This episode takes a step back in time to look at the history of women as public speakers, and how the past relates to the present. If you look at history books or speech anthologies, you might assume women didn't say very much in public until the 20th century. But that's far from the case. My guest, speechwriter and coach Dana Rubin, has compiled a speech bank of women's speeches going back hundreds of years. Women were speaking up...it's just that HIStory wasn't interested. And that legacy, Da...
Mar 16, 2021•23 min
Erica Heilman is the host of the podcast Rumblestrip . The Atlantic recently named her series ‘Our Show’ the best podcast of 2020. But before she was a brilliant podcaster, Erica was a lot of other things. She was a seller of muffins, she was a theater performer, she milked cows, she worked on a TV news show, then in documentaries, then for a healthcare website…and that’s not all. It took Erica a while to get where she wanted to be. And she’ll be the first to admit she had no idea where that was...
Feb 25, 2021•26 min•Ep. 171
Dara Kass had always known emergency medicine was for her. She loved the excitement of the ER, the fact that she always had too much to do. It was only when she had a baby that she realized the emergency room, like so many other workplaces, wasn’t going to fit in with her - she was expected to fit in with it. She set out to change that for her and everyone else. But when Covid-19 hit New York last spring, Dara was presented with challenges she could never have imagined - catching the virus herse...
Feb 04, 2021•29 min
2021, a year so many of us have been hoping will turn a global page for the better, has got off to a rocky start. There is so much we can’t control at the moment, so in this show we’re going to concentrate on what we can do - that is, take the reins of our own careers, albeit from behind our computers. My guest is Lisa Unwin, co-founder of London-based Reignite Academy and author of She’s Back . I wanted to talk to Lisa because she’s now optimistic about the future, when a few months ago she fel...
Jan 18, 2021•25 min•Ep. 169
Being single is a lifestyle choice for some women and an unwelcome reality for others. In this episode we meet three women, each with different perspectives on living and working alone, especially during a pandemic. Retired professor Joan DelFattore has been happily single for decades. Susie, a consultant, is mourning the lack of a husband and children. Her isolation during Covid just makes everything feel worse - particularly when HR seems fixated on families. And psychotherapist Magali Rozenfe...
Dec 17, 2020•30 min•Ep. 168
Today we revisit the theme of body language in the workplace: hunching, spread legs, eye contact, and kissing - all in a business setting. We meet Yale psychology professor Marianne LaFrance , who discusses how men and women play up their power, or lack of it, through non-verbal communication. And Financial Times journalist Elaine Moore talks about how she deals with unwanted male kisses at business meetings. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Dec 09, 2020•21 min•Ep. 167
Working from home is the new normal for a lot of us. But that doesn't mean we like it. Or that we're good at it. In this episode I sit down with Laura Vanderkam, author of I Know How She Does It, What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, and, most recently, The New Corner Office: How the Most Successful People Work from Home. Working from your house or apartment has taken on new meaning - and stress - in the pandemic. But Laura says there are ways to gain focus, force yourself to stop...
Nov 23, 2020•24 min
Now may not seem like the best time to ask for what you want at work, whether that's more money, a new title, or more time off. Everyone's under stress and putting in extra hours, right? But this situation isn't ending any time soon. And you may be about to burn out. So why NOT ask for what you want and need? In this episode we meet negotiation coach Fotini Iconomopoulos . We talk about her background as a child of Greek immigrants and what that taught her about advocating for herself. And we di...
Nov 10, 2020•25 min•Ep. 165
In this show we meet a small business owner, Rachel Garrett who specializes in boosting women's careers - only to find that during Covid, her own was flagging. She is far from alone. We now know that in September, four times as many women than men left the US workforce thanks to the pressures of the pandemic. Rachel and I discuss the difficult conversations she started at home about whose career was getting priority, and why it's important - even now - that women don't put themselves on the side...
