Who Run the World

Peggy Li is the co-owner of SPS Affinity, a boutique and strategy agency that specializes in hospitality - or as Peggy likes to call herself Chief Troubleshooter and Tinkerbell. Peggy has worked in the most prominent restaurants and alongside Michelin star chefs, namely Chef Joel Robouchon. She shares with Marilyn stories from across her career, including how she fell in love with the service industry, what it's like working side by side with rockstar chefs, and all the names she was called for being a result oriented team member. Spoiler alert: she was called an aggressive b****. Marilyn and her producer Rhea take Peggy's story as a springboard to look at what are the different names women are called in the workplace and why.   

Managing Director and founder of Moxie Future, Jessica Robinson takes us on a trip that spans from London, to New York, Beijing, Honk Kong, all the way to Dubai, sharing all the challenges and victories she's faced all along the way.  Jessica has worked in consulting, where she had to assimilate into the industry's boy's club to climb up the ladder. She then moved to Beijing where she changed her career due to an identity crisis after becoming a mother and finding herself without a job. Jessica ended up gravitating towards responsible investment, creating a platform that will engage and empower women to think about their investment and financial decisions. 

Leila Serhan is the Public Sector Director for the Gulf Region at Microsoft, where she has been working for the last seventeen years. In her conversation with Marilyn, Leila shares stories from her career, including her first job at a Lebanese telecom company, her early days at Microsoft, the stereotypes she's been held to because of her gender, and how she is giving back through mentorship. What's interesting about Leila is that throughout her extensive career, she's never negotiated her salary. In fact 68% of women do not negotiate their salaries, and through Leila's narrative we look at why.