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"When Women Lead" with Julia Boorstin

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This week on What's At Stake, our host Penta Managing Director Ylan Mui is joined by CNBC's Senior Media & Tech Correspondent Julia Boorstin to discuss her new book, "When Women Lead." In a world where only around 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women and less than 2% of venture capital dollars go to startups with female founders, Julia and Ylan break down what the book can teach us about what women achieve, why they succeed, and what we can learn from them. 

Beyond recapping some of the stories of successful women in the book, Ylan and Julia discuss what skills, attributes, and attitudes all leaders can implement to progress in their careers and live better. All business leaders can benefit from this episode's conversation on changing the corporate culture, reinventing markets to fit new demographics, and rethinking what success looks like. Listen now! 

Speaker 1:

Welcome to this week's episode of what's at Stake. I'm your host, Ilan Mui, Managing Director at Penta, here today with Julia Boorstin, CNBC Senior Media and Tech Correspondent, my former colleague and, of course, a dear friend. Julia recently released a book entitled when Women Lead that uncovers the key characteristics that help top female leaders thrive as they innovate, grow businesses and navigate crises. Thank you, Julia, for joining us on the podcast today. I'm so happy to be here and so happy to see you. It's very exciting. It's going to be a great conversation. I'm so interested to dive into your book. As we said, the title is when Women Lead, but I think the subtitle is actually super interesting as well. It is what they achieve, why they succeed and how we can learn from them, and I felt like those questions really resonated with me, because I think it's something that every woman asks themselves as they start to navigate their career. So tell us a little bit about what you found out.

Speaker 2:

So I started off by just wanting to tell the stories of amazing women who had defied the odds. As a reporter at CNBC, I saw two things that stood in sharp contrast to me. On one hand, I was interviewing these amazing, phenomenal women who were succeeding with their startups, running businesses, and a lot of these women I met through the Disruptor 50 list, which covers the fastest growing of private companies that are using technology to disrupt different sectors, and I was meeting these women who were approaching business differently. They were creating entirely new sectors or taking fresh approach to old industries, and I was so impressed by them and I really was struck by the fact that they really did seem to be leading differently and succeeding by taking different approaches. And on the other hand, I was seeing all these statistics about how rare those women were. So, for instance, currently about 10% of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 are women. That is about an all-time high, but the numbers of women in leadership are very, very low relative to various other things, and especially in technology. The women I was meeting who were succeeding in the startup space were incredibly rare, because currently less than 2% of all venture capital dollars goes to female founders, and over the decade of around 2011 to 2021, that number was 3%, so the number has actually declined.

Speaker 2:

So I was seeing these amazing women.

Speaker 2:

I was seeing various studies about how diverse leadership tends to outperform and, on the other hand, I was seeing that these women were incredibly rare and had to defy crazy odds.

Speaker 2:

So I wanted to elevate the stories of the women who had succeeded and I wanted to share the excitement that I found in hearing their stories and also different kinds of role models.

Speaker 2:

But the more women I interviewed for the book, the more I realized that it wasn't just enough to show their success, that I really need to explain why their approaches were working, and I wanted to sort of break down these stories that seemed so exceptional into different pieces that made them more relatable and helped us understand, as readers, how we can take some of their skills and strategies and emulate them. I also think it's really important to point out that these skills and strategies, though they are more likely to be demonstrated by women, are things that everyone could study and learn from. We're a culture that celebrates people who have defied the odds, people who are exceptional, and these women who have succeeded are exceptional and therefore I think of great takeaways for everyone, and so I think there's something about taking the story, using the research and the academic studies and the data to explain the story and then to yield some takeaways I hope would be very useful for our readers.

