In this conversation, Karen and Brenda reflect on the unique experience of returning to in-person conferences after years of remote work, particularly highlighting their time at last fall’s Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC). They discuss the emotional weight of the event, not just as a professional gathering but as a space where women in tech, especially those from marginalized backgrounds, can be fully seen and celebrated. Brenda emphasizes how being around people who understand the shared experience of being a woman in tech creates a profound sense of belonging. Karen echoes this sentiment, noting how GHC provides more than just networking opportunities; it offers validation, visibility, and a much-needed reminder that attendees are not alone in their journey.
As the conversation deepens, both women touch on the power of representation and the emotional intensity that comes from witnessing a sea of brilliant women supporting one another. Karen shares how the energy in the room felt like a healing moment, and Brenda explains how the conference reminded her of the purpose behind her work. They both recognize that GHC is about inspiration, as well as impact. From finding community to reigniting passion, Karen and Brenda underscore how essential spaces like GHC are for fostering connection, confidence, and long-term change in the tech industry.
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Our guests contribute to this podcast in their personal capacity. The views expressed in this interview are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology or its employees (“AnitaB.org”). AnitaB.org is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of the information provided in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute legal or other professional advice or services.
Transcript of the Episode
[00:00:00] Brenda: There was a decision that you had to make, you quit your job, right? A pretty comfortable job. Was there ever a part where you worried that you might have made the wrong choice?
[00:00:10] Karen: Yeah, absolutely. That year I made $17,000 the whole year I was so far off of my goals, it was a huge miss.
[00:00:18] Brenda: That’s Karen Catlin. She is a former Adobe executive and an acclaimed author and expert on inclusive workspaces. She’s describing a moment of terrifying doubt that she experienced early on in her leadership coaching business.
[00:00:37] Karen: I felt like such a loser. Like what have I done here?
[00:00:41] Brenda: Karen began as a software engineer in the early eighties when women were a much larger percentage of the tech workforce than they even are today. She rose through the ranks from coder to project lead to team leader, and ultimately to VP of engineering at Adobe.
But even as she was thriving, Karen couldn’t ignore the fact that there was this increasingly sharp decline in the number of women in tech. So she decided to do something about it.
She decided to take a risk.
She quit Adobe and started her own independent coaching business to support women in technology roles. It was a huge change, and success was not guaranteed. A year in, Karen found herself questioning her choice.
Karen: I’ve walked away from a very, very financially lucrative job. I’ve set this goal for myself and I can’t even like, earn, you know, a tiny portion of it. Like, you know, it’s like, what, what have I done?
[00:01:40] Brenda: So how did Karen get past that awful period of doubt? And what lessons did she take away from that early period when she seriously thought her business might fail? That’s what we’re gonna find out.
I’m Brenda Darden Wilkerson, and this is B the Way Forward. When we come back my conversation with Karen Catlin.
AD BREAK / ACT I
[00:02:04] Brenda: Well, I’m excited today to welcome Karen Catlin to the show. So many things Karen has under her belt, author, coach, speaker, technologist, founder of her very own startup. Karen, welcome to the show.
[00:02:23] Karen: Oh, Brenda, it is such a pleasure. I wanna thank you from the bottom of my heart for having me here today.
[00:02:30] Brenda: No, I, I’m honored. I am so excited for our listeners to get to hear from you. This is an interesting time, and I can’t wait to just get into this conversation.
[00:02:41] Karen: Wonderful.
[00:02:42] Brenda: So you started out in software and that’s near and dear to my heart. So did I. You started in the early nineties. Can you describe the scene at the time when you first started?
[00:02:56] Karen: Well, I’m gonna add some years to my life. It was actually in the mid-eighties.
[00:03:01] Brenda: Okay. Like me!
[00:03:03] Karen: Alright. We are peers here. So what was it like? So here’s the thing that many people are surprised by when I share this. I got my computer science degree in 1985 and like for anyone who’s good at math, you can now figure out how old I am,
[00:03:19] Brenda: Yeah, we don’t wanna talk about that part.
