Toni:

If you’ve ever wondered whether you really need a perfectly linear path, a single specialty, and a perfectly rehearsed leadership brand to make it to CPO — this episode is going to challenge that.

Today I’m joined by Catherine Wong, Chief Product Officer at Entrata — a daughter of immigrants who was told her options were doctor, lawyer, engineer, or concert pianist — and who chose to build a career on range, curiosity, and the courage to swing across a jungle gym rather than climb a single ladder.

Catherine started in software engineering, moved into architecture, M&A, product management, and operations — often in ways that, she admits, might have looked like career suicide from the outside. She led an acquisition before she felt ready, led teams through the kind of change most leaders struggle to name, and has now built a leadership philosophy rooted in empathy, authenticity, and what she believes is the most underused leadership skill in tech: assuming people wake up every day hoping to do well.

In this conversation, we talk about:

• The jungle gym career — and why range matters more than ever in the age of AI
• Why diversity isn’t just a values issue — it’s a product quality issue
• Navigating AI adoption as a change management challenge at speed
• Leading authentically when the pressure is on — and what that actually means
• And why the best piece of advice Catherine ever got came from her parents: never be afraid to lose sight of the shore

What struck me most about Catherine is that she leads with conviction and warmth — and isn’t afraid to be honest. She’ll tell you she’s not sure she’d have made it without the right mentors. She’ll tell you she’s back in Cursor relearning to code. And she’ll tell you that AI’s biggest gift isn’t the technology itself — it’s what it frees humans to do.

If you’re navigating a non-linear career and wondering if it’s working against you… If you’re a product leader trying to build the case for diversity in rooms that no longer want to hear it… Or if you’re figuring out how to lead your team through the AI transition without losing your North Star…

This one’s for you. Let’s dive in.

Toni
Welcome to the show, Catherine. Thank you for joining us today.

Catherine
Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to chat today.

Toni
Likewise. We’ll start by telling us all a little about yourself, your career up to now, and how did you become a Chief Product Officer?

Catherine
Yes, so my journey is actually a little, I think, different than a lot of other folks. I started in engineering, in software engineering, and I did that because I’m the daughter of immigrants. Growing up, I was told, well, you’ve got a couple of options. You can be a doctor, you can be a lawyer, you can be an engineer, or a concert pianist was also acceptable.
That was kind of the expectation. And I say that with so much love and respect for my parents because they had sacrificed so much to come and to give me this wonderful life. So in college, I wound up taking a computer science class and I was hooked. One of the assignments was to code a game, the game of chess, right? But it was just so fun to be able to do that and then see people play it.

I started actually as a software engineer and worked wearing a lot of different hats. I would say, to some, it might have looked like career suicide at times because I didn’t necessarily always advance forward. I very much viewed it as a jungle gym. I didn’t really care about title. I cared about range. I cared about really understanding all the different aspects of what it took to deliver a product into customers’ hands. So I wore a lot of different hats: architecture, focused on M&A, did product management, and just so grateful for the opportunity to be able to swing on that jungle gym and really learn what it felt like to be in those seats.

And I will say it was oftentimes, I think, involved me leaning out a little bit into the areas that were uncomfortable for me. I remember sitting on a plane, moving and relocating to London for about a year to help integrate one of our first acquisitions, and I had never done it before. And I had this moment of what am I doing? I’ve never done it, and will I be able to do it? But luckily I had wonderful mentors, coaches, just teams around me that really encouraged that motion of try it, do it, and learn very quickly.

So I have served as VP of engineering, have run product teams, currently running product and operations here at Entrata. And so that’s kind of been a little bit of my journey as we’ve gone over the years.

Toni
I love that you accidentally did range. Whenever I’m working with women who are looking at levelling up, I’m always like, okay, we’ve got to be strategic about your next step. What is the gap? Is it the title? Is it the comp? Is it the experience? And you do need all three. And I’m always like, let’s figure out what’s missing and do that. Don’t just follow one thing.

