In a time of AI, rapid change, and constant disruption, what does it really take to lead?

Susan Sly sits down with physicist, tech executive, and executive leadership coach Dr. Toni Collis for a candid conversation about the realities of leadership in uncertain times. From subtle bias and burnout to walking away from a successful tech career, Toni shares how she rebuilt her path with purpose and now helps others do the same.

They explore what healthy ambition looks like, how to lead when you don’t fit the mold, and why clarity, not hustle, is the true currency of modern leadership.

If you're leading a company, managing a team, or considering a major pivot, don’t miss this episode. Tune in now to gain valuable insights and take the next step to lead with confidence, even when the future feels unclear.

Dr. Toni Collis is a physicist, tech executive, and award-winning executive leadership coach. As CEO of Toni Collis Executive Coaching and founder of the Lit Up Leadership Academy, she helps women in tech step into strategic leadership and build impactful, fulfilling careers. Toni is also the host of Leading Women in Tech, a Forbes-recognized podcast for women in leadership.

Connect with Dr. Toni:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonicollis/
• Website: tonicollis.com

Susan Sly is the maven behind Raw and Real Entrepreneurship. An award-winning AI entrepreneur and MIT Sloan alumna, Susan has carved out a niche at the forefront of the AI revolution, earning accolades as a top AI innovator in 2023 and a key figure in real-time AI advancements for 2024. With a storied career that blends rigorous academic insight with astute market strategies, Susan has emerged as a formidable founder, a discerning angel investor, a sought-after speaker, and a venerated voice in the business world. Her insights have graced platforms from CNN to CNBC and been quoted in leading publications like Forbes and MarketWatch. At the helm of the Raw and Real Entrepreneurship podcast, Susan delivers unvarnished wisdom and strategies, empowering aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned business veterans alike to navigate the challenges of the entrepreneurial landscape with confidence.

Connect With Susan:

• Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thepause.ai/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
• Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://susansly.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠
• Trusted Partners:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.susansly.com/trustedpartners⁠⁠⁠
• LinkedIn⁠⁠:⁠⁠⁠@susansly⁠⁠⁠

This transcript has been generated using AI technology. There may be errors or discrepancies in the text. The opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the show or its hosts.

Hey there. It's your friend, Susan, here. Whatever you are up to, I hope you're having an incredible day. In this episode, we are going to be talking about technology. We are going to be talking about AI, as you know, one of my favorite topics. And my guest today is a physicist. She has her PhD. She's an incredible technologist, and she left a high-paying job to start her own business, and we're going to talk about the courage to do that. We're going to talk about what her tipping point was, and we're going to talk about what it takes to be a stand when you're the only person in the room that is you. So it's going to be an amazing show.

Before we jump into the show, it's been just an incredible year. I've been traveling a ton, and a lot of you have asked me, what do you do to stay healthy? Some of you have been like, oh, I worry about you. I mean, I have so many things that I want to accomplish in the world. I have a massive vision. And so the biggest thing is really about staying healthy.

And so even when I travel, there are certain things I do. I always take my protein shakes with me. I take adaptogen drinks. So these are drinks that are amazing to help my body buffer stress, and vitamins. I take an incredible sleep spray. And the cornerstone of my health for 22 years has been Isagenix, and I love their products. They are an international company. I will always check a suitcase because it is full of Isagenix when I go anywhere. And I have just been such a proud advocate for Isagenix and all the lives it's changed. So if you would like to learn more, go to my website: www.susansly.com/shop, and you will see the Isagenix products that I live and breathe by and recommend.

If you are a woman who is navigating early perimenopause, menopause, and you're wondering what the heck should I be doing? And you're feeling very lonely, maybe frustrated, maybe isolated, I have started a company with my best friend, Dr. Mia Chorney, called ThePause.ai. We are an AI-enabled platform that provides 24/7 coaching, biofeedback, recommendations, fun challenges, and it is incredible. The gratitude messages that we're getting—that, you know, women just don't feel alone when it's two in the morning. You're waking up and you're having night sweats or hot flashes and you're thinking, I can't talk to my partner about this. Harmony, our 24/7 evidence-based AI coach, is always there for you.

And so go to the App Store or the Play Store, you can download the Pause app. And currently, we're in the US and Canada. We will be expanding into Australia, depending on when you're listening to this, and then going global. So check us out. We have won numerous awards, and we are just getting started. So go and search The Pause Menopause App, and you will find us.

With that, I want to get into today's show. My guest today is an award-winning executive coach, speaker, and she has been helping women in technology step into strategic leadership roles, avoid burnout, 10x, build careers of impact and fulfillment. And with a background, as I said—a physicist, a tech executive, and a supercomputing engineer, my love language—she knows what it's like to be the only woman in the room.

She has coached over 1,000 women globally. She's the creator of the Lit Up Leadership Academy. She's also the host of a podcast that has been recognized by Forbes as one of the top shows globally for women in leadership. I've been a guest on it. It's called Leading Women in Tech, and she's absolutely amazing. So my guest today is the one and only Dr. Toni Collis.

