Transcript, E184: Julia Boorstin on women in leadership

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Network ID: LinkedIn News

Jessi Hempel:

From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jessi Hempel, and this is Hello Monday. It's our show about the changing nature of work, and how that work is changing us. Have you ever taken a look around at the top, top, top layers of business and noticed just how similar the leadership seems? Y- you know what I'm saying here: there's not a lot of diversity in any respect up in the C suite. And if you look at which startups get funded, the problem gets even worse; it's mostly men the vast majority of the time.

My guest today is Julia Boorstin. We've known each other for a long time. She's CNBC's senior media and technology correspondent, and before that, she worked at Fortune, like I did. Julia has reported on and built relationships with many of the women who have succeeded in startups. She points out that they have a lot in common: they're adaptable, empathetic, they're vulnerable, and they're grateful. Julia has gathered her research in a new book called When Women Lead. It's just come out, and I have to tell you, it is both rigorous and a great read. I learned so much on a subject I actually thought I knew quite a bit about. Julia focuses her book on women entrepreneurs in particular, and when we started talking, I needed to understand why she got so specific, when she's reported on women from all over business. Here's Julia.

Julia Boorstin:

It's really hard for anyone to be an entrepreneur. Launching and scaling a business is really hard. I mean, there's no official measure of fail- the failure rate, but by some measures, it's, like, 90% of all entrepreneurial ventures fail. So we're talking about an incredibly high failure rate. And also the fact that, in this field probably more than any other field in American business, women are, are in the tiniest minority and face the largest hurdles. So I wanted to look through the lens, not of women in corporate America, where women are in greater numbers, but where are women in the smallest minority, where do they face the, the highest odds against them? Because if we can find the women who succeeded there, those are the women who are most exceptional, who would have lessons for all of us to learn.

So I thought, "Where is the, where is the, the part of this business role do women have it the hardest?" And look, women now are 8% of all CEOs of the fortune 500. But when it comes to venture capital, the fact that, last year, female founders drew just 2% of venture capital dollars, that, to me, is crazy. It is mind-boggling. And over the past decade, it's been about 3% of venture capital dollars. And I thought that number alone is so powerful, if I could look at those women who had secured that 3%, that would be an amazing lens to tell this bigger story of people who had defied the odds.

Jessi Hempel:

Percents are hard to grasp in audio, but let's try right now, because Julia's point is so important. To translate this statistic into dollars, 3% investment is like saying women entrepreneurs get $3 to every $97 invested in startups run by men. It's such a small number, that Julia's copy editors for the book thought it was a typo.

Julia Boorstin:

So for instance (laughs), about 2,000 companies went public, uh, between 2013 and 2020. 0.9% percent of them had a female founder CEO. 0.9%. 18 of those 2,000. So, I mean, it's, like, literally, these are not typos. They seem like typos, but they're not typos. And I think if you look at these numbers, okay, 2%, 3% of V- VC dollars go to companies with female founders. Then if you look at the companies with coed founders, that's 16% of capital. But to me, the craziest statistic is that 82% of all venture capital dollars went to companies with no female co-founder, so male only teams. I mean, that's crazy-

Jessi Hempel:

Right.

Julia Boorstin:

... to me. 82%! So, yeah, the numbers are hard. The numbers are hard so much so that we have this typo issue. Not a typo, not a mistake on my part.

Jessi Hempel:

So Julia, here's the thing, and you say this right at the top of your book, you're like, "Look, w- w- growing up, my mom touted the fact that it would be different for me." You know, I assume your mom was, you know, a, my mom, at least, was, you know, second wave feminist-

Julia Boorstin:

Mm-hmm.

Jessi Hempel:

... understood that I was growing up in a different world than she'd grown up in, and understood that the promise of that world is that, by the time I got to the point where I was ready to hit gas on my career, every option would be open for me, because how could it not be?

Julia Boorstin:

How could it not be?

Jessi Hempel:

And-

Julia Boorstin:

Yeah.

