After 31 years navigating male-dominated consulting in Vietnam, Ha Do's conclusion will surprise you: being a woman isn't the obstacle — it's the edge.

Ha Do started her career applying for a secretarial job at PwC. She had no industry connections, came from a poor family, and had no idea what Big Four meant. Over the next three decades — turning down a UK secondment when her son was one year old, naming the cultural barriers senior women are trained to stay silent about, and working through years of self-doubt — she arrived at a conviction most people would never expect from a Big Four partner: womanhood itself, with all its emotional intelligence and resilience, is a structural advantage. This episode is the story of how she got there — and the principles she's been passing on to every young woman who's sat across from her since.

What You'll Learn

• Why self-doubt — not external barriers — is the real obstacle holding women back in leadership, according to Ha Do's 31 years of observation

• How Ha Do made barriers become invisible: the self-love mechanism she built slowly over her career, and what it actually means in practice

• The difference between sacrifice under pressure and sacrifice by choice — and why only one of them will break you

• The two mistakes Ha Do still sees women of every age repeating, and the reframe that cuts through both of them

• Why "you can have both" isn't wishful thinking — Ha Do's career and family life as a lived proof point, not a motivational poster

Chapters

00:00 | Intro: Working Hard and Staying Humble Isn't Enough

01:02 | The Achievement That Outranks a 31-Year Career

02:14 | Turning Down the UK Secondment — and Never Regretting It

07:14 | From Secretary to Partner — The Career Nobody Planned

10:35 | "The Answer Is a Big Fat Yes" — Naming Hidden Barriers

13:31 | Self-Doubt to Self-Love — How Barriers Become Invisible

15:36 | Leading with Warmth Without Losing Authority

17:35 | Two Mistakes Young Women Keep Repeating

21:17 | Women Are Powerful — The Only Thing Stopping Us Is Us

25:12 | You Can Do Both — Being Woman Is a Privilege

Ha Do | KPMG, Vietnam

Ha leads the Government and Public Sector, and International Development Advisory Services practice for KPMG Asia Pacific. She serves as a board director of Pacific Basin Economic Council (PBEC), an international business association that promotes cross-border trades. She also sits in the Asia Pacific Advisory Council for Global Infrastructure Project Financing Association (IPFA), a global organization for the infrastructure and energy financing industry.

https://kpmg.com/xx/en/contacts/d/do-ha.html 

Ritu Mehrish | Founder and Author | ReWrite The Rules

Ritu Gupta Mehrish is a speaker, executive coach and author, with 20 years of corporate experience working in companies such as P&G, GE Capital and GE spin-off Genpact. In her last role, Ritu ran a multimillion-dollar business vertical with 1000 people across eight countries and five continents. Throughout her extensive career, Ritu has had the opportunity to work, coach and converse with leaders across the globe from diverse industries. Her business and leadership experience has enabled her to bring in a pragmatic approach to leadership development. Her client list of Google, PayPal, Swiss Re, JP Morgan, Applied Materials, Intel, Knight Frank, Johnson & Johnson, AIA, Medtronic, Wharton Executive Education highlights the level of expertise she brings to the leadership topic.

https://www.letsrewritetherules.com/ 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ritugmehrish/ 

https://www.ritumehrish.com/ 

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