SisterSmart Leadership

Have you been at the same company for years, even decades, and suddenly the work that once excited you feels stale? You are not alone and there is a clear path forward. This is the question so many ambitious women face: how do you know when it is time to leave a job you have loved? When the culture shifts, when new leadership changes everything, when an outside force like a merger or a pandemic re...

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 powe...

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 parent...

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...

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...

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 o...

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 t...

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 c...

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 anoth...

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...

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 step...

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 profession...

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...

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 sha...

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...

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,...

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 str...

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...

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 st...

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 Ba...

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...

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 a...

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 d...

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 role...

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 lean...