SisterSmart Leadership

Are you a high performer who has been waiting for your hard work to speak for itself? You are not alone. Most women rise to the director level by being exceptional individual contributors, then hit an invisible ceiling that no one warned them about. The people getting promoted to vice president are not always working harder, they are working differently, and they understand a set of corporate power dynamics that nobody teaches women in business school, in onboarding, or anywhere along the way.

In this episode of the SisterSmart Leadership Podcast, host and executive coach Jill Avey...

If you are a woman in leadership right now, ask yourself one honest question. When was the last time you felt like you had enough time, enough energy and enough space for yourself? If you had to think about it, you are not alone.

For women leaders pursuing VP-level and executive roles, work-life balance often feels like a myth. You are leading teams, running households, showing up for aging parents, raising kids, and somewhere at the bottom of the list you are trying to remember what you used to love doing just for yourself.

In...

Have you ever hit a career level where everything you used to do to succeed suddenly stops working? The problem is not usually a skills gap. It is an identity gap -- and it is one of the most misunderstood moments in a woman's leadership journey.

In this episode, Jill is joined by SisterSmart mindset coach Kan Yue to unpack the leadership identity upgrade: the quiet inner shift that has to happen before your next promotion, your next level of influence, or the next version of you can actually show up.

Most high-achieving women try...

Are you trying to figure out how to get promoted to VP but feel like you are missing pieces of the puzzle? This episode is the career strategy for women in leadership that no one talks about openly.

April Little is an executive career coach and promotion strategist who helps senior women leaders build executive-level influence, positioning, and decision authority inside complex organizations. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in English and a Master’s degree in Human Resources. Prior to launching her coaching practice, April served as Vice President of Human Resources at a venture-backed startup. Imme...

Have you ever been told you are too direct, too strong, or too bossy -- only to find yourself shrinking down just to keep others comfortable? If so, you are not alone, and this episode was made for you.

Christel is a former military veteran, corporate leader, and SisterSmart Elite client who walked into a new company with impressive credentials -- mentors, leadership program visibility and years of high-performance experience. Yet her career was not advancing the way she knew it should. Her direct style was being flagged in performance reviews and the guidance she was receiving...

Have you ever trained the person who got promoted over you? Or held your entire department together behind the scenes while someone else got credit for the results?

Here is what no one tells you about getting promoted: it is rarely the hardest worker who moves up. It is the person whose work is visible to the right people.

In this episode, Jill Avey and SisterSmart coach Sarah Spencer break down the five types of invisible work that women leaders take on every day -- work that carries enormous strategic value but almost never surfaces...

How to negotiate as a woman without getting penalized for it -- that is exactly what Columbia Business School professor and negotiations researcher Malia Mason breaks down in this episode of SisterSmart Leadership.

Women are told to ask for more, be more assertive, and stop apologizing. But when women follow that advice, research shows they are more likely to face social backlash than their male counterparts. This is the double bind, and it is one of the biggest invisible barriers keeping women out of senior leadership.

Malia Mason teaches negotiations and co-directs the Women in...

Have you ever wondered why you keep getting in your own way, even when you have the talent, the drive, and the dream?

That is exactly where Krystal found herself when she first connected with SisterSmart. She was burned out from consulting, running from anything that looked like a corporate job, and trying to launch a business while carrying years of unprocessed career pain. She did not need another hustle strategy. She needed to meet herself where she was.

In this client story episode, Jill sits down with Krystal to talk about her six months...

Emotional labor at work is one of the biggest invisible barriers holding women leaders back, and most have never even named it.

As women in leadership, we often take on the invisible work of managing team emotions professionally: smoothing over conflicts, holding the team together, noticing what no one else does, and absorbing the stress of everyone around us. This invisible work takes real skill and real energy, but it rarely shows up in performance reviews or promotion conversations.

In this episode, we unpack why emotional labor falls so unevenly on women leaders, what it...

How to transition from technical leader to executive leadership as a woman in 2025. Learn proven leadership development strategies for career advancement and getting promoted to senior management.