But the big thing that I think a lot of people don’t realise until they get there is that to be at the C level, to be at the executive level, range is so important. Whatever you end up in, even if you had gone engineer all the way to just CTO, you still as a CTO have to have the breadth of understanding of the different business units. And so I think that jungle gym, and I love that phrase by the way, is so incredibly important and yet so many of us don’t realise it.

I’m a huge believer in helping women listen to this podcast to realise you don’t have to have a big plan. And I love that you’re like, I didn’t have a plan, but I’m here, because that’s awesome. But at the same time you did something I now know, that when I’m working with women who are one or two levels below where you are and we’re like, okay, we need it, we want to get there in the next five years, what does it look like? I’m like, we’ve got to figure out the gaps. And one of the common gaps is not having that breadth. How important has the breadth been to you, do you think?

Catherine
Yes. I love that you’ve highlighted this because it’s incredibly important for a couple of reasons, right? One is I think that really understanding the different disciplines gives you empathy.
So much of what we’re doing as leaders is we’re connecting and we’re trying to help communicate and articulate how the work contributes to this outcome that we achieve as a team. And so I think when we have true empathy, people recognize that. They feel that authenticity and you’re just also very informed around what it takes to be able to do all of these different pieces, have them come together.

So I think the range is very important for that. I think the other reason why it’s important is when you intentionally or accidentally develop range, what it forces you to also do is have this learning mindset. You can kind of put it into autopilot, right? Because you go, okay, now I’m swinging over here. I have to learn. And I think when we have that, when we embrace that mentality of I’m always learning, I don’t know everything, first of all, who doesn’t love working with someone who’s like that, right? I think it’s very infectious. I think it’s a wonderful teammate attribute to bring. But also, I think we strengthen that muscle of always learning.

And then particularly now with AI and what that does, I think the range is more important than ever because you’re seeing so many roles start to blend and kind of overlap. The understanding from an engineering perspective of architecture and code, that’s all very important. And just as important is what is the customer trying to do? What are we trying to actually build? What’s that experience? And then understanding from a marketing perspective, well, how do you articulate that? What is the process whereby they achieve or receive the service? How do they actually engage with our teams on that? How do they understand what the objective is? And then you’ve got finance and accounting. And as you pointed out, as leaders, we need to really be pretty well-versed in all of these languages. You have to be able to read a P&L. You have to be able to understand, oh, this is how a comp structure looks. So I love that you highlight that. I just think it’s more important than ever, actually.

Toni
One hundred percent. I love the empathy piece because I would say one of the biggest challenges at the executive level is that you’re in a room where your peers do not know anything about your job and you’ve got to be able to critique them but stay happy. And oh my god, as somebody who works a lot with engineers because I’m a software engineer myself by training, the amount of butting heads I get between product and engineering.

One of the things I love doing is I have an executive coaching group and I love putting these women in the room together because I have engineers, I have HR, I have marketing, and they’re in the room together and they hear the frustrations from the other ladies talking about their peers in a different company that they don’t know, and they’re suddenly like, that’s why my colleague is annoyed at me. Because a lot of the time that banging of heads you get is a lack of empathy for why is this person stressed out right now? What is keeping them awake? Ultimately, at the C level, you are trying to make this company work and you will have a huge stake in it. But you sometimes forget that your little piece of it is one piece of the pie, right? Does that resonate with you? Is that what you think is going on?

Catherine
Yes, yes. It absolutely resonates. And I think you’ve nailed it. I think that that is a lot of times, right? If you kind of take a step back and say, well, what do I believe? I believe that everyone wakes up every morning hoping to do well and hoping to have a good day, which I do, right?

Toni
Yes, right? I do feel it. I think that too. Most people are really decent. They just don’t know how to show it.

Catherine
If you assume that of everyone, then when there is a conflict, when there is, to your point, this butting of heads, I think if we take a step back and go, wait a minute, you woke up hoping to have a great day today and I did too, and you want to do a great job and so do I, then I think we start to ask, okay, then what is it that we’re really having conflict about or tension? Healthy tension is good, but I do think you’re spot on that really when you get to put yourself in that other person’s shoes, you realize, okay, of course, then I need to probably talk about it this way, or maybe I need to adjust how I’m framing the problem and really understand, seek to understand what it is that’s really concerning them.

