10/06/2026
Today I volunteered with ICF Austin Chapter at the Texas Conference for Women CareerWorks at the Moody Center.
I showed up to coach. I left thinking about how often we ask women to solve, individually, problems that are actually structural.
We tell women to be more confident. Set better boundaries. Negotiate harder. Speak up. Build resilience. Find mentors. Manage their time. Stop apologizing.
And sometimes those are useful skills.
But what if the problem isn’t that women need to get better at navigating the workplace?
What if the workplace needs to get better at making room for women who lead?
I’ve experienced this personally, and I’ve seen it across the schools and workplaces I’ve been part of. I’ve also coached women who are extraordinarily talented and capable and still have to navigate power, caregiving, discrimination, harassment, bias, and expectations that were never designed with their actual lives in mind.
I love coaching people. That’s part of why this matters to me.
Coaching can help us develop clarity, agency, self-trust, and choice. But I never want coaching to become another tool for teaching people to tolerate systems that are harming them.
Sometimes the work is personal.
Sometimes the work is systemic.
Usually it is both.
And sometimes telling someone to work on themselves is a convenient way to avoid asking what the system needs to change.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot since today.
Op-ed in the works.