Jessi Hempel:

... over the last decade in particular, we have, um, we have survived the #metoo movement, a moment when we really saw an opportunity for women's contributions to be valued in a different way, and recognized in a different way. And yet, like, why aren't things actually getting better? And here, like, there's a thing that I, I would love for you to explain a little bit to our listeners, because I doubt they understand: like, how does venture capital work at all, such that it's just, it's easier to just award it to the same people?

Julia Boorstin:

So that's the thing, 'cause I don't think that the massive gender gaps are anyone's fault. I don't think anyone is maliciously trying to exclude women. No one-

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Julia Boorstin:

... is at fault for this. And that's why it's so complicated. People wanna get angry and point fingers; there's no one to get angry and point fingers at. There is a whole institutional, structural challenge here that is really hard to budge, right? And these numbers are very hard to budge. I mean, if you think about the fact that, like, something like $330 billion of venture capital was deployed last year, that is a massive amount of money, and it's also really powerful. I mean, think about the companies that are changing the way we live, and work, and play. I mean, LinkedIn is a perfect example. These are companies that could grow and scale quickly because they had venture capital dollars. So also, another reason to focus on i- this tech space is 'cause this world is hugely valuable, hugely powerful, not only from a business perspective, but also from a cultural and societal perspective.

So the venture capital industry is small, it's unregulated, it's not like Wall Street, which has had various reckonings of becoming more diverse because these are publicly traded banks; venture capital is small groups of investors who gather money from LPs, limited partners, then they take those funds and they make bets and investments in startups in exchange for a piece of equity, in exchange for shares in that startup, at various points in the startup's lifecycle. If you're making a bet early e- on a startup, that startup may not have revenue, it may not even have, may be a long ways from profits, but it may not know exactly how it's gonna be making money, but it may have a, an idea. So at that point, investors are betting on the founder, maybe what kind of a track record the founder has, and just the idea itself, not the business plan at that point.

Jessi Hempel:

Right.

Julia Boorstin:

And so at that very early phase, how much the investor likes the entrepreneur and wants to spend time with them building this idea, and how much that entrepreneur reminds them of other entrepreneurs who've been successful is hugely important. And this thing of pattern matching, you know, we talked a lot about unconscious bias, but just simple pattern matching.

Jessi Hempel:

We've talked about pattern matching on this show before, and it's just what it sounds like: people remind you of someone just because of how they look or how they act. Like, maybe you meet a young 20 something, white male student at an ivy league school on the east coast, and you think, "Well, that's what Mark Zuckerberg looked like, surely this guy will be successful."

Julia Boorstin:

People are trying to find patterns; it's a very natural human instinct. And that, you know, I quote a VC saying, "I'll invest in anyone who reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg." You know, this idea that you wanna find someone who fits the pattern, 'cause then you're more likely to have a success in this, this hit driven business.

Jessi Hempel:

And Julia, I, even as you say that, I want our listeners to reflect on their own experience for a second, because pattern matching can feel nefarious when it comes to awarding early venture capital. But my guess is that it's also a really useful tool, for anybody listening, in aspects of their life; there is a reason why we pattern match, and understanding that also helps us address it. Some of these ideas that have the potential to take off are affecting communities that are not the communities who are investing. And so, as you're doing that pattern matching, you're just, like, you're not even able to understand the potential, or to evaluate the potential, because it is so far out of your lived experience.

Julia Boorstin:

And that comes down to the fact that the majority of investors, VC investors, are men-

Jessi Hempel:

Right.

Julia Boorstin:

... and that's something that is a- very hard to change because these venture capital firms are very entrenched, and they change very, very slowly. So if you have people who stayed at, at a VC firm, um, for decades at a time, you're not gonna have the same kind of change as, say, a retail company with, with management that's growing and changing, or, or even Wall Street. And of course you have to look at what kinds of investments the investors are gonna make. So when you have VC funds that are fundamentally, uh, more likely to be run by men, the fact that male investors are more likely to invest in male founders, um, by a lot, you know, female investors are twice as likely to invest in women as men are, then you just have this cycle that perpetuates.