Oct 29, 2020•21 min
We're still in a pandemic and we know women's careers are suffering. So many of us are managing working from home and family at the same time. But what if you don't have kids, or your children are grown up? In this show we meet two child-free women with different experiences of work during Covid. One feels her career is thriving. The other wonders what ambition means anymore when she just wants to get offline before midnight. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Oct 14, 2020•19 min
In the last episode you heard Jessi Hempel and I ask, what is happening to women’s careers right now? So many of us are still at home, often with family underfoot, attempting to manage children’s schooling or simply care for them while also doing our own jobs. Much has been written about the ‘women’s recession’ and the enormous pressure women are under during this pandemic. In this show Avivah Wittenberg-Cox offers a more hopeful perspective. She sees this crisis is an opportunity for organizati...
Sep 28, 2020•25 min•Ep. 162
In this episode I sit down with Jessi Hempel, host of LinkedIn's Hello Monday podcast about the future of work. If you have family responsibilities the future may have shrunk to this week and managing what's right in front of you. As Jessi puts it, for many of us career questions 'exist in a different plane in time, and we're not existing in that plane right now.' She and I talk about how the last six months have affected women's careers in particular, and what might happen next. We discuss who'...
Sep 14, 2020•23 min•Ep. 161
When I first made this show I could never have imagined how large a role both stress and getting outside would play in our lives in 2020. In this episode I talk to science writer Florence Williams , author of The Nature Fix , about how spending time outside can help lower our stress levels and allow us to gain perspective on daily problems. Most of us live and work in urban environments, spending hours a day in front of a screen. Nothing could be less natural. In this show we talk ab...
Aug 17, 2020•25 min•Ep. 1
Ainissa Ramirez has loved science since the age of four. But her dreams of becoming a scientist were almost squelched when she got to college. When she graduated she vowed to make other people's journeys through science better than her own. Today, she's helping thousands of people understand and appreciate how the world works - and maybe even go into science themselves. In this episode we talk about the ups and downs of her career, leaving academia to go out on her own, and some of the amazing s...
Jul 30, 2020•25 min•Ep. 159
A lot of us have been able to work from home during lockdown these last few months. One group of workers that hasn't is paid caregivers - aides, mainly women, who are paid by the hour to help elderly, frail and disabled people accomplish some of the tasks of daily living. In this show we meet two women who have been doing care work for three decades - Susie Rivera in Texas and Maria Colville in Massachusetts. Their job is one of the fastest growing in the U.S. But it pays poorly and a lot of peo...
Jul 13, 2020•22 min•Ep. 1
In this episode I hand over the reins to Lauren Schiller, host of Inflection Point. In this show she and writer Ruth Whippman (a fellow Brit) discuss the very American idea that if you just try hard enough, you can get pretty much anything you want - from a better figure to a better job. But Ruth says self-belief plus a few girl power T-shirts and social media slogans do not an equal society make. Tune in to hear Lauren and Ruth discuss what needs to change for 'empowerment' to lead to real powe...
Jun 23, 2020•52 min•Ep. 157
Fernanda Santos moved to the U.S. from Brazil to go to graduate school, but ended up staying and forging a career in journalism. Her work is a thread throughout this episode (she was an early believer in the mantra ‘never work for free’). But this story is also about how Fernanda's immigrant experience, and her journalist training, helped when she was forced to confront a future she never expected. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jun 10, 2020•24 min
Some of us have two jobs: one that pays us, one that sustains us in another way. In this episode we meet two women who volunteer as firefighters. Stephanie Looi and Kassie Stevens have faced challenges in their roles, but each feels lucky to be doing it. Stephanie just went through Australia's devastating fire season and had to make decisions she never thought she would. Kassie faces incredulous reactions when she shows up to a call, and sometimes hostility as well. But they both say it's a priv...
May 23, 2020•29 min•Ep. 155
You’ve probably seen some of the stories: women leaders around the world are “stepping up to show the world how to manage a messy patch for our human family.” I’m quoting one of this week’s guests, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox , from her Forbes piece on women leaders’ success during the pandemic . She and other writers on this topic make the same point: when you look at countries with the best coronavirus outcomes so far, they often have one thing in common - a woman at the top. In this week’s show Avi...
May 05, 2020•30 min•Ep. 154
Last month an article appeared in The Atlantic with the title The Coronavirus is a Disaster for Feminism . One striking line reads, ‘The coronavirus smashes up the bargain that so many dual-earner couples have made in the developed world: We can both work because someone else is looking after our children . Instead, couples will have to decide which one of them takes the hit.’ But is that true? In this episode we meet three married women in Canada, the US, and the UK, and one (male) sociologist,...
