What if you didn’t have to choose between being respected and being liked? In this episode of the VEST Her Podcast, we’re joined by Alison Fragale, organizational psychologist, UNC professor, and author of Likeable Badass, to break down the real difference between power and status, and how women can build both without burning out or selling out.

Moderated by VEST Member Autumn Knutson, CEO of Styled Wealth, the conversation goes deep into the practical side of leadership for women: how to be warm and in charge, how to negotiate effectively, and how to turn discomfort into growth.

“Power is control over valued resources. Status is the regard others choose to give you. If you don’t know the difference, you might be playing the wrong game.” 

— Alison Fragale, Organizational Psychologist & Author of Likeable Badass

For guests full bios and show notes and key takeaways click here. 

Note: In this episode, we mispronounced Knutson, Autumn's last name. The correct pronunciation includes the “K”, it’s K-nutson, not Nutson. We regret the error and appreciate your understanding.

If you enjoy the episode share it with a friend, leave us a review and don't forget to hit the subscribe button.

If you are ready to take your career and business to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Learn more at www.VESTHer.co

As the year wraps up, so do the “Top Under 30, 40, 50” lists, power rankings, and glossy features that suggest success is public, polished, and linear.

In this episode, we take a clear-eyed look at why these lists can be inspiring but also alienating, and why so many brilliant, hardworking women still feel like they’re falling behind.

Then, we shift the focus to a more grounded, sustainable way to measure progress, one that doesn’t rely on headlines, algorithms, or someone else’s definition of success.

We walk through a set of practical, reflective questions to help you define what success really means to you, and explore how chasing visibility without alignment can lead to burnout, distraction, and disconnection from your purpose.

Click here for Show Notes and a simple year-end reflection exercise.

If you enjoy the episode share it with a friend, leave us a review and don't forget to hit the subscribe button.

If you are ready to take your career and business to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Learn more at www.VESTHer.co

We’re often told to “build our network” or “think about the impact we want to have” but rarely does anyone show us how. It’s not just about adding connections or chasing influence. What we really need is a Web of Support and a clearer sense of the legacy we're already leaving behind, often without realizing it.

In this episode, we slow things down to explore two powerful reflection tools: the VEST Web of Support that helps make hard things doable, and the VEST Legacy Map that surfaces your quiet but meaningful influence.

First, we walk you through mapping the people around you, mentors, peers, partners, and communities. Who asks better questions? Who shows up when it’s hard? Who helps carry the load? This simple but revealing scan helps you recognize gaps, appreciate the support you already have, and see where you're playing that role in someone else’s life too.

Then, we reframe legacy, not as something far off or grand, but as the everyday ways you shift culture, model values, and strengthen systems. From making space for underrepresented voices to normalizing boundaries and improving how work flows, these quiet contributions shape trust and sustainability, even if they never make it onto a resume.

By the end of the episode, you’ll have three simple actions to take.

Click here for our host bio and show notes. 

If you enjoy the episode share it with a friend, leave us a review and don't forget to hit the subscribe button.

If you are ready to take your career and business to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Learn more at www.VESTHer.co

What if the key to moving from stuck to unstoppable isn’t finding your one big purpose but choosing to live with purpose, every day?

In this episode, we sit down with Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action and author of New York Bestseller Fired Up, to explore a practical framework for aligning what you value, what you're good at, and what truly matters to you. She calls it the fire formula, a tool for any stage of life, from early career to midlife reinvention.

We unpack three common myths that hold women back:

• That you need a single, all-consuming calling
• That happiness is the goal
• That constant busyness means you're succeeding

Shannon also shares her playbook for handling blowback when you start showing up differently, how to decide whose feedback matters, what to hold onto, and how to keep going when the discomfort sets in.

You’ll hear actionable strategies for building aligned community, sustaining momentum, and reclaiming your time and voice. We also get into:

• How to navigate professional risks and resistance
• How to build meaningful relationships in midlife
• How to push back against the systems and narratives shaping our democracy

This is a grounded, honest conversation about courage, clarity, and living on your own terms. If you’re ready to stop waiting for permission, this episode offers the tools and the push to start.

Click here for more Show Notes and Guest Bio. 

If you enjoy the episode share it with a friend, leave us a review and don't forget to hit the subscribe button.

If you are ready to take your career and business to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Learn more at www.VESTHer.co

Democracy thrives when citizens participate, yet America faces a troubling reality: even in presidential elections, only 65% of eligible voters cast ballots, with participation plummeting in local and primary elections. This democratic deficit has serious consequences, especially for women and historically marginalized communities who continue to face systemic barriers to political participation.

At the heart of this problem lies a structural issue: closed primary systems that restrict voting to registered party members. These closed primaries shrink the voter pool, fuel polarization, and produce candidates who cater to partisan extremes rather than representing the broader population. The result? Elected officials less willing to compromise and increasingly dysfunctional governance.