[00:03:20] Karen: Alright, that’s fine. That’s fine. But 1985 was such a significant year because that was the year that was this peak of women getting computer science and information science degrees in the United States across the US. 37% of the degrees were going to women that year and my college, I actually went back through my yearbook and counted all the computer science degrees and, and did my best to tally up gender and it was 38% in my class. So that meant there were a lot of women studying computer science, like in the classes, in peer study groups being teaching assistants for classes. I had a lot of women friends in those classes. It was amazing. But as we know, it certainly went down from there, um, to the low point of like 17%, I think in the, late nineties, early two thousands. But my point is when I started way back when it was a very different scene than what we have today.
[00:04:17] Brenda: Well, I’m actually jealous because you’re absolutely right. That was the height and we didn’t think of it as — I know I didn’t because my university experience was totally different from yours. I had no female professors. I had very few female colleagues in computer science, and so I was very much prepared for what I found when I got out and started working. And it wasn’t fun. But you know, come to find out that was the height of, uh, the percentage of women in, in computer science and technology, and we’ve not made it back there. And it’s better than the 17%, but it’s been hovering about at the same place 35-37% for like the last 10 years. So we have quite a bit of work to do.
[00:05:01] Karen: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:05:03] Brenda: Which is part of why we have these conversations, right? To, to keep people in the loop around the work that still has to be done. You know, I think this is one of the first times I’ve talked to, to a woman who said that her university experience was as diverse as yours, and it makes such a difference. How did that get you ready for your first experience when you went to work?
[00:05:27] Karen: I must admit, I was lucky. I stayed at the university and worked as a staff engineer basically on some advanced research, some applied research, um, which was super fun. Um, it was the early days of hypertext before the internet was around. I got to do some really cool things and so my gosh, I feel so fortunate because that experience working at the university with many people who had gone through the same CS program with me or a few years ahead or a few years behind.
I didn’t feel that there was gender bias at play at all. I really didn’t feel that. I felt that my manager, my peers, everyone, we were all in it together. We were all, um, doing this work. We were all supporting each other. Um, and it was a really lovely experience, but I just didn’t know how lucky I was.
[00:06:14] Brenda: I wanna talk about your work at, Macromedia first, right? Because you transitioned into a VP role at Macromedia, which of course was eventually acquired by Adobe. I remember Macromedia. What was it like entering into a leadership role after being say, on the ground floor, so to speak, as an engineer?
[00:06:37] Karen: Well, I didn’t go right from engineer, individual contributor to VP. You know, there were steps along the way. These things are gradual as they should be in a larger company because you need to learn how to do this stuff.
So what was it like? I mean, yes, it’s very different. Um, if you’re someone who likes hands-on and doing the, you know, writing the code that’s a great place to be, and I love companies that have those technical tracks to stay technical and keep doing the hands-on work. Um, for me, over time I realized I actually like to get things organized more than I liked actually writing code.
So I moved into like program management roles where I could like, oh, bring on the complexity. I wanna figure this out, I wanna put it, put some order to the chaos and that kind of thing. So that was more what I wanted to be doing and that led to me getting more and more, you know, leadership responsibility when it comes right down to it.
[00:07:32] Brenda: And you also spent time with the, you know, whatever we call them back in those days, but the ERGs, taking your passion and, and pouring it into women and women’s groups.
[00:07:43] Karen: I did. In 2006. I had just joined Adobe and there was a senior vice president at Adobe who said to me — and I was like the most senior woman in engineering at the company at the time — he said, “Hey Karen, I’ve been sponsoring this thing called the Grace Hopper Celebration for a few years now. I think it’s worth us sponsoring, but, we’ve never sent anyone. We don’t really know anything about it. Would you go and evaluate it?” And I’m like, sure! Go hang out with women in computing? Absolutely. So I got on a plane, went to San Diego, and I was blown away. I could not believe the conversations that were happening, that were happening in support of women growing their careers, the conversations by men that were happening that were true allies and such great supporters.