This is Raw and Real Entrepreneurship®, the show that brings the no-nonsense truth of what is required to start, grow, and scale your business. I am your host, Susan Sly.

Toni, my gosh, it is so good to see you. And of course, we were chatting, and we were like, oh my gosh, we have a show to do. And I'm so excited that we get to—we get to have this conversation. I was on your show, Leading Women in Tech, and now you get to be here on Raw and Real. And I'm so excited for what we're going to talk about.

Me too. I feel like our conversations are the kind of conversation the world needs to hear. This is definitely one of those ones where I want everybody to kick back, get their favorite drink, because these are the conversations—as women—we should all be having. And you and I, as soon as we met, I was like, we can have so many great conversations. So I'm honored to be here recording this with you.

Honored. Thank you. And you know, as we're having this conversation, we're living in some really uncertain times, and there are a lot of women especially—and men too—who are reaching a breaking point, and they're saying, I can't do what I'm doing anymore. And especially in technology, for a variety of reasons. I mean, last year, 2024, we saw an exodus from OpenAI. Now we're seeing Zuckerberg is reaching out and recruiting all of these people in AI to come work at Meta. We're seeing people shifting. We're seeing people leaving tech and saying, I'm going to get a farm in the middle of nowhere.

And you are a person who did reach that breaking point, and you were a very highly regarded tech executive. What was that moment for you when you reached your breaking point and said, I'm not doing this anymore, and I'm going to make a change?

I actually reached it a couple of times before as a tech executive. And actually that, I think one of the cool things about what I did is it was actually the galvanized meeting moved to the executive level the first time it happened, and then the second time. And both times, it was disrespect that comes in many flavors, but disrespect, being pushed into a corner.

I mean, one of the, one of my, what I have now viewed as a superpower, but it wasn't a, it wasn't viewed that way at the time—I realized how to channel it—but a superpower of mine is I will tell you how it is. It's why I'm a good coach. I will say it with love as a coach and a lot of compassion. But I will tell you what I'm seeing. I will tell a company if I see them making mistakes, if I see them approaching a dodgy line and indeed passing a line. I've done that. And you know what? Bosses—male, white bosses—don't always like to hear that.

And I've pushed. I've pushed. I've actually had female bosses who've also shut me down, who felt threatened by me. And it's, it's when I've been disrespected, it's when I've been put into a box and said, "Go there, Toni. Do your thing over there. Stay quiet." And I—that burns me out. It causes immense stress.

And both times it's happened to me, I have been incredibly lucky. And I do think there's an element of luck here. I know you make your own luck, but I do think—privilege is maybe a better word. I had a huge amount of privilege in that I had a very strong husband who said, "No. Don't put up with that. Don't put up with that."

And every one of us needs an advocate, whether it's a partner, a family member, a dear friend—somebody who says, "Don't take that shit." Am I allowed to swear on this show, by the way? Should check that with...

It's all good. It's like raw and real ownership.

Yeah. I do think sometimes, however powerful you are yourself, I think it's so important to have somebody in your corner who just says, "Yeah, yeah. You shouldn't take that." And that was... it's happened to me a couple of times.

And both times, disrespect. And often disrespect from somebody that, with the benefit of hindsight, a lot of mental health work, a lot of compassion—honestly, they felt threatened by me. And I actually feel quite sad for them. But in that moment, it does not feel that way. It doesn't feel that way.

And it's required me to step back. It's required me to take my next... both times I've channeled that into taking my next big leap. And you know what? I wouldn't change it for the world. I am strong, I am tough, I am successful because of it. Doesn't feel like that in the moment though, I totally get that. But I am here because of those hard moments.

I just hope that other women don't have to go through them though, because I don't think they're necessary for success. That's how I got here, but I don't think they're necessary. And it's dangerous to the planet to keep putting people through that, because it means we're not getting all the value from everybody here.

And disrespect that you mentioned, you know, it's kind of like I grew up in that "girls should be seen and not heard." That was my... and so, disrespect can show up in many different ways. Personalization, being... I've been spoken over—literally starting to speak and someone starts talking over me. Or my favorite was, "Susan's not the technical one." I'm like, what? Oh yeah. What does that mean, right?

And the question I have for you is, the first time it happened, how long did you let it go on before you reached the tipping point? Because I want... as the... if anyone's been listening to the show for a long period of time, they know I was raised by a single dad, and he was, you know, he was the first person to go out and buy me tampons. We're gonna say it. Like, he was amazing.

There are men who get disrespected. There are women who get disrespected. And this... how long we let it go on? I mean, in my own life, I've let things happen for years before I actually reached the breaking point. But the first time it happened for you, how long did it go on?

