Leading Women in Tech Podcast

Burnout is not caused by too much work.
That's the argument at the heart of this episode — and Yana Carstens has earned the right to make it. After 12 years in the design and tech space, and her own burnout behind her, Yana shifted into executive coaching, where she now focuses on burnout prevention and authentic leadership for women in tech.
In this conversation, Yana and Toni get into what taking radical responsibility for your own wellbeing actually means — and why most of what we call "wellness" is polishing the car while nobody looks under the hood. They dig into hyper-responsibility, the reflex that makes everything your fault; why rest is a prerequisite for success rather than a reward for it; and how leaders who model genuine wellbeing quietly reset the culture of everyone around them.
If you're stepping into a new role, carrying everyone around you, or wondering why the vacation didn't fix it — this one is for you.
What we cover:
◾ Why tech-native executive coaches are so rare — and why coaching skills spread naturally through teams
◾ The three reasons wellbeing is a leadership issue: modeling, leading from your center, and preventing burnout
◾ Burnout is not caused by too much work — the root causes nobody talks about
◾ The Ferrari analogy: you're built for speed, but without the pit stops you break down
◾ Why unlimited PTO and spa days are polish, not maintenance — and what "under the hood" work looks like
◾ Rest is a prerequisite for success, not a reward for it — and how that belief shapes team culture
◾ Hyper-responsibility: the high-achiever trait that makes everything your fault
◾ Observe, don't absorb — and Toni's version, hold, don't carry
◾ The client story: the boss's bad mood that had nothing to do with her
◾ Moving from hyper-responsible to "response-able": pause, clarify, build the internal boundary system
◾ The honest truth: this pattern comes back under stress — and that's okay
◾ Worst advice Yana ever received (from another coach): "you need to put on an act"
◾ Best advice: if you believe things will work out, you see opportunities — if not, you see obstacles
Useful Links
Connect with today's guest, Yana Carstens, on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanacarstens/) and sign up for her monthly newsletter at https://realignandthrive.com/newsletter.
Ready to learn to coach — for your self-coaching, your leadership toolkit, or a business of your own? Ignite Coach Academy is open for enrollment. Doors close September 11: https://tonicollis.com/ignite-coach-academy
This episode was sponsored by our guest, Yana Carstens. Thank you Yana for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community!

Ever looked at an opportunity, a stretch role, a speaking slot, a bold idea, and thought "I could do that"… and then let it pass? And then been quietly furious with yourself weeks later?
It probably wasn't a courage problem. It was an energy problem.
In this episode of Leading Women in Tech, Toni Collis introduces the Leadership Energy Model: the relationship between bravery, grit, and confidence, and why understanding it changes how you take on hard things, how you recover from them, and how you lead a team through them.
What's covered:
➡️  The three-stage model — bravery gets you started, grit gets you through, confidence is what you earn on the other side, and each one changes what the next hard thing costs you
➡️  Naive bravery — why not knowing how hard something will be is sometimes the greatest gift, and why the more naive you are, the more grit you'll need later
➡️  Why bravery and grit are finite — one shared pool across your entire life, which is why a house renovation, a health challenge or a hard season at home leaves you with nothing for the bold move at work (and vice versa)
➡️  The celebrity illusion — why some people seem infinitely brave, and what resources actually do to the price of courage
➡️  Confidence as the exchange rate — every hard thing you complete makes the next one cheaper, and how to build confidence deliberately through structured small wins instead of deep-end plunges
➡️  Self-coaching with the model — how to audit your own bravery and grit spend before you commit to the next hard thing
➡️  Coaching your team through it — especially in AI transformations, where you're asking everyone to be brave and gritty at once with no confidence to draw on, and what great leaders do about that energetic cost
If you've been wondering why the version of you who used to leap at challenges has gone quiet, this episode will give you the answer, and the way back.
Useful links
Ignite Coach Academy — Toni's coach training program, enrolling now for the September cohort: tonicollis.com/ignite-coach-academy
Book a complimentary chat with Toni about whether Ignite is right for you: tonicollis.com/lets-chat

What outcome are you actually after? It's one of the most important questions a leader can ask — and one most organizations get wrong.
Jessi Szurek, Associate Partner at Synthesis, joins Toni for a conversation about outcome-focused leadership, AI adoption done right, and the career-defining skill of speaking up when you're being overlooked. Jessi's path took her from an architecture degree at Cornell to an MBA at NYU, through 17 years at Ernst & Young working across process automation and AI with global financial institutions, to a smaller consulting firm reinventing what client value really means.
This episode is full of practical wisdom for anyone leading change, adopting AI, or trying to get clear on what actually matters — plus one of the best examples of calling out being ignored that we've had on the show.
What we covered:
The non-linear journey: architecture, an MBA in economics, and 17 years at a global consulting firm
Why Jessi left a role she was good at when her objectives and her employer's diverged
Outcome-focused thinking: the difference between the actions and the actual outcome
Why most companies think they know their outcomes but don't — and how to find real clarity
Why sometimes the right move is to stop and reprioritize instead of just doing what you're told
Transparency as a leadership tool — and why short-term discomfort creates long-term value
AI adoption is change management, not magic: why AI is just the next tool in the toolbox
The AI skepticism problem: what to do when people are being forced to adopt tools they resist
Why user buy-in matters more than the perfect solution — the paper Rolodex principle
The golf story: how Jessi challenged being overlooked and what it taught everyone in the room
What's the worst that can happen? Reframing the fear of speaking up
Setting boundaries and choosing your environment over putting your head down
Why the most important decision you'll ever make is who you choose as your partner
Finding success in discomfort — and being your own biggest cheerleader
Useful Links
Connect with today's guest, Jessi, on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessi-petrosino/ and find out more about Synthesis at https://synthesis.inc.
This episode was sponsored by our guest,Jessi Szurek. Thank you Jessi & Synthesis for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community!