I was blown away. I went back and I said, oh yeah, heck yes. We are gonna keep sponsoring this thing. And I was all fired up. I was fired up in such a way that I came back to the company and I was like, I need to start a resource group for women. We didn’t even have the term ERG back then.
[00:08:48] Brenda: Mm-hmm
[00:08:49] Karen: At least I didn’t, I wasn’t aware of it. And so I founded our women’s group, um, Adobe and Women, um, at that time and got just so passionate about helping others.
You know, kind of put that, pay it forward mentality, helping others grow their careers. Having book clubs or, um, lunch and learn sessions about different topics. Um, kind of, um, just trying to bottle up everything, the excitement of Grace Hopper, bring it back home, and, um, roll it out to our ERG.
[00:09:17] Brenda: Amazing.
[00:09:18] Karen: It was pivotal, pivotal to me.
[00:09:21] Brenda: Was there ever a time when that passion began to eclipse your day job?
[00:09:28] Karen: Oh it did. It absolutely did. Now Brenda, we all have those days when we wake up and we can’t wait to get to work, right? We’re excited whether that is telecommuting or actually getting into, um, into the office. We are excited. And then there are other days where we are like, well. You know, it’s a job. I’m going to work and I started having many of the former days, the ones I couldn’t wait to go to work.
When I was doing something with women, mentoring another woman, or participating in some employee resource group activity, or even just advocating for women at, you know, a big staff meeting or something. and I realized over time like that is my passion. Being a VP of engineering, the pay is really good, like, it’s, it’s really a very lucrative job, but I didn’t wanna be doing it anymore.
[00:10:20] Brenda: Obviously you’re good at engineering, you got all the way to VP of Engineering, but something else caught your eye, there was a decision that you had to make, and not only did you wanna keep doing it within that organization, you quit your job, right?
[00:10:36] Karen: So
yeah, I pivoted, um, in a big way when I realized that was my passion, um, and decided to start my own business: to be a leadership coach so I could pay it forward to women full-time. Um, and not just women at Adobe, but women working across tech wherever they were. It was a huge risk when I, you know, when I look back at it, now I had some money in the bank. I have a husband who had a full-time job with benefits. You know, all the things that make it easier to take a risk. But I just thought I had to do this.
[00:11:07] Brenda: So now walk us through that first year when you launched your coaching business. You fresh out of Adobe, you’ve shaped a business plan, you’re finding clients and jumping into marketing. It had to be a lot. Talk to us about that time in your life.
[00:11:24] Karen: Oh yeah, there’s so much to running a business that, you know, you look around, you realize there are people everywhere who run their own businesses, and you’re like, it can’t be that hard. And then you realize, well, it might not be that hard, but you might not be good at everything when it comes right down to it. There are a lot of detail oriented things around just running a business in terms of your business license and your LLC and your accounting that you have to do and sending out those bills and setting up a checking account and like all the things there.
I mean, there’s just a lot of detail and yeah, you can outsource it unless you’re trying to do it yourself to save money, which I’m frugal, so I try to do as much as I can myself. Then there’s your website that you have to create, and then it’s like, well, what do you put on your website? You know, what are the words you use? Well, that’s marketing. And then like all the stuff you have to figure out and wear so many different hats. So yeah, it was definitely hard. The thing I’d say I struggled with the most was business development. I never had to do that before. I’m an engineer. I build products. Somebody else is doing the business development. How could I do this now? Year one was not successful.
[00:12:36] Brenda: Was there ever a part where you worried that you might have made the wrong choice?
[00:12:41] Karen: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I had only ever worked at companies that gave me a paycheck every two weeks or twice a month. You know, it’s just like I had never done this myself. I had never sent an invoice for like work I had done. It just like, got paid.
At the beginning of the second year, I met with a business coach and he said, so what are your financial goals? I’m like, well, this first year was just trying to figure things out. And he’s like, not anymore.
What are your financial goals? I wanna know what you think you need to earn, want to earn every month. And so I, I think I said at the time, okay, well, what I want to do is have this be a business that I can feel proud of. I’m making some money. I wanna earn $10,000 a month, so. Kind of, I mean, a nice sum of money, but not too outrageous or anything.
