Work with Erika Ayers Badan

Hi! Happy Friday! It’s sunny out on the East Coast which feels great. If I were in college right now I’d be wearing flip flops and shorts despite it being 40 degrees. Full spring energy. Speaking of, meet Emily Tisch Sussman. She’s fun, smart, fearless and not afraid of a big job, nor a pivot. She’s the owner of Gotham FC, a strategist and the host of She Pivots - a podcast about harnessing change...

This episode is about the stuff people don’t say out loud. The resentment when your partner makes less than you. The panic before asking for a raise. The isolation of being the only woman in a room full of men. These questions come from the Work Like a Girl Slack - a community of professional women asking the real questions women are grappling with at work. If you've ever felt stuck asking for wha...

Meet Danielle Fette. She’s the co-founder and CEO of FetTech , a medical device company. She and her husband got fired from their last job, used the settlement money to start their own company, and now they’re inventing products that help people heal naturally. If you’ve ever wanted to leave a company that doesn’t put the things that you value first, or wondered what it takes to actually do it, th...

First of all, Go Patriots. In today’s episode, we respond to David Rubenstein’s comments on being a great fundraiser. IMHO the fundamentals of being a great fundraiser are the fundamentals of being a great seller (and a great partner). Listening. Being solution oriented. Knowing your customer (or your audience). Having a point of view. Following up. Being present. Being willing to do the work to g...

Today we are talking about narrative and numbers. And the tension between the two. “ Narrative driving numbers early in the life cycle and numbers driving narrative later. ” From Narrative and Numbers by Aswath Damodaran. The idea is simple and also hard to live by. Narrative drives numbers early. Numbers drive narrative later. And that back and forth never really stops. I think in narratives. I l...

Search traffic is down, referral traffic is drying up, platforms are changing their rules, people are evaluating what to do…and what’s next. Emily Kirkpatrick is one of these people. She left a big, recognizable job in dramatic fashion, went fully independent, and built a real living on Substack and YouTube. No ads. No corporate overhang. Just her voice, her point of view, and a direct relationshi...

Gen Z is resisting the workplace emergency and honestly, they are not wrong. On today’s episode, we talk about Gen Z and their refusal to get wrapped up in manufactured chaos of work. No all nighters. No dropping everything. No pretending every problem is catastrophic. Their perspective is simple: Nobody is dying from this. I love a problem at work and a get down into the trench - there’s only one...

This is an episode for people grappling with how to manage and how to embrace AI. Good managers in the future will seamlessly balance being human, creative, fallible, empathetic and visionary with tools, systems and services which automate all that isn’t differentiated nor distinct. Managers and people who refuse to adapt and evolve will be extinct in a workplace soon to be fueled by agents (and n...

Meet Selena Rezvani. She is a leadership coach, four time author, and someone who spends a lot of time thinking about why work feels harder than it needs to be. We talk about suffering at work. We talk about why people are suffering at work and what suffering at work even means. We talk about side hustles and life rafts. We talk about the loss of trust and optimism. We talk about Gen Z (obviously)...

The most vibrant channel on Work Like A Girl’s slack is the working mom channel. It’s also the most honest, acute and to the point. It goes something like this: One woman says - I need help. The others say - I got you. In this episode of Net Net we talk about the politicization of the mom brand and the idea of motherhood - namely: Motherhood as a proxy for what women should want, do and be. Being...

Today we are talking endurance. We breakdown the quote: “ The trick in any field, from finance to careers to relationships is being able to survive the short-run problems. So you can stick around long enough to enjoy the long-term growth. ” from Same as Ever by Morgan Housel’s. Housel basically says the real trick is surviving the short-term problems long enough to benefit from the long-term ones....

Meet Ariana Ferwerda. She’s the founder of Halfdays. She’s looked at women’s ski apparel, thought it sucked and decided to do something about it. Ariana saw a real gap in the market. Women’s ski gear that was either technical and ugly or cute and useless. She talks about trusting her instinct on opportunity, what it was like to raise money ‘early’ in her career, building a brand and an inventory h...