Far longer than it should have done. I'm, it's actually interesting question to ask myself, when did it start? There's a particular job I had which I had for quite a number of years. I did get the promotions in there. Um, and the reason it's hard is I had a couple of people who really championed me in that company. They just weren't directly involved in my career path, but they really championed me. And so it's kind of, there was an inoculation, an antidote, if you like, to the disrespect I was getting.

But the disrespect was, it was subtle. At the beginning, it was, I was told you're not technical enough. Okay, great, fine. What does that mean? I was told I wasn't getting promoted because I wasn't getting promoted because I wasn't technical enough, and yet I saw people who had the job I was actually doing, just not paid for, who were less technical than me. So I was like, what does that even mean? And it was that kind of subtle disrespect.

There was more obvious disrespect, which comes from other quarters, like people shouting you down, literally being shouted at in a room to the point I cried. I'm not ashamed of that now, I feel like that was just who I was, and I probably would cry today if I was treated in that way. Because, you know what, I'm an emotional human and there's nothing wrong with that. It's taken me a long time to accept that, but there's nothing wrong with that at all. If you treat somebody like that, you should not be afraid that there might be tears that come out of it.

And so it was always very subtle. So I think it went on for a number of years. It was actually the point where I really realized how bad it was was when I was told, you're not getting promoted, and I was like, I'm doing the job. What are you talking about? I mean, this was my internal dialog. I didn't have the confidence to say it at the time. And honestly, I went home. It was just before the holidays. I went home, and I sat with it, and by the end of the holidays, I was like, there was a fire lit under me, but it had built. And I think this is why it's so damaging to us, because it had been building gradually over years. I just couldn't see it.

It's almost like Stockholm syndrome was going on. And I think that's, talking to so many other people now about this kind of thing, I think that's actually very common. It's very subtle. It's very just there in the background. And what is the difference between somebody like me—I'm, I'm a bit of an interrupter, I've got so much to say, so much to do—and what is the difference between somebody who's excited and passionate versus somebody who's disrespectful?

It's, it's hard to see the line. And as a coach, I will often train the women I work with to like, hey, let's, let's see how differently you can view this. Is it, are they just excited and want to be engaged in the conversation, or are they genuinely disrespecting you? Where's the line? How can you build the resilience around that excitement that comes across as disrespect versus full-on disrespect? And it's a really hard one to see.

It's one of the reasons I have a job as an executive coach, is helping people navigate that and build the resilience against it, and also build the confidence to call it out and tackle it, which means that you bring down the disrespect against you, and also call out that behavior on behalf of other people.

That, that piece where the, you self-actualize and thinking about this is going on and sometimes it's like Elizabeth Kübler-Ross. I remember in university studying those phases of grief and denial, and when we're being disrespected... I mean, there's always a beautiful blessing in it, because so many of the, the 400 plus entrepreneur journeys we've had on this show, there's always a tipping point. It's that hero story. There's always this, okay, I am making a choice.

And nine times out of 10—very rarely—but nine times out of 10, it's because we're moving away from a reality we no longer want to be a part of. And for you, I have a question. So, you know, there you are, an executive, you have benefits, you have a salary, and now you're going to go and start your own business. What, what process did you go through mentally in order to prepare yourself?

Because the vast majority of our listening audience all over the world, they're either wanting the courage to go join a startup, maybe as a first move, or to go start their own company. So for you, what was it that you put your mind through in this rigor to finally get to the point where, like, I'm starting this?

Well, it's actually interesting, because I think I actually did it in stages. Would I have done it in one go? I don't know. I...

Yeah, so the, the first stage was actually moving from a big company into a smaller company that was more risky and it would... it was my first executive position, but I lost benefits. I remember asking my coach at the time, I said to her, I'm going to lose maternity benefits because I, that, the big company—obviously, I'm based in the UK, and although I work with people globally, like, I'm very privileged that a lot of the bigger companies here have quite good maternity policies.

And I was like, oh my God, I don't know if I want children. I don't want children, but I'm going to lose maternity benefits. And my coach was like, wait, hold on, you're going to double your salary and you don't want children, but that's the thing that's stopping you doing it?

And it was, it was that realization of like, like, like, there were so many—there's golden handcuffs are mental as much as they're cash. I didn't think I wanted children, and I, you know... and anyway, the doubling of the salary, like, I could just put that money in the bank and have better maternity leave straight away. Like, just... but your brain tells you shit.

So I did that first step, and that really helped. And then it was, you know, that, that final step away from being in a corporate executive to building my own business. And it was a combination of the burnout, being pissed. That to me, I've always leveraged that to take action. And they... again, it's one of my superpowers that I do get, I do get down for a bit, and then I'm like, no, I'm gonna change the world.

I fundamentally believe I was put on this earth to make it better than how I found it. And so I channeled that, you know, anger at the disrespect—it was anger, I've dealt with that now—into taking action. So the fear was there, but I thought to myself, I'm being put, I'm being shoved aside, I'm being put in this box, which means, actually, I'm quite at risk anyway.