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah. So look, your book, um, definitely spells out some of the structural issues, um, for female founders. But first and foremost, your book is one of optimism. You have basically spent a considerable amount of your 20 year career, and in particular, the last few years, preparing for this book, trying to discern where women's superpowers lie, to talk to the women who have figured out how to succeed anyway, about why. I wanna sort of unpack some of those superpowers, but I wanna start with this wonderful observation you make right at the end of the book, and I'm gonna read it, um, because it, uh, it caught me by surprise. You write, "What was most surprising to me about those characteristics was that they were not innate. I found that women had, over the course of their careers, created their powers by practicing and honing a series of strategies and approaches." Talk to me about that.

Julia Boorstin:

I, I love that discovery because it's so, um, empowering, that no one's-

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Julia Boorstin:

... superpowers are innate, really. Um, or if you think they are, it's (laughs) probably a lie, you know? We all have innate traits, um, innate characteristics, but ultimately, we all have the power to hone and improve our skills, whether it's for us as journalists, or for anyone who's a leader. And I think i-, you know, as, as a reporter, over the years, I would interview these people who were incredibly impressive, and had this seeming perfect confidence, and, um, never seemed to waiver. But ultimately, they all had worked really hard to get there, especially the women, had to work really hard to get there, and had to learn from their mistakes, and had to figure out what they were good at, and had to lean into that. And I think, you know, we talk a lot about authenticity in our culture (laughs), and we t-, we could debate, like, what is authenticity? Is it the BeReal app, or is it actually, uh, something very (laughs), very complex? But I think, really, at the end of the day, authenticity for these leaders and for e-, for all of us, is understanding who we are and how to use that to our advantage, not trying to fit into a box. And-

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah.

Julia Boorstin:

... in, in business news, there are a couple of these archetypes of male leaders who kind of dominate, and it's the man in the suit, and the guy in the hoodie. And in reality, leadership is so nuanced, and the types of leaders are so varied, and the ways in which they succeed is so varied. And I think the more we can try to break free from those couple of stereotypes and archetypes, and understand the complexity of the, the, the varied types of leadership, the more we can all be more successful as leaders, both men and women.

Jessi Hempel:

So I wanna talk through a few of these superpowers. Let's start with the growth mindset, since you're talking about that, uh, the importance of realizing that so much of this is not innate. I love Carol Dweck's work. A lot of people on this show reference Carol Dweck's work. She was the professor at Stanford who developed the theory of mindset, and who introduced this idea that if you believe that you can improve, you are more likely to be able to improve. And many people have gone on to say that that is actually a more important trait than being naturally gifted at something. You bring up a conditioned disparity for women, and I want you to explain that.

Julia Boorstin:

So what's so interesting is, there was this, this theory, um, and this discovery that girls were told that they were bright. "You're smart, you're gonna do well because you're smart." And boys were told, "Work hard, and you will do well if you work hard." And she was trying to figure out why it was that the teachers were encouraging the boys to try harder, and that, if they tried harder, they could do anything. And they thought maybe the boys were, were, had too much energy, running around the class, they need to be told (laughs) to sit down and focus, but the girls were told they were fundamentally bright. And what they found is that the girls didn't feel like they could grow; they didn't feel like they could take on hard challenges, 'cause they thought that their mindset was fixed, whereas the boys were told to, "Sit down and try your hardest, you'll be able to do it."

And, um, they discovered that it's really damaging to tell someone, "Y- you are smart." You should say, "You work hard. If you work hard, you can do it." And now, of course, this is a big part of parenting. All the parenting books is, "Don't tell your kid they're smart, tell them it's great when they work hard. If they work hard, they can put their mind to anything." And I see this a lot in just talking to my kids, um, but I think that th- this identification of the bright girl effect, that being told they were just smart could hold women back, was really interesting.