Toni
Well, actually one of the things I’d love to do is pick your brain on what do you wish peers of yours in the past had understood about product as a function? How it shapes both the business imperative, but also culture and innovation? What do you wish people just knew about product? I think a lot of people, unless they’ve worked in product, don’t really understand it. They think it’s just project management and it’s really not.

Catherine
I think that’s right. I love this question because I think product is pretty misunderstood in a lot of organizations. Some view it as project management, some view it as customer intake of feedback. And really what I’d say is product is the intersection of customer experience with technology, application, with revenue building or company objectives. And I think that is the overall domain of product and it’s why it can be hard to pin down, because it is actually at the intersection of so many different things.

But I think if folks understand that, then it’s probably a lot easier to navigate with your product counterparts. At the end of the day, I think the goal is to drive the objective of the company. It’s likely a revenue target, right? But it’s not a short-sighted one. It’s usually a, well, we do that by creating great service or value or experience for a customer. And the tool we use, in this case in software, would be technology, right? And we use that as a way to create that experience that customers want more of, they want to renew, they want to buy more because it’s adding true value. And so that’s really how I kind of view product. And I think if other leaders understand that, then it’s probably a lot easier to interact with product leaders.

Toni
Yeah, one hundred percent. One of the other things I want to bring up here, because this is a passion of yours as well, is diversity, which is not such a hot word anymore. But one of the things I know you’re passionate about is that when you have diversity of influence and ideas, the product itself gets better, and you see that as a product leader. Can you explain this a little bit more? Why do you think diversity directly impacts product? Also, what do you see happening right now in the US and globally as we’re diminishing the importance of diversity and taking that conversation out of the boardroom, out of the business, because it’s no longer acceptable? How has this influenced product success in your mind?

Catherine
Yeah, I think, and part of this is probably informed by how I have often felt growing up. I have often felt like a stranger in a strange land. I’ve always felt like one of these things is not like the others. And early in my career, I felt like maybe I should just try and minimize my differences. Maybe I should just fit in.

Toni
Yeah, I’m sorry.

Catherine
But that was kind of my reaction, right? You kind of say, well, how do I blend in here? And what I realized over the years was that actually is exhausting, first of all. And secondly, it wasn’t ultimately helpful to the team and the outcome because I had great mentors and managers who wanted my perspective because of the diversity, not in spite of it.

And that really helped me change my mindset. So to answer your question around product, the reason why we want such diverse perspectives in all forms is because those that use our products are also diverse in all forms. And so we want the experience, again, it comes back to that empathy, how do we design and create something if we do not understand what the customer on the other side is using and wanting to do and wanting to achieve? And people are not all the same. You have a very broad audience. And so that is what strengthens that product and why I think it’s important for a business because it actually makes the product better. It makes it more accessible. It makes it resonate more with humans. And while we love the tech, we love the AI, we love all the capabilities that it unlocks, at the end of the day, we are humans and we are trying to connect. We are trying to do great work, right? We’re trying to live full, whole lives.

Toni
Yeah, I think this is one of my passion topics because I truly believe, I mean, the reason I have this podcast, the reason I do what I do as an executive coach focused on women, is that I truly believe the tech industry desperately needs our input. And if women don’t have the voice at the table, we’re all doomed as a species, is kind of my very negative view on it. Maybe we just won’t do as well. And especially with everything happening right now in the world, I feel like we really need diversity at the table. Women is my particular passion point, but all forms of diversity because as you say, we’re humans, we need that at the table.

But one of the things that breaks my heart and I hear every single week, maybe even every single day, is the women who come to me who haven’t had the mentors that you had. You said you had mentors and managers who wanted your perspective, and that lifted you up, I’m sure of it. Do you think you would have got to where you are today without those people? An honest question for you.