I had to self-coach to go through the risk factors and realize actually I was quite... I was in a very fragile position anyway. And, you know, if you're thinking about moving into a startup or moving to entrepreneurship, I think one of the things you should look at is the fact that right now, you're more likely to be laid off in a big company than you are in a startup.

So this idea that there are certain companies that are safer than others—I'm sorry, we don't live in that era anymore. That's something our parents' generation had the privilege of having. We haven't actually ever really had that. We've just been told that narrative. But I think it does a lot of damage.

In the same way that, for whatever reason, my brain was hooked on this maternity leave for something that I had other routes through, should I, should I wish to use it. But your brain, you've been indoctrinated your entire life. Get a job, stay safe, pay into your pension pot, your 401(k), you'll get there, you'll retire.

You know what? Some of us are never going to retire, partly because I think retirement... I think if you're, if you've got that entrepreneurial mindset, I think you get bored in retirement. I think we just maybe change flavor. But I think the other side of it is, I think we are the generation that might just live for a very long time, if you look at what's going on in research, at which point retirement doesn't make sense anyway.

So why are we all living for retirement and using that as an excuse to not bet on ourselves? Which is the final piece of the puzzle. I bet on myself. And that's something I tell women every day: you are the one that can control your future. No one else. Bet on yourself.

Yeah, which is huge. And, and I love the transparency. I mean, clinging to something like a maternity benefit when you... and there's so many questions—that's an excellent point. There's so many questions as women that we're just starting to have this dialog now, and even in the work that I'm doing with The Pause and building that company with perimenopause and menopause, we're asking questions.

Someone just said to me yesterday, why is it this generation suddenly having the open dialog? And my, my first gut response was because we do not feel like we're in isolation. There's a tribe for everyone on social, right? And so, and it's the same thing. It's perfectly fine for you now to be able to say, I'm not sure if I'm having children, but I want to reserve the right to. Or, I don't, but that's my choice. This is, this is an incredible time.

And to your other excellent point, we're also seeing a trend in technology where the number of jobs for entry-level people, especially young people coming out of uni, they're, they're drying up. And then if you're very senior and experienced, you've got Zuckerberg sending you a private WhatsApp with a million-dollar signing bonus, right? Like, you know, I haven't received mine yet, but you know...

Anyway, the reality is that that's the climate we're living in. And I feel—one of the things I say to my children is, you all need to study entrepreneurship. Because, yeah, for the... that looks like it. Whether it's a service-based business like the one you've created, or it's, you know, a physical business, having that as a skill is huge.

Thinking about women in tech who are listening to this, I'm wondering, what is something that women in tech are not talking about enough, in your opinion? I mean, you've, you've worked with over 1,000 women, plus your show goes all over the world—hugely popular. What is it, as women in technology, we're not talking about?

That's a great question. There's so many things. I think, oh gosh, the first one I'm going to go with is what we can take responsibility for.

There has been—and I'm very cautious here, please listen to this whole segment, anyone listening—because it could very easily come across as victim blaming, and that's the last thing I want to do. I am so passionate that women deserve a seat at the table, and we have had unfairness, power, like, banged on us our entire lives.

But one thing that is not unpopular to talk about is what we can own. The classic example I will tell you about is, you know, we're told to be assertive, and then we're labeled as aggressive, right? We've all heard that. We've all maybe experienced it. But we've all certainly seen that online and these very rightfully angry women being told, I'm damned if I do, I'm damned if I don't. What do I do? And how dare they? And blaming it externally.

Here's the uncomfortable truth—some of this is on us. And I don't want to sound like victim blaming, but... and it's because society has put this on us.

So what happens? We are our entire lives told, be nice, be seen and not heard. Make everybody happy. Make everybody smile. Make everybody comfortable. So we're indoctrinated in being nice, which means we don't assert, right? We just want everybody to be happy. Then somebody comes along and says, that's the reason you're not getting anywhere. And you're like, oh, for fuck's sake, are you serious? And we're pissed.

I have women working with me who are simultaneously super angry and terrified of speaking up. And it's like, well, those two things seem in conflict, but they're not. They're right there in the same breath, brain, simultaneously. And when they do eventually speak up, once I coach them—when somebody says, you really need to do this—it comes out a bit angry, because they've not had the practice earlier in their career. Because they've not been allowed to. Society has not allowed them to. They don't have the practice.

Men come across as angry the first time they're assertive. We're just doing it 20 years later than men.

Secondly, we have less grace given to us. So when we are like this, people are like, well, that's not who she is. We have less grace.

Thirdly, when it backfires, we just get even more angry. And we do one of two things—we sit and quietly seethe and blame everybody else. When we're angry, by the way, it's so hard to say, how did I actually do?

Anger means it's very external focused. It's very hard to be self-aware when you're angry. So you can't do an honest look at yourself and say, okay, great, is there anything legit in that feedback? Can I take 5% of it and dismiss 95%?