$10,000 a month. Well, that year, I made $17,000 the whole year. No, I was so far off of my goals, and it was a huge miss. I felt like such a loser. Like what have I done here? I’ve walked away from a very, very financially lucrative job. I’ve set this goal for myself and I can’t even earn, you know, a tiny portion of it. Like, you know, it’s like, what, what have I done? I was in the dumps. I really was, I was like, I can’t do this. This is not a viable business for me. I need to go figure something else out. I felt like I just couldn’t get the business going.
[00:14:05] Brenda: We have to take a quick break, but when we come back we’ll find out how Karen broke through those doubts, who it was that helped push her to do it, and how she keeps herself going today. Plus, I’ll have my top three takeaways that you can use in your own career. Don’t go away.
ACT II
[00:14:26] Brenda: Was there ever a time when you thought about going back to the corporate world?
[00:14:31] Karen: Yes. Yes.
[00:14:32] Brenda: And why?
[00:14:33] Karen: I was overwhelmed. I thought it was just too hard to do this. I couldn’t be successful at it. I was embarrassed when I thought about it at the time. My family knew I was having trouble, but I didn’t wanna tell many other people I couldn’t do this.
‘Cause up to that point, everything I set my mind to, I did. So there were times I thought about going back to the corporate world. I dabbled a little bit with a startup, getting involved with that. Started looking at what jobs were out there. But I wasn’t excited about doing those other things. This is what I cared about. This is what I wanted to be spending my time doing. And we don’t all have that luxury to be able to match that passion with our vocation. But I wanted to make that work.
[00:15:18] Karen: I remember, kind of at the lowest point there, I was talking to my husband and like, oh gosh, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. This isn’t working. And my husband’s more of, he’s a serial entrepreneur, he’s always in startups, and he brought really the entrepreneurial mindset to me. He’s like, wait a second. You need to stick with this.
You can’t claim failure after just one year of not meeting your goals. We’ve got enough resources in the bank to see us through this. Keep going. You need to think of this as more of a three to five year kind of timeframe, not the one year timeframe. And I must admit, yeah, you think executives are looking at three to five years down the road, but a lot of the decisions we make as executives is quarterly or yearly. We have quarterly goals. We have yearly goals, annual goals, so that’s what I was doing to myself. I was thinking like there was a whole lot more behind me, you know, supporting this and bringing in the business when I really needed to be getting the word out more, getting the word out about my business, growing that business and getting the coaching clients I knew I could get.
[00:16:24] Brenda: So he encouraged me to stick with it. We all need those cheerleaders around us. “He did that for me, and I stuck with it.” Yeah, I mean it’s important for our listeners to hear that because I know if you’re like I am, I can think my way out of something quickly. I can have a great idea and then I sit there and go through the what if’s.
[00:16:49] Karen: Yeah.
[00:16:50] Brenda: I let the potentially negative what if’s stop me from doing something that could really have been important not only to me and my development, but the impact that I wanted to have on other people. Right? And so we need to hear the steps, you know, the emotional and mental steps that people who stuck with it went through so that we can know when they happen to us, that’s normal, right? And I’m really grateful to your husband, that he did encourage you. It’s important to get around people who will encourage you when you have those moments that you obviously had, and you stuck with it. And I’m so glad you did.
[00:17:34] Karen: No, thank you. And I’ll share that with my husband. That’s nice that you shared all those kind words about him too.
[00:17:40] Brenda: Oh, it’s important, right? We need those folks around us.
[00:17:42] Karen: One thing that I did is I remember going on a mentor walk with Nora Denzel and she was doing this to raise money for a nonprofit. She was on the board of, I think it was the YWCA of Silicon Valley, and she would go on mentor walks if you donated money to their nonprofit. And I’m like, that sounds like a good deal. I wanna walk with with Nora.
[00:18:02] Brenda: Right.
[00:18:03] Karen: And we were walking and talking and at one point I was telling her, I need to grow this business. Like I’m not doing a very good job at the biz dev. And at one point she said, “Hey Karen, do you do much public speaking?”