Catherine
That is a very good question that actually no one’s ever asked me before. I don’t know that I would. If I’m being honest, it’s really hard. Yeah, I’m going to be honest. I don’t think I would. I think that it was not to take away from the hard work that I did, not to take away from all of the effort. It’s important.

Toni
The hard work is important, but it just doesn’t get you all the way, does it?

Catherine
No, I was very fortunate to have mentors who were willing to pull me aside and give me the honest feedback and to champion me as well when I didn’t think I could do it. So there’s sometimes where I, actually many times, I was like, no, no, no, no, I can’t, I don’t know, I’ve never done that, and I kind of count myself out. And I think I see that pattern a lot too. So you do need that tribe around you who says, actually you can and you will.

I was a very reluctant manager for the longest time. I told my manager, no, I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to manage people. I think I’m great as an IC. And finally he sat me down and said, you will do this.

You have to. And so he pushed me. So that’s why the honest answer is probably would not be where I was if I didn’t have that.

The other thing I will say though, and I do encourage this, is I very much recommend that when you are seeking mentors or you’re seeking to improve or kind of understand what can you do to close the gaps that you referenced, it’s really important to go and ask and find those people who will give you the honest, fulsome assessment and feedback because not all are willing to do that. And you need the candor, right? You need that. And I think when we’re open to it, they can also sense it. If you really don’t want to hear it, nobody’s going to.

Toni
Yeah. And if you get defensive, they’re just going to stop giving you feedback. They’ll give you vague things like you need to work on your executive presence. You’re like, what the fuck does that mean? Excuse my language. That is what I hear every week, so I’m always saying it because I’m like, seriously, can we stop giving women that feedback already? It’s so unhelpful.

Catherine
It is unhelpful, right? So you need to be open to getting the very specific feedback. If you’re defensive, they’re going to sense it and be like, it’s fine.

Toni
Mm-hmm. They’re just going to stop. Yeah, yeah. And it’s so hard to not be defensive, just to everybody listening to this. It’s so easy to go, but, but, but, but, but, did you not see this thing I’ve just done? That’s not the point. You’re trying to get the feedback of what they think, not what you think they think. Yeah.

Catherine
That’s right. But I think when you do that, you will find those people and you vote with your feet. You choose where to work. You choose where to be.
And you will vote and you will say, hey, this is great because I have found this group around me where I can get the honest feedback. I can be given the opportunities as I raise my hand. And I’ll say lots of times I raised my hand for the jobs that nobody wanted. It was fine. I was eager to learn.
And I wanted the at-bats. And again, to our range point, it really stretched my understanding of all different aspects of what it takes to run a business.

Toni

There’s so many things there. The first one I just want to pull out for the audience is that volunteering for things that nobody else wants. That is a really interesting strategy that I’ve used over and over again with clients when they are working for promotion rather than if you’re going external. It’s not a good tactic unless it’s about range, unless it’s about skill sets. But if it’s about promotion, one of the things you can do is look for things that nobody else wants to do but that would also get you kudos. Don’t just do the things nobody wants to do that aren’t going to get you any credit. That is just going to burn you out. But it’s a really cool thing to do things that nobody else wants to do if you’re going to get credit for it as well. That is a great way to get noticed.

But the other thing I want to ask you, because you gave some great insights into what does it actually look like to minimise yourself? Like, I don’t want to do this, I’m just going to not volunteer for things. Saying basically I’m going to stay in IC. So many people stay IC longer than they want because they think people leadership means they aren’t going to be technical enough or something.

If you hadn’t had those mentors, or rather let’s phrase it differently, if women today are listening to this and thinking gosh, actually I think I’m minimizing myself, because it’s so common, what do you think they could do if they don’t have those mentors? Worst case scenario, they don’t even have somebody who can give them good feedback. What can they do to stop minimizing themselves?

Catherine
I think it’s a very common thing. I do think you need to actively look for those mentors. You need to seek them out. It’s going to be hard to do this alone. I didn’t do it alone. So maybe one could, but I think you have to really prioritize.

