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.

Erica: 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.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Welcome to the Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floor podcast. The podcast where we get real about the challenges that women face in work, life, and leadership. I'm your host, Erica Rooney, HR executive, keynote speaker, and executive coach, and I'm on a mission to get more women into positions of power and keep them there. This is the space where we call it the paradoxes, being told to lean in but not too far, to speak up but not too loudly, be ambitious but not too ambitious.

Erica: If that sounds familiar to you, you're in the right place. But here, we break down the sticky floors that keep us stuck from imposter syndrome and perfectionism to burnout and fear and give you real strategies to shatter those glass ceilings once and for all. So if you're ready to rewrite the rules, own your power, and take your career in life to the next level, you're in the right place. Alright, y'all. Get ready to meet an incredible woman who's been turning corporate turbulence into opportunity for decades.

Erica: Y'all, today's guest is a Fortune one hundred executive, a board director, and change catalyst who was the first woman to helm Verizon's Upstate New York region and later guided more than 12,000 people through the historic Sprint T Mobile merger. And if any of y'all know me, y'all know I also spent a decade at Verizon, so we are kindred spirits here. Now senior vice president at Humana, she leads multibillion dollar health care initiatives while championing equity for veterans and mentoring the next generation of women leaders. From transforming telecom retail from the ground up to reshaping organizational culture with heart and with grit, she is proof that you don't have to choose between compassion and decisive action. Y'all, please welcome Tracy Nolan to the table.

Erica: Tracy, how are you?

Tracy: I'm great, Erica. Thank you for having me on this podcast. I was so excited. I just the name of your podcast alone was like, yes. I need to join Erica and have a conversation.

Erica: Oh my god. It is such a sticky name for lack of better words. But I love this because our lives have so many red threads connecting us from Verizon to your work at Dress for Success and even some friends who work where you are now. And so I am so excited for this conversation, but I would love to kick it off just by asking you what inspired you to pursue leadership in your field, and how did your upbringing or your education really shape your ambition?

Tracy: It's so funny, Erica, because if you would have asked me, growing up what I was gonna do, I thought I would be a woman with five kids, six kids. I would be a school teacher, and I would not be doing what I was doing today. And life just takes those changes and chances. I started out of college in retailing, and I loved it. Most people think clothing retailing is all about just selling, but it was the operations. It was the marketing. It was the HR piece. It was the whole operations of owning a P&L and being able to make a difference, and putting at the center of it, of course, is customers. Having somebody walk out that knew they were gonna go into an interview, and they not only had bought a suit or a blouse, but they knew head to toe what they were gonna wear. So I'm always putting the customer in the middle and making sure they have whatever product it is they're gonna use with it. And it just kinda blossomed. It just started with the focus on customers and on our employees. And then from there, it just kinda moved up and each role was taking on a new challenge. And I'm a challenge seeker, I guess. I'm one that runs to challenges. I don't run away, but it has to start with a little bit of confidence that it's okay to not always succeed. And I think we as women have such a hard time with that.

Erica: Yeah. I would say we do, speaking from personal experience. But I would love to ask you, and I think we all have these self-imposed feelings on what we think is possible. You know, and you said way back in the day when you were a kid, you never would have imagined this life that you're leading now. So I would love to hear from you. What was that first glass ceiling that you really, like when you look back, you recognize that, wow, I really crashed through that one?

Tracy: I would say that I seem to break barriers. Even when I picked my college, we were a family that went to liberal arts schools. And I was very determined to go to the best school that I got in and get a bachelor's of science, really focus on doing something. And I went to a school where the ratio was six to one, six men to every one woman, and it was an engineering school. I wasn't even taking engineering, but my family was like, what are you doing? Is this really what you wanna do? So I kinda went to a college that wasn't even anything like what my family expected, it was the hardest school I got into. I knew I was gonna be challenged being around six men, which might sound kind of fun, actually. But in the coldest spot in Upstate New York, right on the Canadian border. I look at that and that was kind of a start of like, I'm gonna challenge myself to do things that I didn't know. And I went from being a pretty good student in high school to being surrounded by all these people who were so intelligent that it was like, oh my gosh, I am average at best from an educational perspective. So I think that was the first one that I broke, that I really stepped out and did something different.

Erica: So, what school did you go to? You didn't even tell us that.

Tracy: So, Clarkson University, a division one hockey school. So we didn't have, that was the big thing and that's where I started to love hockey. But it was a tough school. All the people I roomed with were electrical engineers, chemical engineers, and there I was an accounting major. And I also started our first sorority. They did not have any sororities at the school, only fraternities. So I was a founding member of a sorority, and I was gathering women at that time together so we would have a sorority and we bought a house in the time that we were there. And I was, of course, the vice archon of our sorority. So again, I just started that leadership even while going to the school.