And that's just one very common example. There is stuff we can do. We have a right to be angry—we do—at the way society has treated us, at the way we've been indoctrinated, at the way we've been told to shut up, at the way we've been told don't ask for money because you don't deserve it as an entrepreneur—whatever it is—we have a right.

We also shouldn't just dismiss the feedback. There might be a nugget of something in there that can make you be awesome. But you gotta let go of being pissed off, which is such a hard thing to ask, when we've had a lifetime of every right to be pissed off. You gotta let go of that to do the work to become the extraordinary woman you're capable of being.

Absolutely. And to your point, as you were sharing that, I was thinking about a couple of pieces.

I think sometimes when men are assertive, they're not being labeled as angry. They're definitely not being labeled as victim. They're being labeled as strong. When, yeah, men are assertive, we often will be labeled as victim, or we will be discounted. Because it wasn't—it was only a few years ago that really women began to speak up. But women were often labeled who did speak up as tattle-tales, or, you know, they were... they deserved it. They were being Victoria's Secret business sexy at work or whatever. There was always some dismissiveness.

When I look at women I know now who are entrepreneurs, who are in, you know, technology, healthcare—the piece I observe, Toni, and I'd love to hear your insight on this—is it really comes down to the 80/20 rule. The women who are healthy about creating change are spending 80% of their time—80% of their social media platform—on what they can change, and 20% on commenting on the world.

It's when I see the women who are spending 80 or 90% complaining about grant funding disparity, about funding disparity, about, you know, whatever it is—disparity—it makes me question what they're doing to actually create change.

And I, even for myself, I have put out there in the world that less than 1% of VC-led funding goes to women-led startups. But I'll also put out a video that it's Sunday night and it's, you know, midnight, and I'm working on a pitch deck—because that's what entrepreneurs do.

And it's not from a place of victim. It's just from a place of, this is my life. This is what I'm doing and building.

So let me ask this question: what does, what does healthy ambition look like?

Oh, that's such a great question. So first of all, I would say healthy ambition is actually about boundaries. So I would say to people something like, just calling you out here, Susan—working at midnight, honestly, tonight is a choice. And I think the best entrepreneurs... I mean, they could be wrong. My brain turns on—I'm a night owl—so I do work later than perhaps is seen as healthy, but I have boundaries.

I don't take early morning calls ever. I've learned that when I do that, I don't do a good job, and it damages me for the rest of the week, let alone the day, because I'm a night owl. I'm a night person. It's one of the reasons I work so much with North American women, because based in the UK, I just start work at lunchtime. I just work later in the day, and it suits me perfectly, right?

So boundaries is one of the things that's successful. But you are spot on with that 80/20 rule. And you, you came at it from, you know, changing the world. But I think actually changing the world and entrepreneurship go hand in hand, and it's why you and I both do what we do. Because we are here to build businesses that leave the world a better place.

It's why I think you and I just hit it off when we started chatting, because we are both driven to build things that make the world better. And you can only do that if you spend 80% of your time driving that forward. If you spend 95% of your time complaining about everything that's out of your control, or worrying about everything... and right now, there's a, there's a lot to worry about in the world. It's not a great place.

But if you spend your energy on that, that diminishes your capacity to make the change that you are capable of bringing. And every single one of us, I truly believe, has capacity for something extraordinary. But if you are putting that energy elsewhere, you aren't doing the extraordinary.

By all means, champion the people. Use that 5%, use that 20%, champion the people who are doing the thing that you care about that isn't your zone of genius. Champion them. And then get back to what is your zone of genius and change the world with your 80%.

Absolutely. The only way we're going to create change is to become wildly successful.

Yes, exactly right.

It's a game. Look at the founder— Of Canva. She was rejected by 200 VCs. And I, I had a founder on the show, and he was rejected by 150 VCs. And he, you know, there are all kinds of things that we could say about that, and it's, it's not in isolation.

However, if you're going to go online and just complain about all the VCs that are rejecting you, right? It doesn't make you attractive. And what people are attracted to is your personal power. Like we were talking about before the show—how you're showing up in the world, what, to your point, what your choices are.

It was my choice to work on that deck. It wasn't for a deadline. It was my choice. It was an inspired choice. I had been in a workshop in New York with someone who raised $100 million in 46 days, and I was like, I am going after this. Like I just had it all in my head about what I wanted to shift, what I wanted to do.

And that same point is—the people that are just online, complain, complain, complain—I’ve never seen a complainer change the world. I’ve seen Mother Teresa change the world. I’ve seen Martin Luther King change the world. I’ve seen Gandhi change the world. I’ve seen Nelson Mandela change the world. He didn’t even complain about being in prison.

So the... I hope that as people are listening to Toni and I, it's really thinking about, if you are going to achieve your dreams and make positive change, spend that time focusing on what you can change.