And this is a little bit of what I see sometimes. There is kind of this desire to do it. But when I ask, but how much time are you actually spending then on finding the mentors or looking for different opportunities that, to your point, maybe there’s not a lot of energy that you’re seeing for others to do it, but it’s actually meaningful? I mean, I would say definitely make sure it’s a meaningful project.

Are you really looking for those? Or are you staying busy with the day to day? I think that is a little bit of, and I’ve fallen into that trap, right? Where you kind of say, well, but I just have so much and I’ll get to that later. So I would say, I think you really need to prioritize and you need to ask yourself, what is most important to me over the next two to three years in my career? What is it?

And I often recommend really being kind of strict with that and saying, meaning, what’s number one and what’s number two? Everything else being like a 50-way tie for third place. I mean, of course we want to work with great people. We want to, all of those things. But I think when there’s clarity, then the next steps become much more obvious to women, or men frankly. But if you don’t have that clarity with yourself, and you probably see this as you’re coaching a lot of women, then it’s going to be a little hard to figure out what’s the right thing to focus on, because you generally want improvement everywhere. So I don’t know if you see that at all, but I do think clarity is…

Toni

Yeah, I do all the time. I mean, that is one of the reasons they get hired as a coach, is because they’re not getting that support internally, or they’re getting well-intentioned support that’s not really helping. A lot of mentors are thoughtful, but just tell you what to do. They don’t really help you expand and grow. If you’ve had a mentor just do this, tell you to rewrite your resume for the tenth time this week kind of thing, I’m just like, that’s not the issue. It’s really not. And so I see this all the time because that’s precisely why people hire. So as you say, you can’t do this alone. And if you don’t have somebody internally that’s lifting you up or that person, a lot of the time, if there’s big blockers in your skill sets, like I hate to use it now because I’ve just said stop telling us to work on our executive presence, but if genuinely your executive presence is a thing, your communication, your strategic follow-through, the way you’re speaking up at work, all those things, your mentors can only get you so far because they’ve got a full-time job. And sometimes you do need that external view. But I think the most important thing is recognizing that you shouldn’t do it alone. To your point, I think that’s so incredibly important.

Okay, I do want to shift gears before we run out of time because one of your passion topics is change. And I think as a C-level executive, I don’t talk about this enough on the show actually. At C-level, the job is change. I would say the whole point is we’re leading everybody through change all the time.

And one of the things I know is that as leaders, I have to remind the women I work with all the time, you are months ahead of your direct report. You are six months or more ahead of the individual contributors in understanding change and embracing it. I’ve seen this so many times where I’ve got a leader like, we rolled out this change two months ago, why is my team still resisting? I’m like, well, because they’re not you.

So especially with things like the adoption of AI, that’s obviously a big change that every one of us is experiencing. How do you navigate change with your team? How do you bridge that gap? How do you stop the overwhelm and friction, accommodate your team, but still move them forward at pace? What do you do there?

Catherine
I mean, to your point, a lot of us are in the heat of this right now. So much of the AI adoption curve is not really a training issue, right? This is a change management exercise at the greatest speeds we’ve ever seen.

So I think a lot of it is really making sure that we’re able to connect with our teams on the why and how does this actually help them, whether it’s the pain they’re feeling or the pain that the company is trying to solve for customers. But I really think as humans, naturally, when we’re going through change, we need to understand why first. And if we can get our heads wrapped around that, then the how is a little bit more of a, this is how we’re going to do that, then understood, and we can maybe debate how to do it and how fast.

But I really think when we… and here’s the other thing, I had a great mentor, to the conversation with mentors, who gave me some very good constructive feedback. His feedback to me was, when you are a leader, you have to get comfortable with playing the hit song over and over and over again.

And you will get tired of playing the hit song. But he was like, that’s part of the job. They need to hear it multiple times, right? In a thoughtful way, but very consistently. Because I think sometimes we as leaders, we get tired. We’re like, I’m going to just switch it up a little bit. I’m going to change how we talk about it. And that’s more for us. It’s not really helpful to tweak it and change it constantly as far as what the North Star is, what the ask is, the why. Really getting clear and crisp on that and being very consistent, I think is incredibly important.