So Carol Dweck, over the years, then, then measured the impact of this, and found out, if women, as they got older, felt limited in their abilities. And she found out, no, there was women, as they got older, had an improving outlook, this idea that, "If I can try hard, I can do anything." And so they were not limited by this bright girl effect, and in fact, the w- older women who got, the more they felt optimistic and empowered to take on challenges. And I thought that was really interesting. And I, and I think of it the way my parents, you know, tried to encourage me, and then also the way we are now, you know, trained to talk about grit and all of these other things. But I think that this, um, having, having a growth mindset is incredibly important, not just individually, but also for companies, and also for hiring.

So Gail Becker, who's the CEO of Caulipower, um, she worked in public relations and, and branding, and, and in entertainment over the years, and she said, "I'm gonna create this company." And she believed she could create a company that had nothing to do with her area of expertise, because she knew she had the ability, that, that improving outlook, to take on these challenges, and she also hired people who did not have the specific experience in the food industry. And she said, "You can apply this outlook to hiring," which, now, of course, is something that people are looking a lot at, not hiring someone based on their resume, which is just a measure of their, their opportunity and experience to, to date, but on their soft skills and on their, on their capabilities going forward.

So I think that, um, obviously, a, a growth mindset is incredibly important just for personal reasons, but I think the more you could try to imbue that into an organization, "Things are gonna change, there're gonna be challenges, it's gonna be tough. We can tackle it. We have the ability to learn and grow," and make that part of the culture, and also part of the hiring; that seems to yield massive benefits.

Jessi Hempel:

We're gonna take a quick break here. More on women in entrepreneurship when we come back.

And we're back. Today we're hearing from Julia Boorstin on female entrepreneurs. There's something so many of them have in common, we practice it a lot here at Hello Monday: gratitude. This idea of gratitude came up so much in Julia's interviews, that she started searching her transcripts to make sure that she was hearing it as often as she thought.

Julia Boorstin:

I started digging into the research to try to figure out the role of gratitude in business. And there are some amazing studies showing that people who practice gratitude are better at doing longterm planning and longterm thinking. And there's this one specific study that I think sums it up. They bring in people for a study, and they say, "Would you rather take $50 now, or $84 later?" And if they just offer them that choice, most people would take $50 now. Um, then they brought in people to see what the impact would be of doing these different writing studies. So they would have someone write about being happy, someone else write about feeling grateful, and try to bring them into that mindset of happiness or gratitude. Feeling happy did not impact the outcome of whether they took $50 now or $84 later, but practicing gratitude made people want to take $84 later. It had this amazing impact of making people think about their, how they would feel down the road.

The same thing is found to be true for leadership, in that, if you're feeling grateful, you're not as anxious about the near term success. You're not as anxious about what happens tomorrow, maybe as anxious about the quarterly numbers, and you can plan more for the longterm. And the women who interviewed in this book who practiced gratitude, and really saw gratitude as core to their mission and core to their business, they were the ones that were looking at longterm problems. Like Julia Collins, she meditates a gratitude meditation every day, and she is trying to solve gl- global warming with these regenerative agriculture practices. She's thinking about a hundred year plan. Not about a short term plan, but a hundred year plan. Or, or Sheena Allen, who's trying to fix, um, the banking for the unbanked, all these people in the community she grew up with in Mississippi, who don't have access to financial services. She said, "I am so lucky I can help solve these problems." She sees her, her proximity to, to her community, but also her understanding of the solution as this gift. And so with that, she is trying to create longterm solutions. And I think it's really interesting to see how that feeling of gratitude, it's not about happiness, but gratitude, can really push you to think about the big picture.

Jessi Hempel:

I loved the entrepreneur from Mississippi, um, which is probably a little bit of a personal connection; my wife is from Mississippi, we have a home there and spend a lot of time there. But what I loved about her story, and will you remind me her name, Julia?

Julia Boorstin:

Sheena Allen.