Speaker 1:

So what did these women do differently? What helped them defy the odds?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think it's different for every person. I would say every leader in the book, every woman I write about in the book, and there are. Every woman I write about in the book and there are about 60 women I write about in the book. I interviewed about 120 women for the book. All of them leads in their own authentic way. The word authenticity, I think, is overused these days, but I think it's really about not trying to fit themselves into a box, not trying to follow a certain archetype of leadership, the sort of more traditionally male top-down leadership, and they really spent time to figure out what they were good at, what they weren't, how to hire teams that would support them and also complement them. The one universal trait is, I would say, is a growth mindset which every successful leader has, which really breaks down to this combination of confidence and also humility leader has, which really breaks down to this combination of confidence and also humility, and it was interesting to see this evolve over time that to succeed, these women need to have the confidence that they could keep learning and growing and changing, but also the humility to realize that they didn't know everything and they shouldn't take, they shouldn't sort of go into situations, knowing that they'd be able to figure it out. They need to learn from people around them, and it's that magic balance, just hitting that right, exact balance of confidence and humility, that enables people to have the right kind of a growth mindset to succeed. Having said that, there were some skills and strategies that women are more likely to deploy that I saw illustrated beautifully by so many of the leaders that I profiled in the book. Some of them may sound familiar to you, like empathy. Women tend to rank higher in tests of empathy. What I think is really interesting about this is that empathy is not an inherent trait. It is taught, it is studied. People can become better at empathy, and empathy is also, I think, should not be described as a soft skill or as a skill that sort of diminishes, something that's like a nice thing to do. If you're empathetic as a leader, you can be a much better negotiator because you can really understand where your counterparty is coming from, or you're going to be able to better motivate your team because you're able to put themselves in their shoes and put yourself in their shoes and understand how to really make them excited about overperforming. So I think that this idea of empathy, which is often characterized as a more female trait, is something that every leader should really be trying to study and push themselves on to be a more successful negotiator, a more successful manager of teams.

Speaker 2:

Another one is vulnerability. Women are more likely to show vulnerability in the workplace. Vulnerability is also occasionally associated with weakness, and this is something that a lot of women struggled with how to be vulnerable in such a way that does not show weakness and instead shows strength. And the best leaders are those that say here's an area in which I'm incredibly vulnerable, I don't know what I'm doing here, I need your help and they use that vulnerability as a way to invite collaboration and, at the same time, they could use that vulnerability to show how strong they were in other areas. I feel so confident in my abilities with X, y and Z that I can admit my weakness in this other area. So strategic deployment of vulnerability.

Speaker 2:

And then another one which is really key, which I saw illustrated in so many leadership stories, is communal leadership. For so long, the leadership that was celebrated and sort of the one way to lead was a top-down, hierarchical leadership. Communal leadership means going out to people across your team, people that may be in far-flung offices and really trying to figure out what their feedback is, what they're seeing, and using that communal style and pulling on the perspectives of everyone to then make a final decision, and that's the way that women are more likely to lead. But I would say it is a leadership style that everyone should really be studying now, and so I have more examples.

Speaker 1:

But I thought I'll leave it there for now. No, this is really great, and I want to pick up on one of the characteristics that you mentioned, which is vulnerability, because I think that is definitely not a term that we typically associate with leadership, but I like the way that you described it as almost strategic vulnerability and being able to admit when you don't know something because you are so confident in your other skills, you feel empowered to ask for help when you need it. You led that part of the book with an example from your conversations with Gwyneth Paltrow and how she felt when she started her company Goop. Tell us a little bit about that story.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean she's a perfect example of vulnerability where she you know Gwyneth Paltrow didn't go to business school. She never graduated from college but she founded Goop and she was very much the vision behind Goop. But for many years Goop had what she called sort of professional CEOs and there were two CEOs who came in for a couple of years each to help grow the company, but ultimately, when the second one left, it was time to hire a new CEO and she and the board and investors were interviewing potential CEOs and one of them, a man, was in a conversation with her and made a comment about how Gwyneth Paltrow was referring to some of the stats and the numbers and she was talking about areas of growth and weakness and where they were working, and the CEO candidate said wow, you really seem to know your stuff. Like wow, like I'm so surprised. Like gee, you really know your numbers.

