Leading Women in Tech Podcast

Toni Collis
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Careers
  • Weekly

For ambitious women ready to rise, lead, and thrive — without burning out. Are you delivering results… but still waiting to be seen as a true leader? Tired of performance reviews with praise — but no promotion? Hosted by Dr. Toni Collis, executive coach for women in tech, this podcast is your go-to leadership toolkit. Whether you're a rising Director, lone female VP, or overextended operator tired of being overlooked — you're in the right place. Each week, Toni shares real-world leadership strategies, career advancement frameworks, and executive presence tools to help you: ✅ Build strategic visibility ✅ Communicate like a trusted exec ✅ Navigate politics with integrity ✅ Advocate for yourself (without overworking) ✅ Lead with confidence, clarity, and influence You'll also hear powerful interviews with women who've paved the way — and candid conversations on the unspoken challenges women face in male-dominated industries. ✨ If you're ready to go from "she's great" to "she's the obvious next Exec" — hit follow.

  1. 5 days ago

    Hard Conversations: What to Actually Say

    You have had this conversation in your head eleven times. You have drafted the message twice and deleted it both times. By the end you will have six moves, including the actual words, and the one almost everybody skips that explains why nothing changed last time. Most of the women I coach have already had the difficult conversation. Sometimes more than once. They raised it, the other person nodded, everyone was pleasant about it, and then nothing changed at all. Three months later they are furious, and the other person is genuinely blindsided, because from where they were sitting that conversation went fine. Here is what often happens and why everyone's confused. You cushioned it. You opened with how much you value them. You gave a lot of context first, because you wanted them to understand where you were coming from. Then somewhere in the middle you said the actual thing, in the gentlest possible version, wrapped in qualifiers, and you closed with reassurance because you wanted them to leave feeling okay. So the hard part was in there. Technically. Buried two thirds of the way down, at about forty percent of its real volume, between two much louder pieces of reassurance. And they did not hear it. Not because they were not listening, but because it was structurally the quietest thing you said. That is not a courage problem. You were brave enough to have the conversation. You then built it in a shape that made the hard part undetectable. This episode is about what you actually say. The words, in order. Because approach and mindset are rarely what is missing. What is missing is the first two sentences. WHAT'S COVERED → Why the conversation you already had changed nothing, and what buried the message → Why the surface version of the problem is almost never the real one → The first thirty seconds, with four openings you can use as written → The single distinction that decides whether this goes well or turns into a fight → Why women cushion, and why vagueness does not actually protect you → The move almost everybody skips, and why it is what makes the other five stick RELATED EPISODES Boundaries for women in leadership: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/268-boundaries-for-women-in-leadership-how-to-lead-without-burning-out When the stakes are high and your voice goes quiet: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/298-leadership-communication-skills-women-clarity-under-pressure/ Leader as coach, how coaching skills transform your leadership: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/314-leader-as-coach-coaching-skills-transform-leadership/ FREE RESOURCE Say It Like a Leader, a bank of scripts for high-stakes moments: https://tonicollis.com/sayitlikealeader  Book a complimentary strategy call: https://tonicollis.com/lets-chat

  2. 20 Oct

    Leadership Coaching Styles: Lead as You, Not as Them

    Ever felt like this: everyone in that meeting said the right thing, behaved well and seemed to have your back. But you still left wrong-footed.  Let's talk about the situations that hold you up even though on paper, they seem like they shouldn't.  By the end of this you will know what to do in the moment when something is off and nobody has said anything you can point to. Ruth E. Andermatt has been coaching executives for twenty-eight years, since she walked out of a corporate role running a staff of seventy. She says it is harder to be a woman in leadership now than it was when she started, because the language has changed even though behaviors have mostly changed. The attitudes have not changed. So you no longer know what you are dealing with across the table, and an attitude you cannot hear is far harder to lead through than an insult you can. Toni and Ruth also get into what coaching actually is, which is a conversation this show rarely has. Ruth's definition is that she is invested in the person, not the outcome, which is why a client who arrives certain she needs the VP title sometimes leaves clear that she does not. From there: what Ruth means by wisdom, and why she insists you arrived with it rather than earning it with age. Toni's zone of genius framing, and the warning that the work you are merely excellent at will burn you out while the work that energizes you will not. WHAT'S COVERED → Why the attitudes did not change when the language did, and what that costs you → Why neutral beats both engaging and retreating when you are undermined → What wisdom actually means, and why waiting to be old enough for it is a mistake → The difference between the work you are excellent at and the work that energizes you → Why there is no such thing as a sacrifice, only an investment → Whether Queen Bee syndrome is still real, or whether you simply do not click → Why introverted leaders are often the most powerful people in the room RELATED EPISODES How coaching makes you a better leader — https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/162-how-coaching-makes-you-a-better-leader/ Using coaching as a leader to elevate your team — https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/160-using-coaching-as-a-leader-to-elevate-your-team/ Embracing introversion as a leadership strength — https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/223-embracing-introversion-the-power-of-thoughtful-leadership/  CONNECT WITH RUTH E. ANDERMATT LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachruth/  Ready to work out what your own leadership style actually is, rather than borrowing someone else's? Book a strategy call — https://tonicollis.com/lets-chat/