Erica: That's such a good story, Tracy. I love it. And I was thinking back as you were answering, I was like, well man, Erica, that's a great question. What was your first glass ceiling? Yeah, and I think for me looking back, it was breaking the six figure mark. I just never thought in my life that I would ever make more than $100,000. That just seems so far off and unattainable to me. And so I love sharing moments like this because it's like we all have to start somewhere. We don't just have this leadership prowess in us, and we're not just bold, and we don't just go for it. So I'd love to ask you, Tracy, what are some of the traits that you think really helped you? And then how do you think women today can harness that to shatter whatever ceiling is self-imposed over their own heads?

Tracy: It's super interesting because I grew up in a family of it being prim and proper. And that whole politeness thing became part of the way I was, not only home but at work. And I think at times that held me back actually, because I was the one that was trying to arrange the room, or I was the one that was going to get in water. And it was like, one day, I was just like, why am I doing this? Other people aren't coming in and making sure they're coming in because they've been invited to this meeting. So I just started to really hone in on that, if you're invited to a meeting or you're part of a meeting, then you are there to be part of the meeting and not to bring in kind of all the things I kinda learned, like hostess of the mostess, and said, I earned the right to be here. They have a right to have me in this meeting, but I also have a right whether I wanna be there or not. And when I started flipping the switch on feeling like, oh my gosh, it's so nice that they invited me. I earned this. I am respected. I'm coming in. That's when it really was one of those little switches that was like, wow, this is empowering. And I empowered myself. The company already empowered me to be there. But as women, I think sometimes that nicety and that way of being brought up was actually holding me back.

Erica: I would 100% agree. Same thing, I grew up in the South with a stepmother in the junior league, which if you're not familiar with the junior league, it is historically this very WASPy group of women, and it's much different in many locations. So I'm just speaking in generality here. But it was all about putting on the perfect party and having the right tableware set out, and that was really impressed upon me as something that was important. And just you talking got me thinking how we still are so programmed to not even recognize this. I hosted an internal training at a corporation not too long ago, and we had lunch, and we were eating lunch while we were doing this training. And after everybody kinda went back to their desk, one man came back in, and he was like, alright, what do you need help with cleaning up? And I was flabbergasted that this man was coming in to offer to help me clean up the table, which also, let's be clear, wasn't my job. But we need more men like that. We need more people who are stepping up to be true equals.

Tracy: I will tell you that when I was at Verizon, I was in the Midwest, and my boss used to say, Trace, there was a big meeting coming up, you're so good at making sure people are sitting in the right place and setting the room up for success, can you go down. Now here I'm running a billion dollar organization for them, and I'm being asked to go set up the room so that it's effective. And after the meeting was over and I presented on my business, afterwards, somebody came up and didn't say, hey, great presentation, great results, Trace. They said, you did such a great job setting this meeting up for success. And I stepped back and I was like, that's what you're gonna remember about me? That's not what I want you to remember about me. I want you to remember the kick ass stuff I'm doing here in this market and how I'm changing around and moving it to number one in market share. Not that I can set up a meeting. But I take accountability for that because I'm the one who was volunteering for it. And there was not a single man staying afterwards arranging and picking up, because I'm thinking I'm doing something nice for the people who are gonna come in and clean the room. And I'm like, why am I picking other people's stuff up? Like, I assumed that was part of my job just because I grew up that way. And that's what people were thinking of me. And I was like, god, I don't wanna be known as the person that goes and makes the room nice.

Erica: Well, and these are the exact things that we as women do because we're people pleasing, we were brought up that way. And what it does is the other people end up looking at us as the doers, not as the strategic thinkers. And so it really is holding us back.

Tracy: It is. And I go so far now, Erica, to do things like I used to always carry my notebook in front of me. And I now carry it like any other man does down on my side because it's just, this is closing. If I can put it down on the side, I walk in and it's more commanding. It's those little switches that make a difference in how you're perceived and how you show up, that you can be the most strategic woman out there, but you are taking little notches out of how people perceive you that you don't even know you're doing that make a difference. I laugh about it because you go into a meeting and men are like, they pull their chair up, they spread their books out, they kinda lean back in their seats, and they take up space. And there was little polite Tracy when I was younger, I'd take my notebook and I'd have my little spot. And I noticed it one day, and I'm like, this is crazy. So now I go in and I'm like, ladies, spread out. Take your space. You were invited to the meeting. You have every right to take up as much space as you want. It gets you into a mindset, right, that we are so programmed, many of us, not everybody, but many of us are programmed this way. And I have seen a few men like this too, so it's not only women. But we're just so programmed to be like, oh, I gotta have my little space here. You deserve that. Your voice needs to be heard.