Speaker 1:

It's not like. This is a business I founded.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so and she had this sort of combination of feeling, both latter, that this very successful guy was telling her that she was doing a good job breaking down the numbers, and also, at the same time, kind of offended, like of course I, I do. Um, and for her it was a struggle between owning the stuff that she knew and also coming to terms with the fact that she didn't have these areas of expertise, like she was not schooled in, uh you know, and had not taken a lot of econ or stat classes, and so she felt this sort of like insecurity about that. But what she realized over the course of running Goop, and then, by the way, after that interaction, she decided she wanted to ask for her board for the CEO role. She's like, what am I doing here? Like I know this business and the stuff that I don't know. I will surround myself with people who can help me. I'll have a CFO and a COO, people who can help me.

Speaker 2:

Interesting is she made this sort of strategic decision a couple of years into running the business that she was not or you know, not a CEO, but before that that she was going to admit what she didn't know and she was going to say look, I can talk to you about the content we're going to create or the.

Speaker 2:

You know the, the, the products that we're going to create or the events that we're going to host, and I may have clear leadership there, but I'm not going to pretend I know what these acronyms mean. And so when we're in a business meeting, I'm going to admit that she went through a phase of Googling things under the desk. She's like who am I kidding here? Why not admit what I don't know? I'm going to, I'm going to make myself smarter and I'm also going to empower the people around me to ask questions when they have questions too. And so there was something about that moment where she's like put her phone on the table, that I'm no longer Googling under the table, like let's just talk about it. That created this sense of transparency and also authenticity. That went a long way opportunity.

Speaker 1:

We often talk about the idea of imposter syndrome, right? Women feeling like do I belong in this room? Do I belong in this role? Folks are going to find out that maybe I don't know what I'm talking about and it sounds like what you're finding is that this conversation has really evolved so that we don't have to worry about imposter syndrome because we're not posing. You're just admitting if you don't know something, and that's okay too.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I also think it enables you to say here's what I feel really good about, right, here's what I do wanna to have ownership of and authority over. I also think it's really important to think about sort of breaking down that imposter syndrome. I mean, there's some statistics I referenced in the book about how men occasionally feel imposter syndrome too not at the same rates as women do. But one reason women feel imposter syndrome too, not at the same rates as women do, but one reason women feel imposter syndrome more than men is because they don't match the pattern or the stereotype of what leaders are supposed to look like. And there's a really interesting study in the book that I found so fascinating that basically breaks down the fact that the more rare someone or a type of person is in a role, the more you assume that they're not going to be good at that role. And there was a funny academic study about horse racing and jockeys male and female jockeys because male and female jockeys actually compete against each other and what they found is that people were betting against the female jockeys, and incorrectly, more in the races where women were underrepresented. And there are various studies that illustrate this, but this one, I felt like made it so stark.

Speaker 2:

The more you don't see someone in a certain role, like a female jockey in a certain type of race, the more you're going to assume they're not good at that thing. It's natural, human nature. You don't see female CEOs, so you're like, oh, there must be a reason why there aren't female CEOs, maybe they're not good at that. Or so you're like, oh, there must be a reason why there aren't female CEOs. That's there. Maybe they're not good at that.

Speaker 2:

Or something I hear from a lot of men is maybe they're opting out of that, which, of course, is not not true. But I do think that that element of a pattern matching, even implement, influences the way women think about themselves. I have never seen someone who looks like me in that role, so how do I know I'm supposed to be there? And I think that's underlying a lot of the imposter syndrome. And the more we could share these diverse examples of the various ways that leaders look or act or behave, or their various backgrounds, the more there won't be such a dominant stereotype of what people are supposed to look like that people will be constantly comparing themselves to.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and in the book you talk about this feeling of being othered when you're the only one in the room, perhaps and these women that you interviewed took that experience or that feeling of being othered and used it to their advantage. How did they do that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So there are some great examples of women who seemed like they were insiders. Right, they like, for instance, sally Krawcheck was, you know, in running Citigroup, one of the most powerful companies or Whitney Wolf Hurd, who was, who was a co-founder of Tinder in the early days and they seem like insiders. They knew the way the business works, but they always had an outsider perspective because they were the only one in the room. And what I found in various examples and I and I write about this throughout a chapter in the book is this idea that if you are a woman, even if you're an insider, you may always feel like an outsider. Or, if it is in any situation, if you're in a predominantly white environment and you're a person of color, you are going to feel like an outsider, even if you're sort of in the management or in the group. And I think what's so interesting is that outsider perspective can be a massive advantage.