  3. 13 Oct

    How to Build Powerful Advocates (Without Feeling Sleazy)

    Mentors talk to you. Sponsors talk about you. Most senior women have plenty of the first and almost none of the second. By the end of this you'll know the one sentence your advocates need from you, and why the ask you have been dreading is not the ask you think it is. There is a question I get asked more often than almost any other, usually near the end of a coaching conversation or virtual coffee chat and usually a little embarrassed: how do I get somebody senior to actually back me? If you have been collecting mentors diligently and wondering why nothing is changing, this episode is about the thing you have been missing A mentor talks to you. That relationship happens in a room with two people in it and you are one of them.  An advocate talks about you. They say your name in rooms you are not in, they put you forward for the stretch project, and they say "I think she's ready" when somebody else is not sure. Career sponsorship for women is the piece that almost nobody explains, and it is the piece that actually moves careers. Here is what I see constantly in my coaching practice. The women I work with have been mentored extensively and have had nobody argue for them when it mattered. And when I say the word sponsor out loud, I watch faces close, because what she is thinking is that she does not want to play politics just to get ahead. That objection is not silly and it is not going away on its own. But the sleaze is not in the advocacy. It is in how you have been imagining the ask. You have been picturing yourself going to somebody senior and asking them for a favor, asking them to like you enough to spend their own credibility on you. No wonder it feels awful. Advocacy is not a favor you ask for. It is a handover. Your advocate needs something specific to say and evidence behind it, and your job is not to be liked enough. It is to make yourself advocable. This episode covers the five steps that do that.   WHAT'S COVERED → Why you have been collecting the wrong thing, and what a mentor cannot do for you → The reframe that makes the ask stop feeling grubby → Why you almost certainly have more advocates than you think, and how to find them → The one sentence that decides what gets said about you when you are not there → Why advocacy for women skews toward character and what that costs → Why evidence matters more than relationship when somebody puts their name behind yours   RELATED EPISODES Why you're not being seen as the leader you want to be: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/310-why-youre-not-being-seen-as-a-leader-at-work/ Office politics for women who hate office politics: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/296-office-politics-women-hate-office-politics From tactical to strategic, the unspoken rules for women stepping into executive leadership: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/292-executive-leadership-for-women-strategic-shift   FREE RESOURCE Seen as Strategic, the checklist for what senior leaders are actually reading when they decide whether you are executive material: https://tonicollis.com/resources/seen-as-strategic/ Book a complimentary strategy call: https://tonicollis.com/lets-chat/