Erica: They call it manspreading. Where they just sit down, it's like, I see it all the time at the airport where a dude will sit in a middle seat, and he'll take up so much space with his legs that it's extending over two other chairs. And I'm like, dude, what is wrong with you?

Tracy: Oh my gosh.

Erica: So, Tracy, I wanna talk about this idea of being the only, because Verizon was heavily male dominated, right, a lot of your professional experience has kind of been in that realm. And we talk about the little changes that we can make so that we are perceived in the way that we wanna be perceived. And I would love to hear from your perspective, the power of the only, how much should we be conforming versus remaining authentic to us? Is that gonna hold us back in any way, shape, or form?

Tracy: You know, I thought it would, and I always thought I had to compensate being a woman in a room full of men. I've been in meetings with large electronics vendors where I was the only one of 21 people in a room. I always felt like I had to compensate by being the smartest, not the smartest technically, but I needed to memorize everything about whatever I was responsible for. I needed to know every fact, and it held me back from the joy of actually doing the job. Leaders don't need to know everything because you can always go find something, you can always find the answer. But for some reason, that actually made me come across less confident and less strategic because I knew every answer. They're like, woah, she must be studying. It did the reverse versus just being confident in who I am. And then the other part is I always thought that I couldn't show my caring side. I always tell the story that I had this one point in my life where my father had had quadruple bypass surgery and had to go back in the same day. He was in the hospital for ninety days. My mom, the stress of trying to take care of my mom and my dad. I had this high powered job that I was doing and I had a really bad first marriage, and I was not good, let me just say that. And I was going through so much stress and I went to the doctor because I was having stomach problems, and he's like, hey, you're too nice to be in corporate America because you're caring too much. He's like, Trace, you should be a nurse, you should be a doctor, you should be doing something caring because I think you care too much about people. And in corporate America, you can't care. And that actually made me angry. I think I was trying to be more like a corporate executive male, not show my caring side. And when I decided that, you know what, I'm gonna just be me, I'm gonna care, and I'm gonna ask about this person who just went through something, know that his husband was in the hospital. So I will show my caring side, and I will show that I can deliver strategy and be super effective. And when I stopped worrying about trying to be like a man, or trying to come across a certain way, and just started being authentic to who I am, that's when I literally started really shattering ceilings. That, along with not studying for everything, not being over-prepared for everything, it was also more fulfilling personally. And I think I became better at leadership, better at caring about people. People wanna know that their leader is human. And I was trying to be something that was more stereotype.

Erica: Hey there, listeners. If you have ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But guess what? It's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities. My book, Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential. This book has been endorsed by Mel Robbins, best selling author and motivational powerhouse. It's also been featured in Success Magazine. Inside, you'll find real life sticky floor stories, practical strategies to help you navigate your own sticky floor moments, and a whole lot of inspiration to keep you climbing. This isn't just a book. It's your road map to success, confidence, and freedom. Grab your copy of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors today at www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Whether you're in the boardroom, the classroom, or just starting out, this book is for you because no one deserves to stay stuck, no one deserves to feel small, and you have glass ceilings to shatter. Let's do this.

Erica: I will never forget when I really showed up as a human as a chief people officer. I had a wonderful group of women who worked with me, and I was really going through it too. And it was like, I need a break, and I needed an immediate one week where I have to step away. Everything was hitting the fan, and it was getting really intense. And I was very honest with my team members about it. I was like, look, this is me taking my mental break because it's too much right now, and I've delegated everything out. And you don't need to worry about me, I'm going to see my really great therapist, and I'm gonna talk it out with her, and I will be back next week. And then a couple weeks went by, and one of my team members came up to me, and she just said, hey Erica, I'm going through a really hard time right now too, and I just don't know that I can keep working through the rest of the work day, I'm just so stressed out, I just wanna lay in my bed and watch trash TV, do you mind if I do that? And I was like, absolutely not, please go take care of yourself. And she came back later, and she said, the only reason I felt comfortable asking for what I really needed in that moment was because you were vulnerable about it first, and I knew that you wouldn't judge me. And that's the hardest part, because we always worry that we're gonna be judged, and we're keeping all of that so closed in, we're losing that opportunity to show the human side and really connect with our teams. But Tracy, I would love to know, have you ever been called something like bossy or intimidating?