Jessi Hempel:

Sheena Allen. What I loved about Sheena's story is that she had gone to Silicon Valley, she'd participated in the machine, and she had basically come away thinking, "No, this machine is not for me." And two things happened of note there. One is that she was able to connect with an investor who basically taught her how to translate what she hoped to do into the language of the group of people who could enable it for her, and that felt singularly important to her success. And the second is that she was, like, "Pshwa, geography! I'm moving to Atlanta. I'm going to a place where I can actually do what I wanna do." Um-

Julia Boorstin:

But it, but also, what was important for Atlanta is, in Atlanta, she was closer to the people she wanted to help, closer to the people who would be her customers. And she felt like being in Silicon Valley, it was a bubble, and she wasn't gonna have that proximity that would en- actually enable her to be more successful. So she needed to learn how to speak that language of Silicon Valley, and to be able to make the pitches to the investors, but ultimately, when it came to the day to d- d-, day to day, being outside that bubble and having the real understanding of the challenges of the people on the ground, who she was gonna be c- c- creating solutions for, was much more important.

Jessi Hempel:

Right. So I wanna talk a little bit about the relationship between women in EQ. And I have to, I have to say, I was prepared to read this, and I was prepared to be unsurprised by it because, of course women are just better at EQ. Like, that's a, an assumption I make. And by the way, it's also not always true in the workplace, I have learned. Um, but actually, I thought you just brought such, again, nuance and rigor to the discussion. Like, what are you really talking about there? Where is it that women bring something to bear?

Julia Boorstin:

I think it's so interesting because, yeah, I mean, we talk about emotional quotient, by the way, I also talk about the adaptability quotient, and these are terms that are thrown around so broadly, but I think, when I dug into emotional attention to detail and the, the idea that these women were paying attention to, whether it was what a patient needed in, um, in a, in a doctor, in an emergency room, or, um, what a customer needed, or what an employee needed, is they were really paying attention to context. And there was some ama- amazing data that women are, in fact, better at, um, at paying attention to people's emotions. This is not innate; this is trained. Women are socialized to pay a lot more attention to social cues. I think this is all really what's socialized.

And, um, as I looked at these women who were deploying empathy in their work, what I realized it really came down to was paying attention to the full context of someone's life and someone's situation. And trying to solve a big picture problem, I think about it as trying to help the forest rather than just trying to solve for a particular tree. And there's this one woman I write about in the book, Toyin Ajayi, who's now C- CEO of Cityblock Health, and she, um, she leads with empathy. And that empathy led her to try to help patients when she was a young resident, um, at Boston Medical. And she didn't wanna just keep helping these patients with a immediate medical problem that brought them into the emergency room, and then they would be brought back to the emergency room a month later, and a month later again. She wanted to really understand, what was the entirety of their challenge that was, that was making them not able to be healthy, and how could she help that full context?

So she created this company that, to me, is a very empathetic company that's about social services, housing, trying to help someone so their overall health improves. And so, therefor, by the way, they're much less of a burden on the health system, um, you're, you're keeping them out of the emergency room 'cause their overall health improves, but you c-, she did that by sending doctors into people's homes. What better way to show the patient that they're in charge and that you're listening to them, then have the doctor come to you? And also, what better way for the doctor to understand the full context of someone's challenges. Maybe there's no food in the refrigerator, and you could use that, and an empathy towards that, to really help create a medical plan, and maybe a housing plan that would help that person.

So I think of empathy as really, not just about how is someone feeling, but what is the full context of them? If I were to put myself into their shoes, what is everything I would need to know?

Jessi Hempel:

Yeah. Women are so great at seeing that forest for what it is, a forest. So I wanna talk a little bit about how women work together, and how they support each other. I think, particularly for people who I have had on this show who have had outside success, they talk about the experience of being the only person in the room, and how their experience, and often, their success, shifts when they are no longer working solo, but one of, say, three voices in a room. What did you find as you talked to people?

Julia Boorstin:

I think there is a meaningful shift when someone is not the only one anymore. And there's all this data about critical mass, this idea that, once a minority group becomes 20 or 30% of the whole, once you get to that level of a quarter or almost a third, that's when things can really start to change. There is this, this stereotype that women who, in order to succeed, they had to be sharp elbowed, and act like one of the guys, and had to fight for their position, and were not helping the younger women. And-

Jessi Hempel:

Mm-hmm.