Speaker 2:

In the stories about Whitney Wolf Hurd and also Sally Project, I write about this idea of cultural numbness, and there's a lot of research about the fact that the longer that someone's part of an organization, the more they become numb to the things that the organization is doing wrong, or maybe ethically wrong, numb to the things that the organization is doing wrong. Or maybe ethically and as an outsider, you may be more immune to that. You may say, hey, you may get used to running something some way or making some financial decision, but I'm not sort of falling prey to this cultural numbness. I'm an outsider, I'm not part of this culture, and I think that this is wrong. And that's exactly what happened when Winnie Wilford founded Bumble and when Sally Krawcheck you know, back from the financial crisis called for people to be refunded, she said you guys might be used to this, but I think that this is the wrong decision.

Speaker 2:

So I think there's something that is really valuable about having an outsider perspective, but also not just from a cultural numbness perspective, but also as if you're an outsider, you're going to come up with new ways of doing this. You're going to say you may have been always running your retail business this way, but I don't think it serves female consumers. Or your health care business may have always been been based on your male consumer base, but like what about the women who make up 80 percent of all health care decisions? So I think identifying the value of an outsider perspective has really enabled women to invent new industries, reinvent old industries and occasionally raise their hands where they say something's wrong here like the existing infrastructure wasn't working for them.

Speaker 1:

These women are all women who created something new right. They started their own businesses because they wanted to do things an entirely different way, rather than, you know, a CEO or a female CEO who comes into an existing business and has to sort of work with the systems that she's got right. What did they do? I guess two questions out of this. What did they do differently when creating their own business or their systems or infrastructure they put into place that made the operations or the culture of their companies different. And then two do you think that's harder to do? Do you think it's harder to start from scratch versus try to fix what might be broken? Oh my gosh, do you think it's harder to start from scratch versus try to fix what might be broken?

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh, it's 100% harder to start from scratch. Reinventing the wheel is much harder than trying to tweak a wheel that already exists to extend the metaphor. But no, of course it's incredibly hard. There's a lot of risk associated with it and you also oftentimes, if you're part of an ecosystem like a retail ecosystem, are going to have to convince a lot of stakeholders that they should be willing to do things differently. The situations in which I saw women be most likely to try to reinvent an ecosystem are the situations where they were often the target consumer. So there are tweaks like flipping something upside down, like Tinder, which predominantly featured men making the first move. To Bumble, where women had to make the first move. To something like the health care industry, where women literally make 80 percent of the decisions in health care.

Speaker 2:

In the health care business, many people would say it's not working so well in terms of long-term outcomes. So I think of someone like Toyin Ajayi, the CEO of CityBlock Health. She was a resident at Boston Medical and she said this system is broken. As a woman, she empathized with her patients. She saw they didn't trust the system and she also empathized with the fact that she was treating them. She was giving them medical care, but then, for the poorest patients or the homeless patients, they were discharging them to the streets and they would come back.

Speaker 2:

She said this system is not working. So she created a company in CityBlock Health that gets rewarded based on the long-term outcomes for the patients, not on the volume of care they provide. It's a totally different way of providing care, but as part of that, as a medical system, cityblock Health also has people who are effectively social workers, who are working with them, helping their low income patients get access to housing or food to make sure they can actually, you know, keep up with their protocols. That the doctors are recommending and thinking about medical care as something that's very different from medicine or bigger than medicine is a totally, totally different way of thinking about medical care. Really, I would say reinventing the wheel.