Tracy: Oh, I was gonna use bitchy. Could we use the word bitchy? I have. And it's so funny because I had people also say, can you just stop, can you just, and I'm like, stop what? Well, you just are asking so much. And I'm like, but the people that I learned the most from, I didn't even know what a sponsorship was, like somebody sponsoring me. I knew what a mentor was, but I had a boss who would just push me to a level to help me get to the next level. It's kinda crazy because also women are known, when we're demanding, we're bitchy, that's what we're considered. I've just decided that I don't really care what you call me, I'm effective, and I'm out for your best, and I gotta build that trust. To your point, what you were just talking about, that woman trusted you enough to have that. You can call me bitchy, you can call me whatever you want, but what you need to know about me is that I got your back. I'm there for you. And trust doesn't happen, I always say this because people think, oh I trust my team, well it's more about do they trust you. You gotta show them that vulnerability, that care, and also have those tough conversations. So that's maybe when I'm bitchy, is when I have those tough conversations, but I'm doing it out of care.

Erica: Yeah. I've been called, definitely bitchy, but the one that really threw me for the loop was when I was called intimidating, because I was like, I am the friendliest person you know, what are you even talking about. But to kinda circle this back to what we were talking about in the beginning, we're making people uncomfortable when we're not fitting into those little cookie cutter expectations that they want us to be. So as a chief people officer, and I'm voicing my opinion and standing up for my team and saying what I believe in, which by the way is the right thing to do as a C-level leader, people don't necessarily like that. And then so I'm intimidating. But wait, you're doing the same thing for your team, why aren't you intimidating? It's just bananas. So I would love to ask you, if there's a woman out there who's listening that gets a piece of feedback like that that just sits so uncomfortably with her, what advice would you give her?

Tracy: I keep going back to, don't worry about being intimidating, and ask the question, what is it that I'm doing that's intimidating. I really have a hard time, Erica, with people who do feel intimidated by me, because I do get that. I put on my shoes the same way you do every morning. I also have issues that are going on that you have no idea I'm dealing with, and you're dealing with your own. We're gonna get better if we can get past that intimidating thing and just have conversations. Titles, while yes titles are out there, I just wanna get the work done. So if you've been called intimidating, unless you've been unprofessional in how you've been holding yourself up in a meeting, I wouldn't worry about it. Again, it goes to a trust I have in myself if I've treated that person well. I might be tough, but I'm doing it out of the spirit of helping them grow. I just kinda move forward, keep moving forward.

Erica: And it's not your responsibility to regulate their emotions.

Tracy: I love that.

Erica: You know, if they're insecure and they need to call you intimidating, so be it.

Tracy: Exactly.

Erica: Yeah, I've got one last question I'd love to ask you, and I think it's not what I usually ask a lot, but I just think it's gonna be a powerful one to end this conversation. And you're a high powered woman, you've been in many positions of power. Was there any woman before you that really gave you the mentorship and the belief in yourself, or maybe even just planted a seed that you feel like, wow, this woman really changed the game for me?

Tracy: It's interesting because most of my sponsors or people who have really developed me have been men, believe it or not. But I believe that my mom, who went to college when very few women were going to college, was married to a World War II Navy Seal, so tough guy, my father was tough and he didn't let her work until only after she had kids. But my mom taught me a very important lesson, which is this too shall pass. And I would have those nights where I call her on my way home almost every night from any job, Erica. Unfortunately, I lost her years ago, but I would call her and give her the status of the day, and it would be like, oh my gosh, I'm not confident in myself, blah blah blah. And she'd be like, Tracy, just be you, and realize whatever you're worrying about is not going to be, most of the things you're gonna worry about are gonna have passed tomorrow. And there's nothing that you can't do if you don't just believe in yourself. And that alone, she may not have been a CEO of an organization, but I will tell you that she always saw the good in people. And so even when you're having a difficult conversation, somebody's not doing what you expect them to do, just knowing that she would always say, you just don't know what's going on, and just be good to people. She was not only my mom, she became my best friend, and she was the woman that inspired me. And if I can be, close to her, like what she did for me, to somebody else, then I've accomplished everything.

Erica: Oh my gosh, you wanna know what's wild? The quote my mother always says to me is this too shall pass.

Tracy: Oh my gosh, isn't that wild?

Erica: That's why I just started smiling as soon as you said it, because I was like, holy shit, me too, girl.

Tracy: Oh my god, it's amazing. And you know what, it's so powerful because we as women in particular, how many times do we walk out of a meeting and we're like, oh, how did that go, we grade ourselves, we're tough on ourselves. It was the best advice ever.

Erica: Oh my gosh, I love it. Tracy, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. And y'all, if today's conversation lit a fire under you, here's your next move. Don't keep it to yourself. Share this episode with a friend, drop a review, and let's keep the conversation going. Remember that your potential is limitless, and the only thing standing in your way are those sticky floors. But guess what? You have the power to break through them. So go out there, take up some space, and let's shatter some ceilings together.