  4. 6 Oct

    Starting a Startup as a Mom: It Was Never About Timing

    The urge arrives late at night,  after the kids have gone to sleep and the laptop is shut: I could do that. And it can feel like that's impossible because of timing. But today's conversation shows you that starting a startup as a mom is not a timing problem. Elisa Lu has never asked herself whether she should. She only asks how. She co-founded an AI hardware company with no coding background and no engineering training, as the mother of two young boys, while relocating her family to Germany for her husband's career, with co-founders spread across three time zones. That is three solid reasons that everyone would understand as a reason to wait. But Elisa didn't. She treated all of them as logistics to be solved for. Elisa, today's guest, is co-founder and COO of Memoket, and her career before this was a deliberate walk towards the part of a business where decisions actually get made: supply chain at Procter & Gamble, building manufacturing facilities as a young graduate, then a deliberate move into marketing, because marketing was where the business outcome was decided rather than serviced. In this conversation Elisa makes her journey sound so ordinary, so casual you think 'yes well, of course'. She makes the hard parts sound easier than I know many of us think they are. There is travel, there are weeks away, there are children who cried the first time and adapted faster than she expected. There is a husband with his own career and no assumption that either of them is the default parent. And there is a clear-eyed answer to the question of whether she ever doubts it, which is yes, at three in the morning, and her response is to keep moving. We also discuss whether luck has anything to do with this, or is it something else?  It is worth listening for how often you use the word 'lucky' about your own career. This is for anyone weighing a founder move, a side project, or any leap that currently feels badly timed. WHAT'S COVERED → Why "should I?" is the wrong question, and what to ask instead → How to build in an industry you have no technical training in → What the logistics of founding actually look like with two young children and a partner with his own career → Why saying "I'm lucky" quietly erases the choices you made → The 3am doubt that every founder has, and what to do with it → Why "stay stable" is the worst advice she was ever given RELATED EPISODES Is entrepreneurship the right next step for you — https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/210-is-entrepreneurship-the-right-next-step-for-you-with-alex-batdorf/ The realities of leading as a young mom — https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/233-the-realities-of-being-a-leader-as-a-young-mom-a-coaching-conversation-with-madeleine-lambert/ Breaking out of your comfort zone and preparing for venture funding — https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/263-breaking-out-of-your-comfort-zone-emily-dinu-on-mindset-grit-and-preparing-for-venture-funding/  CONNECT WITH ELISA LU & CHECK OUT MEMOKET LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisa-lu-71757810/  Memoket — https://memoket.ai/  Ready to stop waiting for the right moment in your own career? Book a strategy call — https://tonicollis.com/lets-chat/  This episode was sponsored by our guest, Elisa Lu. Thank you Elisa and Memoket for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community. Toni has been testing the Memoket Gem and talks about it in the episode.

  5. 29 Sept

    The Operating System That's Burning You Out, and How to Redesign It

    It's nine at night and you're answering the email that could have waited. Nobody asked you to. That isn't a boundaries problem. By the end you'll know which of the four engines is running hottest in you, and you'll have one change to make this week that your system can't talk you out of. Somewhere early in your career, usually for very good reasons, you built yourself an operating system for achievement. Deliver more than asked. Own everything you touch. Never be the reason something drops. Prove yourself in every room, every time. That system worked, and it's why you're where you are. Notice what it doesn't contain. No off switch. No definition of enough. No mechanism at all for protecting the person running it. It was built to produce output, and it will keep producing output until the machine it runs on breaks. Which is why burnout at this level isn't a workload problem and isn't a personal failure. One client arrived convinced she'd lost her resilience. When we mapped what she was actually carrying, she was running roughly two and a half jobs on one human, using an operating system she designed in her twenties when the stakes were far lower. Her resilience was extraordinary. Six months later she wasn't working less hard, because she didn't want to. She was working on one job, deliberately chosen, with the absorption named and redistributed. Her performance went up. This episode maps the four engines driving ambition burnout in high-achieving women, gives you five changes that rebuild the system rather than layering self-care on top of it, and ends with the argument that moves high achievers when nothing else does: your team inherits your pace, and the women watching you are doing arithmetic on what your job appears to cost. WHAT'S COVERED → Why "just get better at switching off" treats the symptom as the cause → The two stories, denial and shame, that keep capable women stuck → Four engines: proving, over-functioning, the invisible load, and success escalation → Why the fourth engine is only dangerous when it sits alongside another → Five changes that rebuild the system, starting with a written definition of enough → Why your calendar is your team's curriculum, and where the pipeline actually leaks RELATED EPISODES Part one, why this is so hard to see in yourself: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/318-quiet-burnout-high-achievers What burnout-proof leadership actually requires: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/294-burnout-proof-leadership-women-tech/ Boundaries for women in leadership: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/268-boundaries-for-women-in-leadership-how-to-lead-without-burning-out The invisible load and what leadership shouldn't cost you: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/254-the-invisible-load-leadership-shouldnt-cost-your-wellbeing Bravery, grit and confidence, the leadership energy model: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/312-bravery-grit-confidence-leadership-energy-model/ Leader as coach, the skill behind delegating capability: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/314-leader-as-coach-coaching-skills-transform-leadership/ RESOURCES The Burnout to Balance Toolkit: https://tonicollis.com/burnout-to-balance Book a complimentary strategy call: https://tonicollis.com/lets-chat/ #WomenInTech #SustainableLeadership #TechLeadership #Leadership #WomenInLeadership