Speaker 2:

Or women like Julie Wainwright, who founded the real real, or or Jen Hyman, who founded Rent the Runway. They were saying we don't think the fashion business is working for women. Women are the main consumers of fashion, but why should I have to go buy new clothes every season? Because that's what the fashion industry dictates. And instead Jen Hyman created this, this rent the runway system of women who had a closet in the cloud and could rent clothes and for a rent the runway. I was saying let's take a more environmentally sustainable way of doing clothing and really enables anyone to participate in the circular economy of high-end fashion, where the clothes are built to last, so make them last with different owners. So there was something about these women saying these are established industries. They happen to be run by men, because most industries are run by men and it's not working for me. So let me take a totally different approach. But that's that's hard I mean. You look at the lawsuits that that Julie Wainwright faced with the real real from Chanel who said we don't want anyone but Chanel selling our bags. Or Jen Hyman had to convince people to sell her dresses because the department stores wanted to protect their businesses. So taking on a whole industry or trying to turn an industry upside out does come with big challenges, but I also think taking a more systemic approach to what might be wrong with the system, like whether it's healthcare or retail, is something that women maybe have more of an opportunity to do, for two reasons.

Speaker 2:

One is that outsider thing you mentioned, but then also there's this idea of a divergent approach to problem solving.

Speaker 2:

This is another thing that women are more likely to do. The research shows that men are more likely to take a convergent approach to problem solving, which means they're focusing in honing in on fixing a specific problem as quickly and efficiently as possible. Obviously, that has its advantages. You want speed to fix a problem, but a divergent approach is much more big picture. It's pulling on threads, trying to understand the ecosystem, asking questions that may seem only tangentially related, to get a bigger sense of what's going on. That's something that women are more likely to do, and it's actually found that one reason men and women are such great collaborators is because you want both. You want the convergent male approach with the divergent female approach, to both do things quickly and also think more big picture. But to me, what's so interesting about that divergent female approach is that if you have a problem, if you take the time to understand what's going on around it, then you may be able to come up with a much more big picture solution, rather than just putting a Band-Aid on the problem.

Speaker 1:

Your book is out in hardback, hardcover and paperback and you're now sort of translating some of the findings and some of the work that you did in the book to your day-to-day life as a reporter at CNBC. Tell us a little bit about this new initiative called Changemakers.

Speaker 2:

Yes. So I really love the process of reporting my book and getting to tell the stories of these about roughly 60 women who are in there. But the book is a fixed product and it's very data-driven and I hope it will live on for years and years and be used as a textbook. I'm talking to a lot of universities, but what I found is that it's not enough just to have those 60 women stories in the world and I really wanted to keep on telling these stories of amazing women who are changing business and who offer such an exciting and diverse range of new role models, not just for women but for anyone to look to as new exemplars in leadership.

Speaker 2:

So at CNBC, we launched a list called the Changemakers List. It's called Changemakers Women Transforming Business. The list came out at the end of February and we have our first event April 18th in New York, and the idea is that every year we're going to have 50 women on the list that are not just succeeding in business but changing it as well. It'll be 50 new women every year. The list is unranked and my goal with this list was really to elevate many more stories of women who are doing extraordinary things, and I think it's so important to get these stories out there, for men and women to have new types of role models, to understand that leadership comes in all sorts of different shapes and sizes and there doesn't have to be one way to lead, but also to start changing the conversation of what success looks like.

Speaker 2:

So many of the women on the list are purpose-driven and have an additional purpose beyond just generating profits and, for the first time on a CNBC list we have philanthropic organizations represented. We have five women representing four philanthropic organizations that are using their platforms and running their organizations in ways that are incredibly tech-driven, data-driven, efficient and, I think, have a lot of valuable takeaways for people in the for-profit world. So I think it was really important to take these women, whether they were in the for-profit or not for-profit world, and show how they're really changing things up. So it's been really exciting and I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. And I think it's also just been thrilling to see that these stories are not just for women. These stories are for everyone who wants to learn how to become a leader or a better leader or to drive change.