Are you a technical professional stuck in middle management? Women in leadership face unique challenges when transitioning from technical roles to executive positions. This episode reveals the exact steps one physician took to move from regional medical director to senior executive leadership.

In this women's leadership podcast episode, Gretchen shares her journey of career growth and professional development. Gretchen was already a high-performing physician with a strong track...

That promotion you did not get? It was probably not decided in a performance review. It was decided on a golf course, at happy hour, or in a conversation you were never invited to.

Informal networks at work are where the real career decisions get made and most women are not in those rooms. Research shows that 70 to 80 percent of promotions and high-visibility opportunities are driven by professional relationships, not performance alone. Yet women's networks are 30 percent smaller than men's, and the gap widens at every level of leadership.

In this episode, SisterSmart Leadership Coaches...

Should I stay or should I go?

This is a question many of my clients come to me with. You've invested years at your company, built strong relationships, and know how to do your job well. But something feels off. Maybe you've gotten too comfortable in your groove. Maybe the company culture has shifted. Or maybe you know deep down that you're ready for more.

Our client, Dorothy, a negotiations coach herself, found herself at this exact crossroads. She was working at a large Fortune 500 healthcare organization and knew it was time to move up—bu...

Have you ever been told you need to be 'warmer' in a meeting... and then told you need to be 'more assertive' in your next review?

This is what researchers call the 'likeability trap.' And it's one of the biggest reasons talented women get stuck in their careers.

In this episode, you'll learn what the likeability trap actually looks like at work so you can spot when it's happening to you. Jill shares why traditional assertiveness training often backfires for women, and what actually works instead.

By the end of this episode...

How can we change the gender balance in traditionally male dominated fields? 

The tech industry is one that's been known to be male dominated. I have a lot of clients in the tech industry, and some of them feel very daunted by this problem, often wondering if they'll ever get a chance to get the recognition they deserve. 

So I'm so excited to have this conversation with a leader in tech that's been a change agent in this way, and to learn more about what's happened to help her be more successful in her career. 

Mid-career women often have an allergic reaction to how to build their network. 

They don't want to feel cheesy, sleazy, or like they're only out for themselves. They've seen others doing this and they don't want to be perceived in the same way. 

But the problem with this is it holds them back in their careers because your network is more important the higher your rise.

In this episode, Jill shares how you can balance giving and taking so you can build a strategic network with people you enjoy spending time wi...

You’ve likely heard the saying, “you can’t control the situation, but you can control how you react to the situation.” 

That can be easier said than done, but that’s exactly the skill great leaders are able to develop.

Our client, Wendy, was initially a little resistant to the mindset work, but when she was laid off from a role she didn’t enjoy, she used that time to reflect on her unique strengths and skills that helped her land the new role she’s in now.

As she transitioned in...

Every leader with an eye on a senior role needs to understand how to find a mentor. 

When you seek out the right mentors, they become an advantage that will help you rise into senior leadership roles more quickly and easily. 

In this episode, Jill and SisterSmart Career Success Coach, Sarah, share how to determine what you want to get out of a mentorship, find the mentors that are right for you, and nurture those relationships to position yourself in the best way.

They also share a few of the traps you’ll w...

Everyone's heard the phrase, your network is your net worth. Then why do so few mid-career women have the robust network that will get them into senior management? 

According to McKinsey, even female CEOs have networks that are several times smaller than their male colleagues and the numbers get even worse the farther down the ladder you go. So if men have this all figured out, why is this still something that women shy away from? 

In this episode, Jill explores the misconceptions that women have about networking and why a personal board of directors ca...

What happens when you have a failure? Like when you make a mistake at work — big or small — or you get rejected for something that you thought was a sure thing. 

It’s tempting to hide away or play small after a failure has happened. Sometimes people let it derail them or even end their career. 

But what happens when you use failure to propel you forward? 

That’s what Jessica Bacall, editor of two top 10 books, Mistakes I Made at Work and The Rejection That Changed My Life, explored in her books and her work...

Are you afraid of taking risks because you don’t know how to bounce back from failure? 

You’re likely nervous that if you fail, you’ll be “marked” forever or side-tracked for a promotion because of it. 