In this episode of WORK Net Net, Erika breaks down why worry feels productive but rarely helps. From the illusion of control to the mental toll of trying to plan for outcomes you cannot predict, this conversation looks at anxiety as an affliction, not a strategy. If you have been spiraling, overthinking, or lying awake trying to solve problems that have not happened yet, this episode is about lear...

On this episode of Unsolicited Advice, we talk about what actually makes teams work. How clarity beats charisma. Why initiative matters more than experience. Why most partnerships fail long before the deal is signed. And why avoiding hard conversations always costs more than having them early. If you’ve ever felt stuck, frustrated, or exhausted by the way work actually functions day to day, this o...

Meet Katrina Gazarian. She’s an HR professional who decided the best way to talk about work right now was through satire, whiskey, and a YouTube show called Drunk at Work . Here’s what I liked about this conversation and why you should listen: Katrina has seen the same problems play out across every kind of company: Bad communication. Poor leadership. Control disguised as process. HR taking the he...

I got a text the other night from my friend Erin letting me know that the year of the horse is in fact coming but it’s ok to not be ready yet because we are still in the mysterious hang-time between the lessons of 2025 and the light of 2026. Whew. I’m ready not ready for the fire horse of 2026. Still have some stuff to get organized and work thru. I was talking to my GPT agent this weekend and we...

In this episode of WORK: Unsolicited Advice, Erika talks through what it really looks like to come out of the worst month of your career still standing. Not with hype or false optimism, but with practical clarity about failure, ownership, restraint, and the underrated skill of rebounding. If something went sideways for you, if you are questioning what comes next, or if you are trying to figure out...

This topic comes to us complements of Abby Wambach and a handful of former US National Team players. Net/Net let your kid live, fail, grow, struggle, learn, connect and play in peace. They’ll be better for it. This is Work Net/Net. Get full access to Mule Media at erikaayersbadan.substack.com/subscribe

Kerri Rosenthal is an artist, a businesswoman, a mom, not someone giving up her ambition (is that what we’re supposed to be doing at work these days?), someone who’s going for it. I watched her this past Saturday stocking pots. I was stacking bedding. I like a woman who doesn’t quit, who doesn’t quite fit in and who has a drive to make something. Kerri is one of those people. Listen to what she ha...

This headline somehow feels both shocking and completely unsurprising. The McKinsey and Lean In Women in the Workplace study is out, and the takeaway is bleak. Fewer companies care about advancing women. Even fewer care about advancing women of color. And somehow, we are now talking about an “ambition gap” like women just collectively woke up and decided to want less. Let’s be clear. Women are sti...

Hi! Ever felt like you’re on a Disney ride through every big-company headache imaginable? Think lawyers, bankers, finance goons, stale conference rooms, staid conversations and the creeping sense that the machine is running you, not the other way around. Big companies exist for good reason. They build real things - consistently. They deliver at scale. But they also can suffocate the people who wan...

Kathy Ireland has a big business. She parlayed a modeling stint into a pretty massive licensing business. Here’s what I liked about our conversation and why you should give it a listen: It takes a pretty unique person to not want to do something that’s lucrative and flattering. Kathy shares a lot about her time as a model - what she liked, what she felt she lacked, and how and why she decided to m...

Today we’re talking about the Omnicom–IPG merger and what it means for agency jobs, how AI is replacing layers of work inside holding companies, and why middle-layer roles are most at risk in this new ad economy. This is WORK. Net/Net. Watch full episode on YouTube. Get full access to Mule Media at erikaayersbadan.substack.com/subscribe

This is a good listen for anyone needing a push to put themselves out there and to accept imperfect, chaotic and unfamiliar situations as a way to meet people, learn things and enliven yourself. We tackle the quote: “So I recommend that everybody here join all sorts of organizations, no matter how ridiculous, simply to get more people in his or her life.” This is WORK: Underlined Watch full episod...

Please meet Cynthia Pong. She came to me by way of super-connector and personal board director an occasional SVU actor, Sarah Storm. Cynthia Pong packs a lot of punch. A one time public defender turned career coach / founder of Embrace Change. We have a wide-ranging conversation about the disadvantages women, and especially women of color, face in the workplace . We also talk about starting your o...