Which leads me to my next question. You and I have often been in technology—the only women in the room. You walk into that room, it’s you and eight guys, eleven guys, whoever it is. You can’t change that. You can only change how you show up. So what advice would you give to women listening, who are the only woman in the room or the only woman at the table?

Good question. So the first thing I want to say is because I know so many of us who were the only woman in the room, it's been our lives. You know, I started out as a physicist, moved into supercomputing. That's about as male dominated as it gets, right? Those two industries.

And so most since I was about 14–15 I have been the only girl or woman in the room or one of just a couple. And so it was normal. It was normalized, I should say. And it was only actually when I started doing a lot of work around women's groups—both of us—firstly as a student, and then laterally, when I started like Women in Supercomputing as a movement, I realized what it felt like to be surrounded by women.

And it was that awakening when I thought, wait, hold on. When I'm in a room full of men, these things happen. And so I want you to be aware you're the only woman in the room, and what's actually going on. Because I think unless you've been in a room full of women recently, you don't necessarily know how it feels. The fact that when you walk in, you do slightly diminish yourself.

There's something—my husband, he is the biggest advocate for men and women in science and tech—and he came to one of my events to support me, and he said, he turned up earlier than me because we were coming from two different things, and he walked in and he said, I walked out again. And I was like, why? And he said, I've never walked into a room full of women in my professional career—because he's a computer scientist—and he'd never been in a room. And he was like, I think I now begin to understand what it must be like every day. And I was like, yeah, it's just, it's so normal.

So you've got to understand what is going on. Get yourself in a room full of women—professional women, not just your girlfriends—and see how your energy is different. How do you show up differently? Is your like... what are you doing? How are you holding yourself? Where do you hold back speaking? When you do speak, do you rush? Do you suddenly blurt things out? Or do you have that calm, collected, really insightful point?

Do you second guess yourself more when you're in that room full of men? A lot of us do. When you do assert yourself and somebody pushes back, how is that different from when you do that in a room full of women, when they push back? If the same words were used, do you respond differently? If it's different words, how does that impact you?

I think a lot of the time we can really change the world by having so much self-awareness. I mean, this is why I coach CEOs in this—self-awareness and how to 10x are the two big things, and they go hand in hand, right? You cannot 10x if you're not self-aware as a CEO.

And so I want you asking yourself, what do I do? How do I operate? How am I taking that in, and how does my brain function? We know that women's IQ literally drops when you put them in a room full of men. And by the way, men's IQ drops when you put them in a room full of women. It's... when you're in the minority, whatever that minority group looks like, if you are viewing yourself as different, your IQ literally drops because you spend some of your processing power on fitting in, on socializing, on asking yourself, am I the right person?

So I don't know if I've even answered your question. I feel like I've gone down a massive rabbit hole here, but I really want everybody who feels like they've ever been the only person in the room—of whatever flavor they look like, whether that's a woman or something else—do an assessment. How are you showing up? Is that different from if you were in the majority? What could you do to get yourself to that other behavior? Because that—again, it comes back to—that's how you're going to change the world.

I don't know if I even asked and answered your question... your question there.

It's good. And as you were talking about your husband—so I was invited to speak at the HP Discover Conference. So for people who don't know, the global audience—so about 13,000 HP employees and customers from every major large brand in the world, whether it's Disney, whether it's Mercedes, UPS—they all converge at this conference.

And so it's in Las Vegas. And so one day, I was doing a talk on a panel with Nvidia and HP and so forth on scaling artificial intelligence. Then they said, Susan, we'd love for you to co-host a peer-to-peer panel on women's health and AI.

And this is the second year, Toni, that I got to have a pan—this, this roundtable—done in a raw restaurant, whatever we want to talk about. 12 women show up, and one man. What a courageous man. And we talked about vaginal dryness. We talked about low libido. We talked about irregular periods, suicide rates for women in menopause.

And he was so grateful. And he's a scientist, and he wanted to be there because he wanted to understand. And as much as the listening audience for this show is about 50% men, I want to, I want to ask you your thoughts on this: just as we show up as women, and it's not owning ourselves...

I spent a lot of years going so far to the masculine I looked like a Silicon Valley tech bro. It was blazer and jeans, like, all the time. And I didn’t even realize. And then I look at the photos, and short of like shearing all my hair off like a sheep in spring, right? That’s who I—I was morphing into.

And I found myself, how I was speaking, like, you know... it was like, who am I? And it wasn’t until a friend of mine called me out on it and said, you’d actually be more powerful if you would have a balance in your feminine—it was a guy—and I went, oh yeah.

And I realized, Toni, that I had—in trying to kind of fit in and be heard—I had given away my power. And which is that balance. Because women, women are created to help men as well. And we, you know... just like women—strong women—have a masculine side, we also have a feminine side, right?

And the same thing with men in their masculine. The strongest men are also nurturers, yes, which is traditionally something we would say is feminine. They're also protectors.

And so what advice would you give to men who are in some rooms now—the only man in the room?