Now back then, I hated public speaking. Hated, hated, hated, and when she asked me, “do you do much public speaking,” the reel started in my head of, no, I don’t do much public speaking. I’m not very good at it. I don’t enjoy this. This is not gonna happen. This is not the conversation we’re gonna have. Like the reel was just spinning. But I kept all of that just in my head because I realized the reason she was asking, “do you do much public speaking,” is it actually could be the key to unlocking this business. People would start hearing how I approach being a leader, being a woman in tech, whatever, people would start hearing from me and hearing that I have a business in consulting and I was gonna start getting business that way.
So at that point I realized I had to dive into the deep end and I set a goal for myself to speak in public once a month. I didn’t know how I was gonna do that either. $10,000 a month for this. Didn’t know how I was gonna do that, but I started just telling everyone I knew I was doing a lot of networking and everyone I met with, I was like, Hey, I have this goal, speak in public once a month. Let me know if you hear of any panels or opportunities. And Brenda, I started saying yes to everything and that made a difference. I even said yes to like, someone who said “my kids’ school has a girls’ coding after school camp and there’s only like three kids. But would you speak there?”
I’m like, yes. ’cause that would count. That was, I was speaking in public. I had to prepare some thoughts. I had to go do it. I was nervous, you know, the whole thing. At any rate, there’s some months now I speak five, six, seven times. I don’t have the stage fright I used to have. I’ve actually come to love public speaking and I think that has been the key that did unlock my business.
[00:19:56] Brenda: Well, like you, I love Nora. She’s amazing, and she was absolutely right, and I love that you set a goal. You know, when you heard this, this was something you should do, and it was new to what you thought you should be doing, you set a goal and that helped you to actually develop into something that you know now, like you say five, six, seven times a month and it helped you develop your business.So, not only did you get good advice, you followed up on it. Sometimes we get that good advice, but we don’t do anything with it.
[00:20:28] Karen: Oh, that, that could be a whole other podcast of all the advice we received that we’ve never done. ‘Cause I’ve got a long list of those things too.
[00:20:34] Brenda: I could have a time, I could write a whole list on that, you know, unfortunately. I’m trying to change that. So you left your job to do something critically important. You’re making this huge impact. What advice would you give women who are considering leaving their job to start something new? Specifically on those days when it feels like the risk may not pay off.
[00:20:59] Karen: You and many of us, we think of something we wanna do and we start playing the what if game. What if this goes wrong? What if this goes wrong? What if this goes wrong? Of course we should be playing the “What if this goes right Game” too.
[00:21:11] Brenda: You’re right.
[00:21:12] Karen: To balance that. So I wanna just throw that out there. The “what if this goes right” thing. I also, while I appreciate all of that, and I think I’m a planner, I love planning, I love figuring out contingency scenarios and all of that. But I also think some naivete serves us well in addition. And what do I mean by that naivete? So one thing I started doing after I started my coaching business and it started growing and I felt comfortable, it felt like it was, it was doing great. I was like, wait, coaching is one-on-one. I am helping a limited number of people with my coaching. How can I scale? And that’s in the technology point of view. How can I scale? And I was like, well, all of my coaching clients are really amazing women. They benefit from coaching, I think, but they really would benefit even more if they were working in workplaces that were inclusive,
so when I realized, and it’s like kind of in hindsight, like, realized that the way to really help my coaching clients and all other women working out there — in fact, anyone who’s underrepresented and marginalized because of some aspect of their identity — is to really make inclusive workplaces where they all could thrive. And I was like, you know, I think if people just realized some of the issues that happened, some of the things that aren’t inclusive, if people just realized what was happening and knew what they could do, they could make a difference. So this is the naivete. I didn’t realize how hard it might be to create inclusive workplaces. I’m like, if people just realize that these things happen and this is what they could say or do, everyone could make a difference. So I started this Twitter handle 10 years ago called Better Allies to share these simple everyday actions people could take to be more inclusive at work.