Apr 14, 2020•33 min•Ep. 153
My guest in this episode started working right around the time most of us started school. Marie was just five years old when her acting work began supporting her entire family. But as she got older she noticed all the best parts were going to the boys, while the roles she was getting relied on her looks. Her dreams of continuing in acting were dashed when she realized what she was expected to do to get better parts. Today she has a totally different career, but she’ll never forget what show busi...
Mar 31, 2020•25 min•Ep. 152
In this episode we meet a true broad - a 20th century woman who has bucked convention in more ways than one. Mary Lou landed her first job as a telephone operator in 1941, and went on to become a social worker and then a teacher. Along the way she married, had six children, divorced, and became a (very) independent woman. Today, at almost 95, she’s settled down with her partner Al and tells me, ‘I’ve had a fantastic life.’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Mar 10, 2020•30 min•Ep. 151
A lot of women have a voice in their heads that asks them that question. In this episode we explore women's confidence, or the lack of it, and why it matters to our livelihoods. We discuss why women often struggle to recognize their value, and how much of our experience depends on our backgrounds. We meet Chicago business owner Denise Barreto, who is enviably confident, and NPR journalist Stacey Vanek Smith, who shares some of my hangups. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more informati...
Jan 22, 2020•23 min•Ep. 150
In this episode we look at forgiveness as a career tactic. A lot of us stew for weeks or months over things that have happened at work. My guest Christie Lindor decided the way to get ahead in her career was to forgive the aggressions - micro and otherwise - she was subject to at the office. She talks about how and why she chose forgiveness as a way forward, and how focusing on what you want to come out of a bad situation can help you deal with hurt, anger and resentment. If you're fuming over a...
Aug 07, 2019•18 min
Most leaders in business and politics are male, and most of us rate our leaders poorly. Would that change if more leaders were women? In this show I meet up with Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, author of 'Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?' We discuss confidence versus competence, learning to distrust our instincts, and how bad leadership can drive a lot of us out of a job (voluntarily). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jul 15, 2019•23 min
Most of us have a bad breakup with work at some point. You don't have to be fired for things to end on a sour note, but however the end comes, leaving a job in difficult circumstances is one of the hardest experiences to go through. In this show we meet two women who know this first hand: Marion Kane, longtime food writer at some of Canada's top newspapers, and Heather McGregor, a frequent guest in this show's early years and now executive dean of the Edinburgh Business School. We hear their sto...
Jun 24, 2019•24 min
This is the second of two shows on what happens as women in the workforce get older. And a lot of it isn't good. Women can experience a double whammy of prejudice that men don't, and it's affecting our bank accounts apart from anything else. In this episode we meet women's leadership professor Terri Boyer, and founder of Magnificent Midlife Rachel Lankester. Each discusses age discrimination (which is perpetrated by both men and women) and suggests ways we can tackle it, beginning with women not...
Jun 06, 2019•27 min
You're commuting to work and you start overheating; you're suddenly feeling more anxious about everything; you can't sleep properly, and your colleagues and family are driving you nuts. Many women in their forties start feeling these signs of peri-menopause. And in the UK, some employers are actually moving to support their female staff as they go through this transition. But menopause still remains largely under-discussed, particularly in the youth-obsessed US (why would you admit you're menopa...
May 07, 2019•27 min
In this show, originally released in 2016, we look at how class can play out at work. Each of my guests works in a professional setting but both grew up in blue-collar households. Each has had trouble navigating the white-collar workplace and some of its attitudes. We also meet Daniel Laurison, a sociology professor at Swarthmore. He co-authored a study on the 'class ceiling' in Britain. It showed that on average, people in high-status professions who began life in a working-class household earn...
Apr 23, 2019•29 min
We all need inspiration in the form of successful women. But sometimes the pitches I get about the latest amazing, do-it-all star who's 'killing it' can make me feel tired rather than inspired. Financial Times columnist Pilita Clark is in the same boat. She argues that true equality means not having to be utterly stellar to receive recognition. In this show we discuss her theory that women should be allowed to be as mediocre as any man. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information...
Apr 08, 2019•21 min