Julia Boorstin:

... I think that the more women get into positions of power, the more that absolutely changes. And I think that, once women understand that they're not just fighting for one spot, they are eager to help the other wo- women around them rise. And at least, I feel like, in our generation, Jessi, and I'm curious if you feel the same way, there is this sense of trying to lift other women with you, and it does feel very different than, say, 2000, when I started working at Fortune Magazine. There was this understanding that there is room for many women around the table, and together, that they can accomplish more than if they were solo. So that, to me, has been very inspiring. And I really feel like the women in this book talked a lot about trying to connect with other women, a lot of women in the book recommended other women for me to talk to; there was a sense of paying it forward with everyone I, I talked to, and this idea that they knew they weren't gonna be the only one, they couldn't be the only one, we were no longer in that place. And the more that they, they helped others, the more they would be able to, um, to sort of elevate, e- e- elevate everyone. And there was a, it's not about fighting for one spot anymore.

Jessi Hempel:

Well, and, um, to you, to your question, do I notice it, you know, coming up, there was one type of female leader that we saw and had modeled for us, and you were expected to conform to that model of leadership. And I think that, one thing your book does so beautifully is, it shows how varied leadership can be. The women in this book, they don't all lead the same way; they all lean into their strengths in pursuit of their purpose, and in pursuit of the thing that they care passionately about. It looks totally different, and that is its own gift and opportunity for this generation: just the ability to model all kinds of different ways to do it.

Julia Boorstin:

And also, this idea that the more you understand who you are, the more you can be true to who you are, and that will make you more successful. And I do think female leadership has changed a lot, and I think 30 years ago, there was one way to do it, and it was probably to act like a man. And now-

Jessi Hempel:

Mm-hmm.

Julia Boorstin:

... you could lead in whatever way is best for you, and find success in that. And that's what I found in the women in this book. And I totally agree: there is not one model of female leadership. Um, but I do get the sense that there is a particular movement right now, and I think it's really been growing in the past couple of years, networks, organizations, companies, designed to help women help each other. I was really blown away by the data of how small groups of women can have a meaningful impact on performance, and also, how big things like conferences can have a meaningful impact on women's abilities to get jobs and promotions. I mean, I, I, I, I'll fully believe in groups that are as diverse as possible, and having men and women interact for every number of reasons, including the fact that it's often the men that hold the power. But the idea that there is a tangible, measurable difference for women to get together for something like the conferences for women, you see an m- m- measurable outcome in the m- number of promotions and, uh, pay raises-

Jessi Hempel:

Right.

Julia Boorstin:

... that means that these types of things actually have value. And I think it's because, when the women go back to work, they know that if they can get their [inaudible 00:26:39] to give them a leg up, as well, then they can all help each other, 'cause there's not just one spot for them anymore.

Jessi Hempel:

Julia's path into business journalism laid the foundation for the work that would interest her. A lot of it feels so familiar. You know, we both worked at Fortune very early in our careers. She was there in the early aughts, and she left right before I arrived, but so many things feel very similar. Like, she has this one story, a male colleague, a friend of hers, comes into the office one day. He's just gotten this amazing assignment: he's traveling to Mongolia. And the story he's reporting isn't even a natural fit for the magazine, not exactly business news, but they're gonna make it work because it sounds so interesting and so fun, and yeah, it's a little taxing on the budget, but they can make an exception. And he got the assignment after business hours, outside the office.

Julia Boorstin:

I, s-, I do think things have changed. And I, in that story of when my, my, my buddy at work got that amazing assignment to go to Mongolia, the reason I was so annoyed about it was because he came in one morning, we talked every morning when we would get our coffee, and he said, you know, "I played tennis with our bosses last night," and they had had drinks, and it was there that they had made that assignment, that they had been like, "Oh, that's a great idea!" He'd made his pitch, and they were all like, "That's a great idea!" And I just felt like, you know, I didn't, I didn't fit in those rooms. I wasn't gonna go have bourbon with our bosses after tennis. I mean, that all, to me, seemed so foreign, and I felt so divorced from that world, that I knew that there was a, there was this whole world that wasn't my, it wasn't my world. And I was tangential to it, so I was gonna keep my head down, and do my work, and know how to read the SEC documents, and make sure I wasn't afraid of any assignment, and I could take on any, you know, wonky assignment that they threw my way, but I wasn't part of that community. And I think a lot has been done since then.