This is a common fear that women can hold, and for good reason. Women are criticized for not taking enough risks and being held back from further success because of it. A lot of this has to do with the way that we are raised, because there can be little latitude for anything besides perfection.

This follo...

Your mental skills are likely what’s holding you back from being a senior leader. 

Our inner emotional life is like a governor for our success, and we need to work through our mindset limitations to avoid getting stuck behind outdated ways of thinking. Our growth gets stunted and our potential gets cut off unless we work to expand our mindset into new territory.

The mental game is every bit as important as being good at your technical skills when it comes to moving up the ladder, and it gets more important the higher you go...

Senior and executive leadership roles bring more responsibility, but that doesn’t have to mean taking on more work and sacrificing your personal time or well-being in the process.

In fact, prioritizing work-life balance and self-care becomes more critical as you rise through the ranks because you need the capacity to navigate more challenging situations, lead more people, and make more prominent decisions. 

When Nadia joined the Sisters In Leadership program, she wanted to gain clarity on where she wanted to be 3 roles from now and what opportunities she would need to take to bri...

You need to get comfortable with failure to be a successful leader and rise into more senior roles. 

We all make mistakes and we all have failures, even big ones.

Women often take failures hard and it can be debilitating and even derail your career if you don't recover effectively from it.

In this episode, you’ll understand why you need to be failing if you want to earn senior leadership roles and how you can overcome failures — big or small — when they inevitably so you can learn from them and be a better l...

As women, we easily fall into the mentality of “we have to do it all.” 

But we can’t rise up without the right support. (Or if you somehow muster up the determination to do so, you’ll end up burned out and unsatisfied pretty quickly juggling all those responsibilities).

In this episode, Chumi Khurana, vice president of sales and marketing at J& J Oncology, joins Jill to share how she leaned on support systems from getting started in her career all the way up into senior leadership. 

She shares insights about how...

Whether you received your promotion recently or you want one in the next few months, have you ever felt like you didn't really deserve it? 

This is a common feeling that leaders have,

While men certainly feel this way at times, the problem tends to be bigger for women and underrepresented groups because this feeling of being an imposter can come from feeling like an outsider. 

Plus, women often have to raise their hand to be considered for leadership positions, feel like they shouldn't need to do that, especially when their male co...

Do you ever feel like all the eyes are on you and you have more and more fear of making mistakes as a leader and pressure to work harder? 

The higher you go, the higher this pressure becomes, especially for women due to gender bias and socialization.

Many leaders in this situation just work harder and harder, without it ever feeling like enough. 

This might get you to the director level because of your performance, but it won’t help you get into leadership levels. 

That’s because the bes...

As ambitious leaders rising up in our careers, it’s inevitable to encounter career setbacks along the way.  

Sometimes you have to restart your career because you had kids or you moved to another country. Or maybe you've done everything right and that promotion you were looking for doesn't pan out or you get laid off right on your way up the ladder. 

Many leaders let these kinds of situations get them down. 

But if you can learn how to use your career setback to your advantage, you might find it to be mor...

An employee is only as good as their team.

There have been studies that show this. 

So why is the team dynamic so important?

No one gets to the top alone. Even in roles that might seem like they're solo endeavors like sales. 

We feed off one another and we have a human need to belong to a larger group. And when these interpersonal dynamics are missing, we simply cannot be our best selves. 

In this episode, you’ll discover the most overlooked element of leade...

If you want to improve your ability to create stronger relationships, not only with your team but also with your peers and senior leaders, you're going to want to listen to this episode because we are going to let you in on the secret to how your physiology could actually be holding you back from being the best that you can be.

In this episode, SisterSmart coach, Sara Spencer joins Jill to share the latest in neuroscience to help you open up your conversations in order to come to decisions quicker, problem solve more effectively, and discover...

Understanding how to develop your conversation skills for work is one of the skills that will allow you to confidently navigate any situation you encounter as a leader. 

So many conversations don't go anywhere or worse — they create a negative situation between two people or different factions. These types of situations are exactly what can get your team stuck or underperforming.