You're delivering. You're the one your team relies on, the one who steps up, the one whose reviews are consistently strong. People call you invaluable, dependable, a safe pair of hands.
And yet when the conversations that matter happen, the succession discussions, the stretch assignments, the rooms where the next senior appointment gets decided, you're not in them. Someone else is being talked about as a future leader while you're being talked about as a great performer.
In this episode of Leading Women in Tech, Toni Collis breaks down the gap between the leadership you're delivering and the leadership you're being credited with, and gives you the practical system for closing it. Not by working harder, and not by becoming someone you're not, but by changing the signals that build how you're seen.
 
What's covered:
➡️  Perception is a system, not a verdict — why the two stories you tell yourself ("the system is broken" or "something is wrong with me") both keep you stuck, and the third story that actually gives you something to do
➡️  The four perception gaps — the language gap, the visibility gap, the signal gap, and the narrative gap, and how to diagnose which one is costing you most
➡️  Why your best work has no name on it — drama is visible by default, prevention is invisible by default, and what to do about it if your leadership style is prevention
➡️  Helper signals versus leader signals — the behaviors that made you indispensable may be teaching people you're a support function, and the three-signal swap one client used to change how her VP described her within a quarter
➡️  The one-line leadership narrative — could your boss's boss finish the sentence "she's the person you go to when…"? Why choosing your story matters and how to write it
➡️  Is your mindset holding you back? — the three beliefs that stop capable women doing this work, including an honest conversation about the double standard and why contribution signals don't trigger it the way dominance signals do
➡️  Where to start this week — the diagnosis, the one signal change, and the one conversation that accelerates everything
 
Being seen as a leader isn't a personality transplant. It's a set of consistent, honest signals about the leader you already are. You've been doing the hard part for years. This is letting it be seen.
 
Useful links
Book a complimentary strategy call with Toni: tonicollis.com/lets-chat
 
Related episodes
⏹️  Episode 264 — Why You're Not Getting Promoted (Even When You're Overperforming): https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/264-why-youre-not-getting-promoted  
⏹️  Episode 228 — Mastering Your Value: Strategies to Stop Underselling Yourself: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/228-not-getting-promoted-heres-the-one-thing-you-need-to-stop-doing 
⏹️  Episode 112 — The Problem With Not Blowing Your Own Trumpet: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/112-if-you-dont-openly-celebrate-your-achievements-who-will 
⏹️  Episode 276 — Busy ≠ Valuable: How to Prioritize Work That Gets You Promoted: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/276-busy-not-valuable-how-to-prioritize-work-that-gets-you-promoted
⏹️  Episode 286 — Executive Presence for Women in Tech: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/286-executive-presence-for-women-in-tech
⏹️  Episode 290 — The Promotion Gap in Tech: https://tonicollis.com/leading-women-tech/290-women-in-tech-promotion-gap

What does it mean to build products that truly work for everyone — including the people most systems were never designed to include?
Debbie Hsu, EVP of Product at Experian Consumer Services, joins Toni for a conversation that spans the full arc of her career — from software engineer at Oracle to leading product at one of the world's most significant consumer financial data companies — and gets into some of the most important questions facing product leaders today.
Debbie leads the evolution of EVA, Experian's AI-powered virtual assistant, and brings a consumer-first lens to everything she builds. In this episode she shares how AI is changing team structures and role boundaries in product, why over-reliance on AI risks making every product look and sound the same, and what the socioeconomic stakes of AI access mean for product leaders who care about inclusion.
She also shares three pieces of advice that I see as foundational to leading: Being humble is not the same as being invisible. Self-advocacy is not the same as bragging. And never let an official meeting be the first time people hear about your idea.
What we cover:
⏹ The unplanned path from software engineer to EVP of Product — and what learning by doing really looks like
⏹ Why Debbie went back to business school to pivot into product management — and what actually landed her the job
⏹ How product leadership has evolved over 20 years: from Flash-based seat maps to AI-powered financial assistants
⏹ T-shaped builders and the blurring of roles in the AI era — what this means for product teams right now
⏹ The AI homogeneity risk: why over-reliance on AI makes products look and sound the same — and what differentiates the ones that don't
⏹ EVA: how Experian's AI assistant uses trusted credit data, expert compliance, and lender eligibility to go beyond generic AI responses
⏹ AI access as a socioeconomic equity issue — and why product leaders need to be part of this conversation
⏹ Financial inclusion and credit invisibility: what it means to build products for people the system overlooked
⏹ Being humble is not the same as being invisible
⏹ Self-advocacy is not bragging — and why visibility for meaningful work is a leadership skill
⏹ Never let an official meeting be the first time people hear your idea
⏹ Diverse voices in product: why every product leader has a responsibility to build inclusively
Useful Links
Connect with today's guest and sponsor, Debbie on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbie-hsu/ and find out more about Experian at https://www.experian.com.
This episode was sponsored by our guest, Debbie Hsu. Thank you Debbie & Experian for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community!