I mean, much of the same stuff applies. Obviously, I work in the tech industry, and so I'm very aware of being the only woman in the room, and my clients are. But the same thing applies if you're the only man in the room. Be aware your IQ is probably dropping.

It is a slightly... society is more masculine focused at the moment. That might change. Give it 50 years, 100 years, maybe it'll change. We don't know. But so that—you have a slight advantage if you're the only man in the room, but there is still going to literally be an IQ drop. Be aware of that. And it's a self-awareness piece.

And then ask the women around you for feedback. Ask them, hey, are you speaking up enough? Do they hear you? And I would say this to a woman as well. I mean, I'm always very cautious getting women to ask for feedback from a male-dominated room, because we know women are over-mentored, given too much feedback and not enough advocacy, and it's sort of giving permission for that.

But there is an element of—we do need constructive feedback. And so if you are the only one in the room, your feedback needs to be tailored to an awareness from you of how might that be impacting me. If I'm the only one of my type in the room, how might that be impacting my ability to ask those really insightful questions or point out where somebody else is missing?

One of the reasons why diversity is so good—and by diversity, we need 30% of the underrepresented group minimum to get the diversity dividend, right? That is well known. You want 30% of your board to be the minority group, and you will get the diversity dividend. Because when we're diverse, we have different lived experiences. We have, therefore, got different insights. So that—whoever you are—your voice matters.

You need to make sure, one, you actually are speaking up. But two, even if you are speaking up—which, you know, I think men, because of our societal training, are more likely to speak up in uncomfortable situations—not always, right? And if you're one of those men who's not, then don't think I'm not hearing you. I am. So pay attention to the female advice maybe.

But men are more likely to be trained from birth to speak up, right? And so if you are speaking up, are they hearing you? Are you speaking their language?

I would say, have the voice for the room. We talk about inner jargon and outer jargon in my world of coaching. The inner jargon is what you use with your team. They understand you. You're all using the same lingo, the same abbreviations. That is not going to work when you walk into certain rooms.

You need the jargon of that room. They need to hear you, which means you need to speak their language. If you can speak their language, they're going to have more respect, just because that's the way the human brain works.

So whoever you are, if you're underrepresented: are you speaking up? When you are speaking up, are you heard? Are you using the right language? Those are the first three go-to sides I would look at.

That's great advice. And that piece around the language, that applies to—

All of us, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

And thinking about what those goal outcomes are, right? At our company, our head of product is a man, and he and I have worked together in a previous company and now in this company. And I always joke, Toni, he knows more about menopause than I do. Like really, truly.

And he's so passionate about product and user experience and features, and he's incredibly kind, and he has this inner strength and resilience, and he also has the heart of the teacher. And to me, the qualities—I always say, anyone can learn skills. Anyone could learn how to code. However, can you learn the human skills?

Yeah, that's the question. And I would hire all day, every day, for cultural fit as the first and foremost. Because when we're aligned as a culture and we're respectful, that is the foundation for building great technology. And we're seeing, to your point, we're seeing a lot of disrespect, and it's allowed disrespect.

Yes, oh, enabled. I would actually say enabled. Sorry to jump in there. But I think disrespect and toxicity is enabled as much as anything else, and I don't think that's accepted in society. But you know what? If you are just allowing it to happen, you're enabling it. I will stop preaching on that point, because I will go on all day.

Exactly, exactly. And we all, myself included, deserve to have an advocate. And whoever you are, when you show up in the room, if you're the only of you, don't just be the person expecting someone to advocate for you. Be bold and be an advocate for someone. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, whatever it is we so desire is something we've got to be willing to put out there first.

And this leads me—we, the first time we met, we got super nerdy, because we could talk about supercomputing, we could talk about quantum computing, we could talk about the various types of AI. You and I could do a three-part series just on different types of AI, because people use the word AI so generally.

And my last question for you is, as we're sitting here having this discussion—you and I have spoken about AI, the future of AI—and thinking about some disparities that can happen with AI. And I'm going to pull it back from gender disparity, because not everyone in the listening audience understands how AI models are built. What is your biggest concern with disparities in the AI models and what potentially can happen?

I think it does all come down to our misunderstanding. I think our—most people's—misunderstanding what's actually going on with AI. We don't actually know how AI does what it does, in the same way we don't really know how the human brain makes decisions. But kind of know, we kind of know there’s things going on. What's a deep neural network? The people even building the machines and the software—how does AI actually come to... it’s not prop—depends what you mean by properly answered it. You can’t predict it, right? And therefore, if you can't predict, you don't really know what's going on.

And the problem with that is, how are we identifying when bias creeps in? So as we replace leaders’ decision-making with AI decisions, where is bias creeping in? From my angle, when we have AI reading resumes—which is now happening left, right, and center—even AI screening is now happening, right? Where you submit a video. We know it's biased against certain groups, but we're already seeing, “it's not us, it's the data,” as an excuse happening.

