest—coaching isn’t magic. But sometimes, the space to stop go-go-going and start listening to the wisdom of your deeper mind can unlock some seriously unexpected momentum.
That’s what happened with my client SJ.
You don’t need to play a zero-sum game in your career journey.
You don’t need to hustle for external validation or tie your self-worth to a job title.
But you can choose to grow — to negotiate for better pay, to rise into leadership — not because you’re trying to prove your worth…
Women are gaslit in the boardroom the same way we're gaslit in the doctor's office. In both medicine and management, male norms — including male bodies, male behaviors, and male baselines — form the default standard. So what can you do?
A client recently transitioned into a custom-made-for-her leadership role—with executive sponsorship and the team support of her dreams. And now? 🥶 She's frozen. In her words -- "overwhelmed by everything [she] could be doing."
The day I found out I was underpaid from reading an industry newsletter with salary benchmarks, it dawned on me like a gut punch:
I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO ADVOCATE FOR MYSELF.
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 mom — a South Korean immigrant with ironclad grit who wishes nothing less than abundance and success for her children — would probably get mad at me for saying this: I delight in making less money, by design.
It’s not a failure of strategy or a lack of hard work. Choosing to leave money on the proverbial table is a deliberate, values-based choice.
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.”)
I teach a concept called Itty Bitty Sh*tty Committee (not a new idea 💡 — I first heard it from Kara Snyder when she coached me about a decade ago, and I’ve run with it ever since).
Itty Bitty Sh*tty Committee, or IBSC, for short, is the voice of our inner critic.
On a cold February night in 2008, I ran away from the South Slope apartment I'd been sharing with my husband like my life depended on it. In a full-blown panic, I ran down 4th Avenue shrieking, "JUST GO AWAY!" to the man I'd shared a life with for the last three years.
When you’re that rare woman, one of the handful of people of color, or the neuro-sparkly oddball in leadership…Navigating office politics and advocating for yourself is spiritual work.
As an executive coach I work for the 1% -- but not the ones hoarding wealth. The 1% I work with are stockpiling something even more powerful, even more in short supply these days: Courage, vision, and the guts to rewrite the rules.
As with so many hard-working, conscientious professionals I've had the privilege of working with, the real challenge wasn’t the logistics of securing multiple offers. It was socialized guilt. Guilt is a learned emotion. It got ingrained in us by authority figures who wanted us to be—let’s be blunt—easily controllable.
The odds are stacked against employees, especially women and minorities. Macroeconomics, mismanagement, layoffs, discrimination—forces beyond your control determine your fate.
So why bother?
Why fight for a promotion?
Ever get a Slack (or Teams) message so harshly worded it makes you want to throw your laptop out the window?
Yeah, my client did too.
And that frustration? It can stick, mess with your focus, confidence, and even how you show up in that next 1:1 — unless you have a scientifically proven way to clear it.
Ready to turn “no” into your next opportunity?
You're done letting "no" (the pushback, all the hemming and hawing, and the excuses) hold you back.
You're ready to equip yourself with the best tools possible to get past impasse, so you make greater impact.
🦄 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…