  6. 22 Sept

    Women in Tech Careers: The Standard No One Tells You With Sharon Lynch

    Everyone tells you you're doing great. Nobody tells you the standard you're actually being held to. Why women in tech careers stall on feedback nobody gives. By the end of this you will know what that unspoken standard usually is, and how to ask for the feedback that names it. Sharon Lynch has been asked more than once to lower the standard for women. Her answer has been no every time, and not because she wants fewer women in senior roles. The moment the bar drops, the whole organisation reads it as proof that women could not clear it, and every woman hired after that carries the diversity hire label whether it fits her or not. She is CEO of Modus Create, and before that she ran Slalom's product engineering organisation across the Americas, a team of more than 1,400 people. What she describes in this conversation is the quieter problem underneath. Managers, often men but women too, are afraid of how developmental feedback will land, so they soften it or skip it altogether. The result is that women are held to a high standard nobody has articulated, evaluated against a bar nobody has described, and passed over for reasons that never get said out loud. When Sharon left her last role, a colleague's first question was not about the org chart. It was who is going to give us the hard feedback now. Women in tech careers rarely stall on capability. They stall in the gap between how well she performs and what anyone is willing to say about it. The rest of the conversation is about what closes that gap. Sharon's route to CEO ran through the business fundamentals: utilisation, expenses, revenue, how money is actually made. She is direct about why this matters. Functional leaders know their own function extremely well. Executives tie everything together, and you cannot do the second without understanding the first. That shift from individual contributor skills to an executive mindset is the one she watches most women stop short of. She also talks about asking her way into rooms she was not invited to, why asking your team to explain the data is not a failure of trust, what leadership legacy looks like when it is not about you, and why a title reveals the leader you had already become rather than creating one.   WHAT'S COVERED → Why "you're doing great" is the most expensive feedback you can receive → What happens to every woman in the room the moment the standard is lowered for one → Why understanding utilisation, expenses and revenue changes how executives look at you → How to ask your way into the rooms where the numbers get decided, without signalling that you don't trust your team → Why being right the fastest costs more than it wins → What a title actually changes, and what it only reveals   RELATED EPISODES How to give feedback as a leader — https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/152-how-to-give-feedback/  The promotion gap for women in tech — https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/290-women-in-tech-promotion-gap/  The shift from tactical to strategic leadership — https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/292-executive-leadership-for-women-strategic-shift/  CONNECT WITH SHARON LYNCH LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharondlynch/  Modus Create — https://www.moduscreate.com/    Ready to stop guessing at the standard you're being measured against? Book a strategy call — https://tonicollis.com/lets-chat/  This episode was sponsored by our guest, Sharon Lynch. Thank you Sharon and Modus Create for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community. #WomenInTech #TechLeadership #WomenInLeadership #Leadership #LeadingWomenInTech

