Risky Conversations with Jamie Lee

The truth is, some of the most powerful career moves happen when you don't ask for anything at all. 

This Friday, July 24th, my client Sarah-Neel Smith and I are going to teach you exactly how to have those career conversations where you don't ask for anything at all and generate power for your negotiation outcomes. All the details here: https://antinetworking.jamieleecoach.com/

If you're going, "Wait, what? How does that happen?" 

I explain it in detail in this episode. 

What you'll learn: 

In this episode of Risky Conversations, I interviewed my good friend and literary agent Kat Kerr about her unconventional path from Florida state government to championing marginalized voices in publishing. Kat shares how her childhood love of books, early encounters with racism, and a mid-career pivot led her into advocacy-driven literary agenting and involvement with programs like We Need Diverse Books. Together, we talk about some of our favorite Asian American authors, why representation in literature matters, the realities of the publishing industry (including agents, querying, and self-publishing), and what it really takes...

What do you do when you're offered an opportunity that will definitely stretch you but also scares you, and your first instinct is to hand it to someone else, because you feel you're not quite qualified? 

That's the moment we unpack in this interview with Ai Asakura, Alumni Program Manager for the TOMODACHI Initiative at the U.S.-Japan Council, who I met at an expat meetup in Fukuoka this spring — one with that same eclectic, cross-cultural energy as New York City, where you connect peer to peer with people from all walks of life. 

Ai i...

Just in 2025, nearly half a million women left the workforce. 23% of all new businesses were started by women, and 50% of all solopreneurs are women.

Perhaps a part of you knows you need to leave. Maybe the job is toxic. Maybe you're underpaid. Maybe you're just done. But here's what's keeping you stuck: you don't know how to exit without burning bridges, tanking your finances, or sabotaging your next move.

So how do you leave a bad situation and actually land on your feet? What strategies, support, and resources do you need to negotiate before you...

Women are asking to be paid better and promoted but we’re also getting "no" more often than men. What gives?

The problem isn't that women can't negotiate. The problem is that we're negotiating the wrong way—playing by rules that were never built for us.

So what's the right way? Surprisingly, it starts with an internal orientation rather than an external one.

Today, I'm walking you through the three core negotiation skills, which happen to be the ones you're already using every day.

And then I'm diving deep into the firs...

Ever felt anxious about negotiating your pay? Wondered why it feels so risky when you already know you’re beyond pulling your weight at work?

Here’s the truth I see as a coach for marginalized leaders who don’t like office politics: We've been taught that asking for what we want is risky. Greedy. Aggressive. Ungracious.

But here's the thing.

Women and minorities aren't bad negotiators. We've just been sold a lie about what negotiation actually is.

In this episode, I'm sharing why I walked away from a six-figure tech career...

What happens when the pressures of work intensify AND parenting intensifies at the same time? Senior-level mothers are caught in a two-way trap—and many are quietly burning out, believing it's a personal failure rather than a systemic one.

In this episode, I talk with Shalene Gupta, staff editor at Fast Company, about her groundbreaking investigation into how senior-level women are coping with the impossible. After putting out a call on LinkedIn, Shalene received over 100 responses—48,000 words' worth—revealing both the ingenuity and the despair of working mothers trying to have it all.

Discover the creati...

Everything worthwhile is on the other side of a risky conversation—especially when it comes to women’s health, birth, and career.

In this episode, I sit down with professional investor–turned–hypnobirthing educator Maria Lernerman to talk about how hypnosis, birth preparation, and self-advocacy can transform one of life’s most intense experiences into a joyful, empowering memory.

Maria shares how she navigates being a daytime asset manager and nighttime hypnobirthing educator, hypnotist, lactation counselor, and mom of three, and why talking openly about hypnosis in a buttoned-up industry was a risky (a...

In this episode, I sat down with leadership coach and former HR leader Ashley Paré to pull back the curtain on the "risky conversation" that cost her a corporate role but won her ultimate freedom and self-respect. We dive into how that experience became the catalyst for her mission: helping women navigate the complex systems of corporate power to advocate for their worth—without the burnout.

We discussed:

In this episode of Risky Conversations, I sit down with global storytelling expert Gabrielle Dolan, author of Story Intelligence: The craft of authentic storytelling made smarter with AI.

Gabrielle shares how one risky career conversation led her to leave a secure executive role at a major bank to build a global storytelling practice, eventually training leaders at the Obama Foundation.

Together, we unpack why personal, values-based stories are the most underused yet powerful tool for leadership, promotion, and influence. You’ll learn

Informational interviews, job interviews, and offer negotiations: these are the "risky" conversations that stand between you and a career you actually love. But what if you could de-risk these moments and catapult yourself into a new dimension of success?

That is exactly what my client, Sarah-Neel Smith, PhD, did. In this episode, Sarah-Neel pulls back the curtain on her journey from feeling "stuck" in academia to pivoting into a high-impact career in philanthropy. 

By combining well-structured informational interviews with coaching to advocate for her potential, she transformed her professional life—negotiating a 7% increase on her fir...

Many people think I'm a negotiation coach, but I'm really a practitioner of change working at the intersection of ancient Eastern philosophy and modern Western neuroscience.

The Science: Quantum physicists like David Bohm and Zen masters in the mountains agree: Everything you think is "solid" (your desk, your body, your obstacles) is actually 99.9999999% empty space. Similarly, neuroscientists like Michael Gazzaniga have found that there is no singular, fixed "I" in your brain. You are a "Society of Mind," an aggregate of different parts negotiating conflicting and inherently empty impulses in real-time. 

The P...