What does it mean to be a successful leader when you are deciding what is a high potential—something I don’t like the phrase of anyway—what does “high potential” mean? And putting them in special training programs. If AI is making that decision based on performance evaluations, you’ve got two levels of bias going on. Who is—or what is—read in those performance evaluations? That’s a level of bias. And then who or what is interpreting those performance evaluations and deciding, that person’s a high potential?

And I’ve had many conversations over the years—before AI—about the problem with that phrase “high potential.” But we use it left, right, and center, and put those people in special programs and lift them up, give them the training, give them the presence, give them the opportunities. And then that’s before we even get to how AI is building our future.

If we don’t have women at the table making decisions on what we use AI for, how we train AI models, where you said like training is something we don’t want to understand—which, if I do say—I don’t, I know enough to be dangerous. I don’t know enough to be an expert, is what I’d say on that. How AI is really trained, right?

Just irritates me when I hear that. We’re about to repeat that. We’re about to repeat that through a lack of objectivity, of having the right representation in the room. Right?

Then there’s like—not designing solutions with everybody in mind, but designing solutions for the white—sorry to say this—but the white male board in mind, because they've got blinkers on. They're one group of people. So we aren’t even using AI in all the places it could be used. And then when we are using it, it’s potentially not being kept in check, because we follow the data.

So there’s so many levels to your question, but basically—we, as a species, and especially as anybody who cares about this—I do believe we have a duty to all be looking at how it’s creeping into our lives. And I, I use AI every minute of every day. I think it’s awesome. But we have a duty as a species—if we’re to survive the AI revolution—we need to be in it. We need to be looking at it.

Where is it permeating our lives? And not just hear from somebody, “it’s the data.” That is not sufficient at all.

And it's that—to your point, right? Where did the data come from? How has it been validated? What are the current safeguards in place to be able to verify that that data is still correct, that there's not hallucinations?

Even for podcasts. So AI is determining which podcasts get advertised, which podcasts are getting promoted. All of the algorithms are—you know, whether it's YouTube, Instagram—all of it deciding based on...

And I hope everyone is internalizing this—when you see someone on Instagram who's like, “Oh, you can get 100,000 followers in a month.” The algorithm says that is not possible, because it is... you would, A, have to be on there 24/7. It's how many times you click, how much time you spend on there. The more time you spend on there, the more time that they're going to promote your particular... to other people.

And so there's so much bias in the algorithms now, and the new algorithms are being built on data from the existing algorithms that are already biased, right?

So until we... the big message I have as a woman in technology is that we think about technology differently. And one needs to, as a woman, advocate for yourself. Apply to be on boards, even if you don’t feel like you have a lot of time. A change maker, a difference maker.

If you’re starting your own company, be bold. It’s the—as Toni and I said—the 80/20 rule. Just heads down 80% of the time. Build some amazing technology the right way.

And I would just encourage every woman—Toni—to listen to your show. It is excellent, and I was so privileged to be a guest on your show of Leading Women in Tech. And Toni, final word to you—what is the message you want to share with everyone in the world about... I want them to always leave every show empowered. So what is an empowering thought you have for them as they leave the show and go out there into their lives?

Oh, that's a great question. I gotta, I gotta leave with something I fundamentally believe in my soul, which is—every single one of us is unique, is wonderfully unique, and the world needs that uniqueness.

Because when that uniqueness comes to the fore, we are going to provide something nobody else can. You have had, up until this point in your life, a unique experience that provides a unique insight into a challenge the human race needs to address.

But if you don't have a voice, if you don't channel your focus, if you don't pay attention to what's possible, if you get distracted by the million things you're interested in—but not the thing that you're unique and beautiful at and a genius at—if you’ve got to channel... because the world needs your uniqueness. They need your creativity. They need the thing that only you can give.

So do the species and the planet the honor of showing up as your best unique self, because we need to hear you.

I love that. That is so beautiful, as are you, my friend. Brilliant. I mean, we could do another show about, you know, physics and... yeah, we could get so nerdy.

Well, Toni, thank you so much for being here on the show. And again, I encourage everyone to listen to your show. It is brilliant. And for everyone listening—Toni and I would love a five-star review, share the show, tag us on social, let us know what is resonating for you.

And my message to all of you—like Toni said—just go out there and be the change. Stop thinking about taking action, and take action. Now is the time.

So with that, God bless, go rock your day, and I will see you in the next episode of Raw and Real Entrepreneurship®.

Hey, this is Susan, and thanks so much for listening to this episode on Raw and Real Entrepreneurship®®. If this episode—or any episode—has been helpful to you, you’ve gotten at least one solid tip from myself or my guest, I would love it if you would leave a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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If you're interested in any of the resources we discussed on the show, go to susansly.com. That’s where all the show notes live. And with that, go out there. Rock your day. God bless, and I will see you in the next episode.

This transcript has been generated using AI technology. There may be errors or discrepancies in the text. The opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the show or its hosts.