These are not gonna be surprises to you ’cause I know that you pay attention to this, but it’s things like, hey, notice when someone is interrupted in a conversation and redirect the conversation with, “Hey, I’d like to hear Brenda finish what she was saying,” like, that’s how to be a Better Ally. That’s how you start creating inclusive workplaces.
[00:23:20] Brenda: Right.
[00:23:21] Karen: You just keep going from there. So naive, Karen, like, I’m gonna change the world. I’m gonna make conclusive workplaces everywhere I started a Twitter handle. Well, lo and behold, that Twitter handle started growing in popularity. People loved it. They started sharing it, retweeting all that kind of stuff. I started getting speaking engagements to come speak about this topic and every time I gave a talk in the early years, someone would say, “Hey, Karen, this was a good talk, but we want more. Do you have a book?” And in the beginning it was like, well, no, but I’ve got this Twitter handle. You know, go follow me there. And the second or third time it was like, well, no book yet. Third, fourth time, coming soon. Now I’ve published four books about how people can be better allies at work, and I hear it’s making a difference for a lot of people.
[00:24:12] Brenda: That is amazing. That is amazing and impactful and I love to hear how you took that advice they were asking for and you finally gave it to them from Twitter handle to four books, and that’s amazing. What were some of the other strategies that you had to keep yourself going when you couldn’t quite see how things were gonna work out?
[00:24:36] Karen: Yeah, look at the long term. Now. We all have different financial situations, and finances are big, so make sure that you’re know, you’re, you’re doing the right thing on that front. But don’t give up too soon. Don’t pre-give up, I’ll call it pre-give up. Make sure that you’ve got that three to five year horizon that I was missing when I first started my business.
And know what success is gonna look like for you. You know, it might be financial, it might be the impact you’re having, it might be something else, but define success. Look at that long term so that you can stay focused as you make progress towards that long term goal that you have. I think that there are so many people listening, so many people out there who probably have incredible ideas for starting something new, whether that’s a, you know, nonprofit, a new company, a startup, or a new role that they might have in within a larger organization. Just stick with it.
[00:25:35] Brenda: Yeah. Stick with it. That’s the thing. We need you to stick with it. If you are in there doing something, like for at one point in my career, I was an entrepreneur. I created within a company, it was just as difficult, trust me, because I had to do my regular job and that other thing too, against a lot of odds. And so I had to have some self-talk to keep me, to keep me going. A big thing for me, and this is my personality, is I thrive on positive reinforcement. So all it takes is one little tweet maybe that would go, you know, you’ll get 50 50 likes or something. I’m like, okay, I know I can do this. I know that people want me to keep doing this.
[00:26:20] Karen: For me it’s the feedback I get through my newsletter. I get fan mail from my newsletter from around the world of, and people do not know, I write back to let them know how much it like filled my cup. I don’t think they realize how much I might have needed it at that point. I got one just this morning from someone in Germany who said, I just wanna let you know I love your newsletter and I frequently share it with this employee resource group.
Here’s a screenshot of what I shared this morning. Thank you for doing the work you’re doing. Those things keep me going. They did back then, and I still have bad days every now and then. Not that I’m gonna like throw in the towel, but days that maybe I’ve made a mistake, you know, I’ll share this: work is hard, it’s hard to be a couple steps ahead of my audience, which is all I am. Sometimes just a couple steps ahead, trying to figure out what’s coming out of Washington DC that, you know, how’s impacting our work. I’m an expert, but I’m not foolproof. I’m not perfect. And so I make mistakes. And so when I make mistakes and I start getting some emails from people pointing out my mistakes, which I’m always thankful for, actually, I think every single person who points out a mistake I’ve made on those days, I go back and look at some of these accolades because that makes a difference to me.
[00:27:35] Brenda: Yeah.
[00:27:36] Karen: And you know, one last thing I wanna say about making mistakes is I heard this great phrase a number of years ago, and it is just part of my DNA. Now it is be curious, not furious. When we make a mistake, whether it’s on the road to be a better ally like me or doing something else, I should say me, but maybe others, you know, quickly get defensive about things like, you know, like, I didn’t do that. I didn’t make that mistake. I didn’t, you know, I didn’t mean anything, whatever. And I need to tuck all that aside and focus more on learning from it. And I think that’s what you said the very beginning. These are, these are learning experiences. Every time we do make a mistake and by being curious instead of furious we actually get to learn.