Speaker 1:

Julia, you and I have known each other for a long time now, so I feel like I can ask you a couple of personal questions, if you don't mind, sure Including how. Has writing this book and how have the learnings from this book changed the way that you approach your own job and your own career? Has it?

Speaker 2:

It's totally changed, really.

Speaker 2:

The way I yeah, absolutely the way I go about my life. I think you know the book started with storytelling and then it led me to the research and the data, and the data took two forms, or a couple of forms, I would say. The first was explaining and, as you'll see in the book, the data explains why these skills and strategies that women deploy are so effective. It also explains why women are more likely to do some of these things, but also anyone can do them, but why women are more likely to do some of these things. And then also a lot of the data breaks down double standards, um, I. The book is very positive. I'm very positive about gender gaps, closing Um, but there are still a lot of negative data that I really had no choice but to include about why women face double standards and what the impact of that is Um and I. And I wanted to include that data because I thought it was important to give people information so they could better navigate challenges.

Speaker 2:

I really struggled with writing this chapter at the end, towards the end of the book, about the double standards, because I didn't want to dwell on them, but what I realized over the course of reading all this research is. I was using this research in my own life to navigate obstacles and I found myself getting through the day or getting through a tough situation and realizing I felt so much better about things and I was so much more confident in navigating a tough situation because I had just read a study that explained why I got that negative comment and it really empowered me and emboldened me and made me realize that a lot of the commentary that may have thrown me off or sent me spiraling or sent me asking three colleagues to watch an interview and ask if they thought my questioning had been too harsh, that it really had nothing to do with me and that I didn't need to be as emotionally impacted by a negative comment or criticism by someone because that criticism may actually have not had nothing to do with me and my performance. And there was one specific incident where someone told me I'd been too harsh in an interview, my questions had been too harsh, and that has happened before. Um, and before I might have asked you or another colleague to watch an interview, let me know what you think. Was I too harsh? Which question was maybe over the line? And I and I in all of the times that had happened before.

Speaker 2:

I never walked away from an interview saying, oh yeah, you're right, that was too harsh. But I would always get really upset about it and I would always sort of beat myself up and wonder what I could have done differently or better. And this time I had just read a study that said women are judged based on their tone. And underlying so many double standards is this idea that women are supposed to be warm and nurturing and if they act in a way that is not warm and nurturing, then it can be sort of disconcerting for people. Or throw people off, throw men off. Someone could tell me I seemed harsh and it really had nothing to do with me. My performance was strong, I didn't need to get worried about it, and I think there's so many examples of that where whether it's imposter syndrome or concerns about negative comments that I just don't feel upset about it anymore, and I think there's something really empowering about having data, and the more you know, the easier it is to navigate obstacles.

Speaker 1:

Right, it's not you, julia, it's them.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly. And what am I? Wasting all my time worrying about it, for Right.

Speaker 1:

I wanted to also ask you about the future. So, as we've said multiple times now, the women that you interviewed were exceptional. They defied the odds, they stood out, but one frustrating thing that I feel, personally, is that it shouldn't take an exceptional person to be able to break down some of the barriers and to overcome some of the challenges that women have historically faced. So what do you think needs to happen so that other women, who are really great but maybe not quite as odds defying as the ones we've described, can still feel empowered to take control of their careers and to be leaders within their own organizations and within their own lives?