And at the time I received the feedback, I did not want to hear it. I was like, well no, the reason why this isn’t working is because of this, this is… and he was just very gentle but firm and said, it’s because you’re changing the message every time. And that doesn’t give them, to your point, people don’t have time to catch up. So I really think getting clear on the why and the North Star and kind of what we’re trying to do, and then getting real comfortable with saying it over and over and over again, as silly as that sounds. And it’s not because people aren’t listening. It’s not because they’re not trying. It’s because jobs are busy and there’s a lot on the line.

Toni
Yes, the busy work. It’s the busy work. If you aren’t calling out this is our number one priority every single day, they will just go back to the busy work because Slack is louder, emails are louder, the customer is louder. If you aren’t being louder than them by saying every day, hey, here’s our number one priority, folks. Yeah, I see this so many times. I generally think it’s one of the things that kills startups. A lot of people say that startups die because of bad management. I actually think it boils down to not highlighting the priorities consistently every day. And so everybody’s running around like headless chickens because that is how we kind of use the startup language. And I think it kills business all day every day. It’s so sad.

One more question before we move on to the quick fire round. You’ve highlighted so much of the stuff that I see as really great executive leadership, and I love it. Where do you see a growth opportunity for you right now? Where do you see a gap for you, somewhere where you’re like, okay, that is now the thing I need to be working on?

Catherine
Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you, every day I feel like I come in and I say, I know nothing. Because I think the AI revolution is absolutely, it is changing my job. It is changing my team. Changing what we build is changing how we build. And we’ve been doing this for a couple of years now, but it’s ramping up. We’re all feeling it. We’re all feeling the acceleration.

And so right now, that’s really where I think a lot of my opportunity is, is to understand the landscape, to understand the technology. And it’s not that I think, I mean, I think AI is amazing, but I think what’s incredible about AI is not technically what it is, as great as that is, it is what it frees people to do.
And as cheesy as that sounds, I do think there’s going to be a wealth of opportunity, new roles, new business structure. There’s just so much that the human spirit and that human innovation I think is going to do with this.

But that’s right now. I feel like my biggest responsibility is to shepherd it, stay on top of it, roll it out, enable my teams, adjust what we deliver and how we deliver constantly. We don’t change our North Star, our vision is clear, but we’re moving faster than ever. It’s changing roles, it’s changing how we deliver value. And I think that is… I spend all my time on it. And that is where I am definitely upskilling. I’m in Cursor. It’s been years since I’ve coded. I’m like, first git commit, here we go, we’re back. And it’s fun, it’s exhilarating.

And I think also right now, we as leaders have the enthusiasm for it when we’re actually really genuinely seeing the opportunity. It really helps with teams to also recognize. They can sense if you’re authentically running out of fear or if you’re coming from a place of innovation, of creativity, of I am learning, I am creating.
And I think when we do that authentically, people lean in.

Toni
I love that so much, that you have to bring the right energy. Your team can see through frustration, through anger, through fear, through all the things. You have to show up every day with focus, with energy, with excitement, joy. If you don’t, your team is going to see it. And that’s what the authentic leadership thing, which I think is really misunderstood, it’s a whole conversation for another day. I genuinely think it is bringing the right emotions to the table and allowing your team to see it because they will see it. Even if you’re trying to say one thing, but you’re sharing a different emotion, that’s inauthentic. That’s where the clash happens.

Okay, I could just talk about that all day. There’s so much here. This is so good. I know, I love it so much. Let’s move on to the quickfire round because people will be coming to the end of their journeys to work. A lot of people are listening in the car. Hello, if you’re in the car.

What is the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given, Catherine?

Catherine
Wait until you’re ready.

Toni
No, I’m so glad you didn’t listen to that. I’m assuming you didn’t listen to that.

