Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes.

Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum. We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it.

This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com. Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone.

Alright, y'all. Something shifted, and I've been sitting on this for a little bit now. And it didn't shift in this crazy dramatic, change, the rooms you're in. What you're willing to tolerate, it changes. And at some point, you realize that you're not becoming somebody new, but you're becoming more of who you were always meant to be. And that's exactly what we're talking about today.

Welcome to Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, the podcast where we stop playing small, start calling things out, and actually do something about it. I'm your host, Erica Rooney, executive coach, speaker, and a little bit of a movement maker. And I'm on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there.

Because let's be honest, we've been told to lean in, but not too far, to speak up but not too loudly, to be ambitious but somehow still likable. And y'all, we're done doing that. This is the space where we break it all down. The sticky floors, the ceilings, and the gaps that are shaping who gets ahead, especially in this next era of AI and leadership.

Some of it's mindset, some of it's burnout, and some of it is the system working exactly as it was designed. Either way, we're not staying stuck in it. Each episode is your nudge to move. One decision, one shift, one bold step forward. No overhauls, y'all. No waiting until you feel ready. Just real momentum.

So if you're ready to think bigger, move smarter, and build power on your own terms, you're in the right place. Let's smash the ceilings and close the gaps.

Alright, friends. What did you think of the new intro? Like, be honest with me because it's been a hot minute since I've made any bigger updates to the podcast, but I really felt like it was time and you see I'm right at the edge of this evolution and I'm not ready to leave behind my glass ceilings and my sticky floors. I just, I love that.

And y'all, this isn't just a podcast to me. It's truthfully the foundation of everything that I'built. And it gave me language to something that so many of us were feeling, but we couldn't quite name. And I'm talking about the tension and the second guessing in this constant recalibration of how do we show up in the rooms that weren't designed with us in mind.

And for a long time, my work was all about helping women see those patterns and figure out how to navigate them more effectively. How can they actually survive corporate and still climb and still be a mom? All of those things. And all of that still matters. It still matters deeply to me.

But here's what's true now. When I started this podcast, I was still very much living inside of it. I was a chief people officer in tech. I was working anywhere between fifty to sixty hours a week. I was leading. I was building. I was integrating, and I was still stuck. That's actually what led me to all of this work, because I felt so stagnant. And it wasn't in a way that you could easily point out.

I had the title. I had the pay. I was traveling to exotic places, and it looked like I had that dream life. And I thought that was the dream life I wanted, but, you know, I was still in my late thirties, and I was like, this is it? Like, this is what I'm going for?

And that's when I started the podcast. And if you're a real OG, you remember way back in the day, I called it From Now to Next, and it was really all about the career progression. And that led me to understand this concept of glass ceilings and sticky floors, and so we rebranded into Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors podcast. We have the book, and so much of my work is centered around that and smashing ceilings. And I, again, still loved that work.

I needed that season, and I needed to live it fully while I was still in corporate because that's where that clarity came from, and that's where the language came from. And growth really always has this way of asking for more, doesn't it? I don't know about you, but as a growth minded person, my brain is always going to the next thing. But eventually, navigating this corporate system really stopped being enough for me.

So what happened next was the conversation started expanding, and that's what I want to happen here in this podcast. I want our conversations to expand. I still want to talk about things like confidence and burnout and perfectionism because I love reading new research. And when that comes out, I want to be at the forefront of it. And a lot of those things we all still struggle with. They're still very real, but there's also a bigger layer.

And those are the actual systems themselves that we're living inside. The patterns that get rewarded, the behaviors that get promoted, those decisions that shape who actually advances and who doesn't. Because once you see that, you can't unsee it. My dear friend and mentor always says, you can't unring the bell. And that is so, so true.

And because of that, my work has expanded from ceilings to gaps. And I'm talking about the leadership gap, the opportunity gap, the visibility gap, the pay gap, and what I am calling the AI gap. Because the future of work and everything as we know it is being shaped by AI right now. We're talking hiring decisions, promotion criteria, who succeeds, who doesn't, who gets seen, who doesn't.

All of the data that is used to train these systems and how they're going to influence the decisions that are made at scale, that is what is massively critical right now. Because whatever sits underneath the decisions, that's what gets carried forward. That's what gets reinforced. And y'all, that is what becomes the standard.

So I want you to think about it, because what I'm saying here is that history is in the training data and this training data is going into AI. And what does AI do? It accelerates, it expands, and it grows things rapidly. So if everything it sees, pattern wise, is your traditional WASPI male succeeding, what do you think that's going to amplify? More of that. Less diversity, less women, less people of color, less LGBTQ plus in the community.

So, y'all, we have got to expand. We have got to lean in more because this shift that I'm talking about to you right now that you're hearing, it is so personal. I am going to be stepping more fully into the work that I am here to do, and that is not just helping women move through what currently exists in this archaic system that still operates and quite honestly is going a little bit backwards right now, but actually helping more of us influence what comes next.

Y'all, I'm a movement maker. I am a gap closer, and that means that I'm going to be a little bit more direct from now on. I'm going to build things with more intention, and I take responsibility for the rooms I'm in and the ones that I help shape and create.

And y'all, shameless plug. That's why I created Her Collective and it's growing the way that it is because the work was never meant to happen alone. Her Collective is where this conversation becomes action. It's where women take what they're learning, and we actually apply it in real time where strategy needs support. And, yeah, we all need some support in our lives.

Now what I also love is AI is becoming an integral part of Her Collective, and it is becoming a tool that is usable and practical, not abstract, not "hey, I'm using ChatGPT as a glorified Google." It is backed by very specific AI agents that are aimed to accelerate these women's climb up the corporate ladder and to close the gaps.

Because that's the only way we are going to win this game. I tell people, you have to play the game to win the game to change the game. And that's what we're doing now. We are changing the game.

Because through all of this, one thing remains the same. And that is that this podcast is all about movement. It's about forward momentum. I want you to know that this isn't some big life overhaul that you have to take. You just need one decision. You need one pivot, one moment where you're like, you know what? I'm going to do it differently this time.

Because that is how momentum starts to build. It's really just by taking that one simple step. Because all those little steps, they add up and they compound over time and they change you into that person that you were always supposed to be.

So, yes, this podcast right now, my work, me, things are evolving, and you're going to hear that in how I speak and what we talk about here. But the conversations that we bring into this space, y'all, they are going to blow your minds because we are still here to name those ceilings, and we are still here to call out those sticky floors. But now we are also going to be closing the gaps that shape what comes next.

Y'all the future is being built in real time, and we have a say in what it becomes. So let's smash the ceilings and close the gaps.

If this episode resonated with you, don't let it stop here. Send it to a woman you care about, a colleague, a friend, someone who's been on your mind while you were listening. These conversations are meant to be shared and you never know what one small shift can unlock for someone else.

And if you haven't already, make sure that you're following the podcast, leave a rating, and write a quick review. It helps more women find this space, and it keeps these conversations going.

If you're ready to go deeper, come a little closer. Send me a DM. I'll invite you to sit in on a live Her Collective session as my personal guest. No pressure, no strings attached. But you get to experience it, feel the room, and see what happens when women start moving together.

Until next time, y'all, keep going, keep choosing differently, and let's smash the ceilings and close the gaps.