[00:28:21] Brenda: We do, we do. We don’t waste energy being upset. We actually can step back and take a look at it and, and take that opportunity. Now I’m gonna say that’s growth, people, for a lot of us. Okay? So if you’re not there yet, it’s okay. You can get there, , because we’re not necessarily taught that, um, in some of our development, but it is so useful. I want to take that opportunity to ask you, even self introspection, I think is, is, is a great tool. You know, I’ll respond to something or react to something and I’ll have to stop and say, okay, Brenda, why did, why’d you feel that way? What makes you feel like that about that thing? And many times we’ll learn something that, uh, causes us to create our craft better or to do something better next time, or actually even maybe a new idea we never thought of. So that curiosity, I really like that a lot.
[00:29:18] Karen: Yeah, love that. Love being curious by interacting with the person who pointed something out. Love what you just brought up, being curious with ourselves and doing that introspection. We can also be curious with our favorite search engine or large language model terms of asking it about some, gimme feedback on what happened here. There are a lot of different ways to be curious so that we do get to learn and do better the next time.
[00:29:42] Brenda: I just wanna thank you so much for putting so much effort into helping people be allies ’cause that’s what, you know, you talk about the workplace, but you’re actually making the world a better place right? We spend so much time at work.
[00:30:00] Karen: We do, we do. And it forms how we are outside of work and, and vice versa.. Now I feel like this bigger weight on my shoulders. Thank you.
[00:30:11] Brenda: Anytime. Anytime, Karen. You got this. Oh, well, you know, I’m looking at the time. I always run over when I’m having a great time, and this has been so amazing. You’ve done so many things and thank you so much for sharing it with our listeners.
[00:30:29] Karen: Thank you, Brenda.
[00:30:31] Brenda: Karen Catlin, author of Better Allies. You need to get yourself a copy and follow Karen. Thanks again.
[00:30:38] Karen: It was such a pleasure.
[00:30:40] Brenda: I wanna thank Karen for joining me today and for being so open and honest about it all. Even the hardest parts. There were so many great insights in Karen’s story, but here are three things that really stood out to me.
Number one, know what success looks like for you. Success doesn’t look the same for everyone, and it’s not the same for every project either. Like Karen said, it could be financial, it could be about the impact you have even on a small group of people, or it could be something else altogether. Yeah, at work, sometimes people are going to be the ones who make that call for you, say a certain number of users acquired or hitting a launch date.
But even in those cases, you can set your own goal for what you want to get out of the work, and holding that definition of success close can help keep you from getting distracted or feeling bad about the notions other people have.
Number two, don’t be afraid to be just a little naive. I love this one. It’s something that has occurred to me before and it’s both freeing and powerful. Often we have an idea or a project in mind, and then whether it’s someone else’s, or our own internal voice, we just fixate on why it won’t work. If instead we try, and I know this is hard sometimes, try to set aside and ignore those voices and instead ask yourself, well, how hard could it be? It’s playing the “what could go right” game instead of “what could go wrong.”
Finally, be curious, not furious. I just love that phrase Karen used when something doesn’t go right. It’s natural to be upset and maybe even angry at yourself or at other people who you think may have held you back or who questioned whether you could have done things differently. Go ahead and feel all the feelings, but then take a breath. Ask questions, use the setback to gather data on what happened and why and what might work better next time, which you know, is basically the idea of this whole arc of the podcast.
Now if you wanna know more about Karen and her work, we’ll have links in our show notes. Starting with this episode, we’re dropping every other week. We’ll be back in two weeks with another chance for us to unpack the best lessons we can learn from some of the worst moments in our professional lives.
As always, if you enjoyed our discussions, then please follow B The Way Forward wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you can please take a moment to rate and review the show. It really helps other people discover our conversations. And of course, you can also watch video episodes of this podcast on the AnitaB.Org channel on YouTube.
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