I recently presented my keynote at a large conference for women in Engineering. I opened my keynote — Discover Your Authentic Voice - And How To Use It To Create Change — with a story about the feedback I received in my corporate career that I was too direct. Because of that feedback, I started to hold back the bold, fiery side of me. I questioned my voice and began to speak more cautiously. Not thoughtfully, cautiously.Which begs the question -- should I have ever listened to that feedback in the first place?!?

I speak at events for mostly women through employee resource networks and conferences. As you might imagine, over the years I've heard A LOT of stories of the bias that women experience in their day-to-day lives. So I decided to put those stories into a blog. It's the ten most common experiences of bias I've heard from women. I decided to share this list of the bias women experience to build awareness and start conversations.

My keynote on Imposter Syndrome - And What To Do About It is my most popular speaking topic. It's real and legitimate and a ton of people experience it, including me. But I think it's incomplete. I see another, potentially even bigger, issue at play: The discomfort with taking up space.