Reforming My Mid-Career Experience: A Legacy of Integrity and Human-Centered Leadership

Honoring the women who paved the way while carving out a new path for professional integrity.

When I think about reforming my mid-career experience, I consider the legacy I’m creating for future generations. Simultaneously, I am holding the knowledge of the women who built before me. We collectively desire progress. Taking the road traveled and moving it up several levels of liberation, deconstruction, and autonomy requires listening and reflection.

I have deep respect for the women I learn from. Beginning with my mother’s generational breaks and shortcomings, and extending to professors, therapists, authors, midwives, doulas, and coaches, I have spent decades absorbing their lessons learned. Now, I want to build a better path.

If I simply do as they say, I do not believe we will make progress. That is the tricks-and-traps dynamic we have been feeling so frustrated over. There have been waves of forward movement, and for that, I am grateful. Simultaneously, there are many ways our culture treats women the same as it has since the ’80s. This is the frustration I hear—and share—with women in their 60s.

So, what is my role? I am now an entrepreneur trying to create a new way to instill human-centered leadership into professional spaces from the beginning. How do we hold the legacy of our teachers and ask:

“What can we do better?”

My Personal Commitment to Authentic Leadership

I will honor my mother and carve out a new path she never ventured on. When I’m with my kids, I feel her. I know how to love unconditionally because she implanted it into my veins. I also know what she would do to prepare her home before guests came over, but I get to honor my capacity. Now, I get to discover my professional space in the world and ruffle any feathers I believe are worth my time. This is something her nervous system would be very cautious of; this is something my nervous system can adapt to. She broke countless generational norms while leaving countless possibilities on the table for me to pick up. In honor of her legacy, I’m running with them.

I’m building a business based on a mission to create a work environment better than the one I inherited. I’m participating in capitalism with as much integrity as possible.

Women have had to make sacrifices to put food on the table, to maintain security, and because they believed in where it could take them. I believe in a future where, when we have the means to say no, we will all say no to the wrong prospects. I will not abandon myself to make a sale. My business requires income, and I’m not ashamed of that. At the same time, I didn’t leave my job to continue putting on a costume and shoving my feelings at the door. If a collaboration is toxic and requires me to provide something I don’t believe in, it will not fuel my drive. My intuition has come back online, and I won’t lose it again for a bottom line.

The scarcity mindset requires us to say yes to every opportunity. When we leave our bodies out of fear and agree to something that takes away our voice, we don’t make progress. We may be physically present when we do the work, but the patriarchy tells us that being in the room is enough (or too much). Legacy building tells me that I can only show up when I can bring my whole self: my voice, experiences, knowledge, and designs that will build a more cohesive future.

I will not change my speech. I will gain insight from women with more experience and inside knowledge from my peers, who are also picking up where the ones before us left off. This is about accountability—holding myself to a higher standard than my mother was held to and seizing the options that those before us didn’t have.

Creating a legacy means respecting the work that has been done before while envisioning something even better.