In this compelling conversation, Margaret Kobos, founder of Oklahoma United, and political consultant Sarah Blaney explore how open primaries could transform our democratic landscape. They make a powerful case for State Question 836, which would implement an open primary system in Oklahoma where all candidates appear on a single ballot accessible to every voter. The top two finishers would advance to the general election, ensuring meaningful choice in November.

The statistics are striking: Oklahoma has ranked last in voter turnout nationally, with only 51% of voters registered as Republican despite complete Republican control of state government. With 80-90% of election decisions effectively made during primary elections, the current system silences independent voters and moderates from both parties. This directly correlates with Oklahoma's poor rankings in education, women's quality of life, and other critical metrics.

What makes this reform particularly powerful is its simplicity and familiarity, it mirrors the system already used successfully in Oklahoma's municipal elections. By expanding this model to all elections, voters would gain real choice while elected officials would become accountable to the entire electorate, not just partisan extremes.

Ready to support democratic reform? Learn more about open primaries and how you can get involved in this movement to revitalize American democracy through meaningful electoral reform. The future of our representative government depends on ensuring every voice can truly be heard.

If you enjoy the episode share it with a friend, leave us a review and don't forget to hit the subscribe button.

If you are ready to take your career and business to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Learn more at www.VESTHer.co

When we talk about startup runway, we obsess over finances, how many months until the money runs out. But what about the founder's emotional runway? That invisible reservoir of energy, resilience, and motivation that keeps a company alive even when the path forward seems impossible?

In this deeply personal and practical conversation, Claudia Naim Burt, Co-founder and COO of Keep Company, shares how she discovered the concept of emotional runway through her own struggle to sustain herself while building a venture-backed startup. As one of only 250 Latinas to raise over $1 million in venture capital, Claudia brings a unique perspective to the challenges of entrepreneurship, motherhood, and maintaining wellbeing when everything feels urgent.

The emotional runway framework offers a strategic way to think about personal sustainability. Just as financial runway helps you make business decisions, emotional runway helps you make intentional choices about your time and energy before hitting burnout. Claudia shares her process of conducting an "energy audit" to identify activities that drain versus replenish her, and how making seemingly indulgent choices (like taking hour-long walks) became non-negotiable investments in herself as a key business asset.

Throughout our conversation, we explore powerful frameworks for extending your emotional runway: 

• Reframing choices through values rather than guilt
• Recognizing the spectrum of burnout rather than viewing it as binary
• Making needs explicit rather than implicit
• Finding connection with peers as the ultimate antidote to isolation. 

We also dive into how these principles apply differently across various seasons of business and life, and the importance of regularly renegotiating your contract with yourself about what matters most.

Ready to extend your emotional runway? Listen now and discover practical strategies to protect your wellbeing while leading through challenging times. 

Your business and the people who depend on you will thank you for it.

Whether you’re running a business or building a career in corporate America, if you’re ready to extend your emotional runway, 🎧 Listen now.

If you enjoy the episode share it with a friend, leave us a review and don't forget to hit the subscribe button.

If you are ready to take your career and business to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Learn more at www.VESTHer.co

How many times have you ended the day exhausted, only to wonder what you actually accomplished? That feeling of spinning your wheels without moving forward is a signal that your workflow isn’t working for you.

At VEST, we recently explored this challenge with our members and uncovered some powerful lessons worth sharing. 

In this episode of the VEST Her Podcast, we’ll walk you through how to evaluate your current workflow, identify blockers, design a system that works for you, and reset with confidence when things go off track.

Why Evaluate Your Workflow

Most of us live on autopilot, answering emails, sitting in meetings, or reacting to client demands. Rarely do we stop to ask: Is this the best use of my time and energy? Through time audits, members discovered surprising patterns about when they feel most focused, what drains them, and how much of their time is lost to tasks that don’t actually move the needle.

What Gets in the Way

The most common culprit? A false sense of urgency. We often mistake busyness for productivity, rushing to put out fires while our real priorities sit untouched. Other blockers include living in our inbox instead of our priorities, overcommitting, and the guilt of saying no.

Designing a Better Workflow

Creating a better system isn’t about rigid control, it’s about clarity. A few simple strategies can help:

• Time blocking: Schedule focused work, admin, and rest.
• Priority buckets: Sort tasks into must do today, can wait, can let go.
• Non-negotiables: Protect what fuels you, family time, exercise, quiet moments.

When members applied these approaches, they found they could finally protect what matters most and reclaim a sense of purpose in their work.

At VEST, we believe your workflow should work for you, not the other way around.

Tools and resources we discussed

Time Tracking Evaluation

Workflow Resetting Checklist

If you enjoy the episode share it with a friend, leave us a review and don't forget to hit the subscribe button.

If you are ready to take your career and business to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Learn more at www.VESTHer.co

Burnout has reached epidemic proportions among professional women. The numbers tell a sobering story: 43% of women leaders report feeling burned out compared to just 31% of men at the same level. What's driving this disparity? Our powerful conversation with the VEST Team reveals two key culprits: perfectionism and people-pleasing.