In this episode, you'll learn how to create teams that are fast, innovative, and interdependent. You’ll discover the five conversation killers that you'll want to stay away from and three secrets that are key to...

Setting SMART goals can lead you to feel like you’re on a “goal treadmill.”

Set a goal. Check it off. Set another one. Repeat.

This usually results in goals that are good for the company, but not necessarily good for you. Many women we’ve talked to who set SMART goals share they end up feeling unfulfilled and not in alignment with their purpose. 

In this episode, Jill and SisterSmart Coach Lisa Kollish, guide you through how to think differently about setting goals so they’re both in alignment with your organi...

It's been proven that companies prosper more when diversity increases and we improve gender balance. 

Yet the workplace is the same experience for all women. 

In fact, white women are at a distinct advantage in terms of promotions, pay, and dealing with microaggressions.

When we can understand how our experience is similar and different from women of color, we can work together towards a future where all women can rise to create a truly diverse workplace that creates prosperity for all. 

Jill is joined in this episode by Mar...

It can feel difficult to set boundaries with your coworkers, but learning how to say no at work without making enemies is the very thing that will make you more successful — not saying “yes” to everything. 

When you set boundaries at work, the way you spend your time, your money, your energy will all become in line with what you really want and you’ll experience how saying “no” helped you go farther and faster towards your goals. 

If you're tired of always bumping up against burnout, feeling anxious, tired, and stressed, and maybe even a little...

If you're like most people, you've taken career opportunities as they've come rather than intentionally thought about how to develop your career plan to get you where you want to go and what you'll need to get there before setting your goals.

When you simply take opportunities as they come, you can end up in a place that you never wanted to be by the end of your career, and it's disheartening to think that you worked so hard only to end up in a place that's unfulfilling because it's not aligned with your values and your...

For most women leaders, learning how to stop working too much is one of the most difficult tasks they face in their career. 

There are social and psychological reasons that you stay stuck in a busyness trap unless you understand these influences and create a plan about how to work through them.

If you've ever struggled with feeling like you have too much on your plate, wondering why you can't get more budget or the headcount to be successful, or even feeling like you don’t want the promotion because you’d have new respo...

When you’re feeling burned out at work, the initial thought tends to be, “If only the company would change their behavior, then I could change my own behavior.”

But recovering from work burnout is an inside job.

SisterSmart client, Jenny, found herself completely burned out, so when she eventually got a new dream job, she wanted to approach it differently to make sure that wouldn’t happen again. 

Tune in to hear how she changed her working style to recover from work burnout and how she went from overworking to becoming...

It seems like every woman we talk to is taking on more responsibility at work and working harder and harder in hopes of getting a promotion.

They keep their head down and wait for their work to speak for them, except this isn't how it works. This only leads you to burnout.

If you're tired of doing more and more and not getting the promotion you're looking for, you're going to want to stay tuned because in this episode we're going to be talking about why this doesn't work and what you can do...

Very few people reach the highest positions in their career, and even fewer women achieve that feat.

But Beth DiPaolo, one of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women and the Women Business Leaders in Healthcare, has risen all the way to serve on the Group Operating Council as the Global Head of the Professional Scientific Services, Eurofins, a leader in testing for life with over 60,000 employees in 60 countries. 

She’s here to share the 4 most important C’s that have helped her achieve such notable success in her career so you hear first-hand what it takes t...

How can you tell if you possess the qualities of executive presence? 

If you have ever felt like your ideas aren't being taken seriously or that you aren't being heard when you speak up in meetings, you might be lacking executive presence. 

Executive presence is all about having influence — it’s that something special about you that tells people that you're in charge. It's often hard to define and even harder to develop as a result.  

Our clients have often heard that they need to develop executive presence, but their manager can't de...

If you’re overwhelmed or burned out in your current role, you might not feel ready to go for a promotion. 

This is what our client Nicolle was experiencing before she started working with us. She wasn’t sure if she was ready for the next level up and was feeling anxious and burnt out as she tried to prepare herself for a promotion.

In this episode, Nicolle shares how she gained the skills she needed to gain clarity what she could contribute to the company, improve her executive presence, and develop her team so sh...