Look, there's a female editor and chief of, of Fortune Magazine! There's a female editor and chief. And I think that this idea of the pattern matching, whether it's investing in a startup or the pattern matching of the in-, uh, the editors thinking, "This young writer reminds, reminds me of myself," I think there has been a movement away from that, and I, I, a lot more, um, not meritocratic, 'cause I do think that journalism is meritocratic and has always been, in a way, but just more in terms of the opportunities, um, a lot more aware of some of these patterns, and a lot more aware of how some of these, um, assignments are made, and I do think things have changed. I am optimistic.

Jessi Hempel:

So Julia, you are one of the more hard working journalists that I witness. You, you know, you continue to evolve relationships and stories. You've come out with this great book; what do you wanna do, personally, next? Like, what's your next big challenge?

Julia Boorstin:

Well, right now, I'm just focused on getting it out in the world. It was really fun for me to record my audio book, and, to me, that was a process of taking a step back, because to go into the soundproof room, and to read these words that I had toiled over for so long, and to think about what I'm really talking about here, and to think about what the messages are, and, um, trying to break these stereotypes and elevate new images, and change the conversation. And I think, for now, I mean, I would love to write another book, eventually, I really love the process, um, but for now, to really sort of dig into some of these things that I was working with alone in my room at my desk, and to talk about them publicly. And I do think that we are at a moment right now where women are excited to elevate each other, and men are ready to think about leading in different ways, and everyone is starting to see the opportunity in embracing a varied range of ways of leading.

And, um, the, the data and the stories were, were so exciting to me, um, and to use the data unlo- to kind of unlock the stories, I found super, um, empowering. And, and I've been using a lot of these things in my own life, just as a, as a reporter and as a, as a mom, (laughs) frankly, um, that I think that I, right now, I'm ready to, like, dive into some of these things and take them out into the world. And then, ultimately, um, hope to get a chance to write another book. But now I'm just excited to talk about this stuff; there's so much more to do.

Jessi Hempel:

That was Julia Boorstin. Her book, When Women Lead, is a must-read for everyone. So how can you support women in your organization? What are you doing already? Let's talk about it on Hello Monday Office Hours this week. You can find us on the LinkedIn news page at 3:00PM Eastern, or drop us an email to HelloMonday@LinkedIn.com, and we'll send you the link. Office Hours, please remember, is truly that: an informal time to check in with us, producer, Sarah Storm, and me. Bring your coffee, bring your snacks; we look forward to seeing you.

If you like the show, please follow and review it wherever you get your podcast and share it with a friend. Thanks so much. Hello Monday is a production of LinkedIn News. Sarah Storm produces our show, with mixing by Joe DiGiorgi. Courtney Coupe is head of original programming, Dave Pond is head of news production, Michaela Greer and Victoria Taylor help us grow all the time. Our theme music was composed just for us by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Dan Roth is the editor-in-chief of LinkedIn. And a special thanks to my friend Ben, for always listening. I'm Jessi Hempel, we'll be back next Monday. Thanks for listening.

Julia, I woke up this morning at 5:30, um, 'cause I try to seize time before my kids wake up.

Julia Boorstin:

Yeah, that's the, that's the only way I do it.

Jessi Hempel:

I mean, like, that is, that is the secret to basically creating anything in my life. So I wake up, and I, like, went out to the kitchen, and I look out our window, and I'm looking, our, our building is sort of like an L shape, and our, you know, our home goes this way, and there's another home that goes this way, and it's totally dark out now, because summer is over, and I look out the window, and I'm looking into, I guess, my neighbor's window. Don't know who lives there, but all I can see is Slack. Like, it's dark outside, it's dark in his apartment, but there is a big screen, and I can recognize the, like, Slack threads. And I just think, "Oh my God, we're all on Slack right now, at 5:30, across Brooklyn, everywhere."