Research from the University of British Columbia shows that perfectionism is strongly linked to anxiety, depression, and chronic stress. Multiple studies also show women are more likely to engage in people-pleasing behaviors at work, often out of fear of being seen as difficult or unlikable. 

Join us as we dive into the science behind these patterns, exploring how perfectionism correlates with anxiety and depression, while people-pleasing gradually erodes our boundaries until we're running on empty. The most illuminating moments come when our team shares their personal struggles with these tendencies, from the pressure to be "supermoms" and "super workers" to the fear of what might happen if they stop doing so much.

We discuss what rest actually looks like in different seasons of life. For those with young children, it might be just an hour to choose what you do yourself rather than responding to others' needs. We share simple but powerful strategies: replacing "should" with "could," taking a pause before automatically saying yes, time-blocking to ensure dedicated rest periods, and perhaps most importantly, getting comfortable asking for help.

We also talked about how perfectionism and growth cannot coexist. When we demand perfection from ourselves, we create an environment where learning and authentic connection become impossible. By reframing rest not as a luxury but as an essential professional skill, we open the door to greater creativity, better decision-making, and sustainable success.

Whether you're a chronic people-pleaser, a perfectionist, or simply feeling the weight of trying to do it all, this episode offers both validation and practical tools to break these patterns. Join our conversation and discover how establishing healthier boundaries can transform not just how you feel, but how effectively you lead.

For the VEST Team full bios, Self-Awareness Exercise and Show notes click here. 

If you enjoy the episode share it with a friend, leave us a review and don't forget to hit the subscribe button.

If you are ready to take your career and business to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Learn more at www.VESTHer.co

The whispers about hormones, perimenopause, and menopause have remained frustratingly quiet for too long. Dr. Kristen Markell, a double-board certified OBGYN and certified menopause practitioner, breaks the silence with game-changing clarity in this essential conversation moderated by VEST Member Alison Anthony.

For decades, women experiencing brain fog, anxiety, fatigue, and mood changes during perimenopause have been dismissed or told to "just deal with it." Dr. Markell reveals the biological truth: these symptoms aren't character flaws but natural responses to dramatic hormonal fluctuations that can begin up to a decade before menopause. She expertly explains how progesterone typically declines first, while estrogen levels become erratic with extreme highs and lows—a process many healthcare providers themselves don't fully understand.

The consequences of this knowledge gap are serious. Women's highest risk of suicide attempts occurs between ages 45-49, coinciding precisely with perimenopause. Beyond mental health, these hormonal changes affect bone density, heart health, and cognitive function. Yet many women suffer silently, especially in professional settings where they fear being perceived as weak or incompetent if they acknowledge their symptoms.

Dr. Markell guides listeners through the confusing landscape of treatment options—from hormone replacement therapy and bioidenticals to supplements and lifestyle modifications. She emphasizes that finding the right provider is crucial, suggesting resources like the North American Menopause Society to locate certified practitioners. Most importantly, she frames perimenopause not as a decline but as "a portal into the second half of life"—an opportunity to refocus energy on what truly matters.

Whether you're in your 20s planning for future hormonal health, navigating perimenopause now, or supporting someone who is, this conversation provides the knowledge, validation, and practical guidance to transform how we approach this universal yet uniquely personal journey. Your hormones aren't just about symptoms—they're foundational to how you show up in every area of your life.

For our guest full bio and show notes click here.

If you enjoy the episode share it with a friend, leave us a review and don't forget to hit the subscribe button.

If you are ready to take your career and business to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Learn more at www.VESTHer.co

Women have long navigated workspaces that weren't built with us in mind, fueling an inner voice of self-doubt that can hold us back. Dr. Amelia Duran-Stanton, author of "The Lotus Within" and Colonel in the US Army with decades of service, shares strategies for quieting that inner critic while building sustainable confidence as a leader.

• Dr. Duran Stanton explains her book "The Lotus Within" focuses on strategic planning, time management, and prioritization
• True confidence comes from showing up prepared, networking effectively, and knowing who to ask for help
• Building confidence is about training like you fight—preparing thoroughly for high-stakes situations
• Silencing your inner critic requires trusting your training and refocusing on the mission when self-doubt arises
• Women of color should see their identities as differentiators rather than trying to assimilate
• Humility and confidence aren't opposites but complementary forces—"like yin and yang"
• When transitioning careers, focus on outcomes achieved rather than titles held
• Recognize toxic environments using the "boiling frog syndrome" metaphor—periodically assess if you're in a harmful situation
• Daily habits like morning journaling, intentional planning, and celebrating wins help build confidence as a muscle
• Handle setbacks by allowing yourself to feel the emotion, then asking what you learned and what you'd do differently

For our guest full bio and show notes click here

If you enjoy the episode share it with a friend, leave us a review and don't forget to hit the subscribe button.

If you are ready to take your career and business to the next level, apply to join our community of professional women, all eager to help you get there and stay there. Learn more at www.VESTHer.co