Catherine
I didn’t, but I would say that’s, sometimes people try to be helpful and say, you should probably wait and do this, this and this. And I just think so much in life, not even career, right? But I think so much in life is… that’s probably, yeah, I would say the worst piece of advice I got.

Toni
Oh, well thank you for sharing that and I’m hoping anybody listening who’s had that advice now thinks about it a little bit more deeply. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

Catherine
I’d say it’s from my parents, which is, they always said, never be afraid to lose sight of the shore. Discover new lands, right? They literally did it. And it’s just such a part of me and it has guided me throughout my life because you will come up to all sorts of opportunities where you’re scared. I don’t know that that’s, I don’t think that’s bad. I think it’s the opportunities to do it anyway, to have the courage and to do it.

Toni
Yeah. Have the courage and do it anyway. Yes. A lot of people talk to me about confidence and I need to build my confidence. I’m like, you don’t. You build confidence by having the courage to do the uncomfortable. You get confidence after. You don’t get confidence from just sitting there doing mindset work. You get confidence by having courage. Yeah. Love it so much.

Catherine
Agreed. I love that. Confidence through courage.

Toni
Right, this has been, as I just, you and I just, we are on the same wavelength and I love it so much and you talk about so many things I’m passionate about. So if the ladies listening to you, and there are a few men that listen by the way, are interested in finding out more about you, connecting with you, finding out more about Entrata, where can we find you?

Catherine
So you can find me on LinkedIn or on X and then entrata.com. You can see all of our latest.

Toni
Brilliant, and I just really hope that folks reach out to connect with Catherine. She truly is an extraordinary human, doing her little bit to change the world. Catherine, what final thoughts do you want to leave us with today?

Catherine
I think the final thought I would leave is that I really do believe everyone wakes up every day hoping to do a good job and hoping to have a great day. And I believe that about individuals, I believe that about teams, about whole organizations. And I believe that AI is such a transformational technology that can genuinely meet them there. So the question isn’t whether AI will change work, it will. I think the question for us as leaders is whether we will lead that change in a way that expands human possibility. I think we can and I think we will.

Toni
What a beautiful reminder to leave us with because I think there is a real element right now, there’s fear around AI. There is so much bad going on in the world. I don’t need to elaborate, you just have to look at headlines in the news. But I think it’s very easy to assume that most people aren’t thinking the best. I genuinely think there are probably a few people out there who aren’t. We could name some of the big figures. But I do genuinely think the majority of us, the majority of people that we work with, they have good intentions. They just aren’t as polished or they don’t have the empathy that we want.

But if you can walk into the room assuming that the people in that room really truly are there with their heart and with their soul, they might be having a bad day, their kids might have been sick, they might be on the spectrum and not know how to deal with their emotional state. There’s so many things that stop us showing up in our best way, and ourselves included. When we have a bad day, when we’re sick, there’s so many things.

But if you go in with a mindset of I’m going to assume they mean well, you will do better. And just to touch on a few points that Catherine’s touched on today: build your range with that mindset. Look at all the different things you could do to help your company and build your skill range at the same time. Reach out to ask clarity. I think feedback is something that we need to be doing all day every day. There should be a culture of feedback. If you show up with that energy Catherine’s talking about, of assume the best out of the people, you can have an honest conversation with your team that says, hey, how am I doing? Are you getting what you need here? How are you feeling about the adoption of AI? All the things. Have a culture of feedback.

And even if you don’t have that amazing mentor that Catherine had, you will grow. Even better, go and speak to her coach. Slightly biased there.

And then the final thing I just want to remind you of what Catherine said today: don’t be afraid to vote with your feet, ladies. We can change the world as a community of women in tech. We can change the world. But the first step is to make sure your career is what you need it to be. So if you aren’t happy, if you’ve listened to this and think, I’m not doing what I could be doing, vote with your feet. There are jobs out there. Go and choose a company that is going to level you up and listen to you and allow you to change the world.

Thank you all for listening. I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation as much as I have. I will see you next time. Bye for now.