Speaker 2:

I totally agree. The fact that less than 2% of venture capital funding goes to women and that number is down over the past couple of years is horrible and crazy, and women should not have to defy those kinds of odds to succeed. I do think understanding the data and understanding those odds is helpful. Anyone will be more successful if they do understand the obstacles they may face when going into a room. Whether it's negotiating for pay you should know what your male colleagues get paid or whether it's trying to figure out when it's an appropriate time to ask for a raise or a promotion. You need to sort of have all of the information, even if it shows that you're at a disadvantage. Understand why and how you're at a disadvantage. Don't be discouraged by it, but use that information as ammunition to help yourself. So I think that's really key. But I also think that women can draw upon each other in a way that they couldn't 10 or 15 or 20 years ago, and I've been so impressed and inspired and blown away by the stories I've heard about women helping other women. I've had so many women help me and my colleagues have been amazing and my former colleagues, like you've been amazing. But I think that you know, 20 or 30 years ago, women were not incentivized to help each other. They knew there was only room for one of them to succeed. Now that's not true anymore. Now we know that there are going to be more than one or two women around a board, a boardroom table, and I think, and I think that that knowledge is really encouraging women to pull other women along with that, and so I think that's key that we're seeing new networks of women, new tools, new organizations whether it's like chief or sort of industry organizations, where women can come together and really help each other out. So that makes me optimistic. I also think, fundamentally, the data shows that more diverse organizations perform better. Gender diversity, racial diversity at every level at the board level, at the C-suite management teams diverse perspectives not only bring new points of view but also help everyone else in the room raise the level of their game. And the studies on that are overwhelming and so fascinating, and I have a couple of them in the book.

Speaker 2:

But I think for me, knowing that everyone will benefit if you're in the room, it's not just like I'm fighting to get in the room because I want a chance, it's that I'm bringing something new and different or they need me.

Speaker 2:

They can't just have a homogenous group of people running something. I think that should be a sense of reassurance for women or anyone who's trying to defy the odds. And I think, even though there are some negative trends, like the 3% in venture capital funding dropping to 1.8%, I do think other trends are positive. Specifically, if you look at the C-suite and boards, the C-suite other than the CEO is becoming more diverse and boards the C-suite other than the CEO is becoming more diverse and boards are becoming more diverse, and having a diverse board is the best indicator of whether or not you're going to get a female CEO. So I think that's a key thing to watch. But I mean, at the end of the day, things are inching sort of slowly forward, but we can all draw on each other for help and I think the more people feel empowered and educated about what their obstacles are, the more they'll be able to overcome that.

Speaker 1:

I love the way you put that You're not just fighting for your own opportunity, but you should really see yourself as a value add to the overall mission and goals of the organization and that's that's a really important Exactly.

Speaker 2:

Exactly Flip the conversation. They're not helping you. You're going to help them?

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, Julia. Final question for you what advice would you give to young women who are at the beginning of their careers and starting to think about how to navigate all this? Is there one thing that you would tell them?

Speaker 2:

Yes, the thing I regret most is not having taken more risks, and I was always told to keep my head down, do the work, work harder than anyone else and it was all going to all be okay.

Speaker 2:

But I also think part of that instruction was to not, um, not push myself out of my comfort zone or taking take real professional risks, and I think that, um, I was sort of like one day, one year at a time and I didn't get the advice to think long-term about what my audacious goals were and to set near-term goals.

Speaker 2:

Here are my goals for the next six months, here's my goal for the year and here's my goal for three years. And I think it's really valuable to lay out those goals near-term, mid-term, long-term and then figure out what you need to do to accomplish them. And I think the more that women or anyone is really pushed to think audaciously, the more you can lay out a path that will help you get there. And part of that involves really drawing on the advice and guidance of people around you. And I really believe in this idea of having a personal board of advisors rather than a traditional mentor, and this idea that young women need to think about who can I go to for advice on different things? Who's my group of friends that's going to hold me accountable and push me to push myself? And how can I make sure I'm not just getting by every week, but then I'm really setting my sights on what I want to accomplish?

Speaker 1:

Julia, you are a value add to this podcast, always an inspiration as a friend, as a colleague and now as an author. Thank you so much for joining the podcast today To our listeners. Remember that you can like and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and follow us on Twitter at PentaGRP. I'm your host, ilan, and, as always, thanks for listening to what's At State.