  7. 15 Sept

    Quiet Burnout: Why the Best Performers Are Never Caught

    You're the one person your boss never worries about. That's exactly why nobody has spotted your quiet burnout. By the end of this you'll know the five stages of the spiral, why your own self-check keeps missing it, and the external instruments that break it. Quiet overachievers are the last people anyone worries about, and that is precisely the problem. If you feel burnout at work but you are still delivering clean work on time with no fuss, every system your organisation has for detecting trouble will read you as thriving. The reason this stays invisible to you is the question you use to check. High performers are relentless self-monitors, but the question is always "am I still delivering?", and delivery is the last thing to fail. Sleep goes first, then patience, then curiosity, then everything outside work, then your interest in the work itself. Delivery holds through all of it, because you make it hold. By the time that check finally fires, you are a long way into something that was visible in other measures months ago. What is workplace burnout when it takes this form? It is a loop rather than an event. Invisible excellence, early depletion, compensation, concealment, isolation, and then back to the start, faster each turn. The accelerant is stage three: you notice yourself slipping, you interpret it as a discipline problem rather than a fuel problem, and you respond by working harder. It works, which is the cruel part, and that guarantees you will use it again next time, harder. This episode maps the shape of corporate burnout in the people best at absorbing it, names the three beliefs that keep women inside the loop, and gives you five exits. Every one of them is external, because the whole argument of the episode is that your internal read is not currently trustworthy. WHAT'S COVERED → Why "am I still delivering?" is the worst diagnostic available to you → The difference between loud and quiet overachieving, and why the quiet version costs more → The five stages of the spiral, and which one turns a hard patch into a loop → Why performing wellness is a second job that nobody hires you for → Why your manager cannot see this, and why waiting to be caught is not a plan → Five external instruments that break the loop, starting with one sentence to one person RELATED EPISODES ⏹  What burnout-proof leadership actually requires: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/294-burnout-proof-leadership-women-tech/ ⏹  The early indicators of burnout high performers are best at overriding: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/248-recognizing-the-signs-identifying-early-indicators-of-burnout ⏹  The invisible load and what leadership should not cost you: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/254-the-invisible-load-leadership-shouldnt-cost-your-wellbeing ⏹  Bravery, grit and confidence: the leadership energy model: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/312-bravery-grit-confidence-leadership-energy-model/  FREE RESOURCE Signs You're Leading at an Unsustainable Pace: https://tonicollis.com/resources/is-this-unsustainable/  Book a complimentary strategy call: https://tonicollis.com/lets-chat/

  8. 8 Sept

    Leadership Advice for Career Growth: Owning Your Metrics and AI Transformation with Kimberly Williams

    "If I wanted someone who would commute, I could have hired a man from New York." That's what a private equity partner said to Kimberly Williams while offering her first CEO role. She took the job anyway, delivered results he couldn't argue with, and changed how he saw women in leadership. Kimberly is Chairperson and CEO of Absorb Software, and before that grew CST Holdings more than five-fold in seven years, taking it from fifth in its market to first. In this episode of Leading Women in Tech Kimberly shares the career advice that took her from a strategy role at Boston Consulting Group to the CEO seat — including the single piece of guidance she gives every ambitious woman, why asking for help builds supporters rather than doubts, and how she thinks about AI transformation as a sitting CEO. What we cover: Why one small comment from anyone in your life can change a trajectory, positively or negatively Boston Consulting Group as the first true meritocracy she'd worked in The accidental route into running a business: a $4.3 million business case "If I wanted someone who would commute, I could have hired a man from New York" The importance of your support network, and why this may be the most consequential move you make in your career The career advice Kimberly gives every woman: fight for roles that carry numbers Why asking for help creates supporters — the cognitive dissonance effect Humility as a CEO strength: your job isn't to have the answers AI transformation: why AI serves your strategy rather than being your strategy Pick projects that could make your company great, not 1% more profitable Testing agentic outbound sales outside the core business Useful Links Connect with today's guest and sponsor, Kimberly Dolan Williams, on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlydolanwilliams/) and find out more about Absorb Software at https://www.absorblms.com. This episode was sponsored by Absorb Software. Thank you Kimberly and Absorb for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community!

See All (100)

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

For ambitious women ready to rise, lead, and thrive — without burning out. Are you delivering results… but still waiting to be seen as a true leader? Tired of performance reviews with praise — but no promotion? Hosted by Dr. Toni Collis, executive coach for women in tech, this podcast is your go-to leadership toolkit. Whether you're a rising Director, lone female VP, or overextended operator tired of being overlooked — you're in the right place. Each week, Toni shares real-world leadership strategies, career advancement frameworks, and executive presence tools to help you: ✅ Build strategic visibility ✅ Communicate like a trusted exec ✅ Navigate politics with integrity ✅ Advocate for yourself (without overworking) ✅ Lead with confidence, clarity, and influence You'll also hear powerful interviews with women who've paved the way — and candid conversations on the unspoken challenges women face in male-dominated industries. ✨ If you're ready to go from "she's great" to "she's the obvious next Exec" — hit follow.

Information

  • Creator
    Toni Collis
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2026 Collis-Holmes Innovations
  • Show Website
    Leading Women in Tech Podcast

You Might Also Like