Earlier in my career, I defined my purpose-driven impact by leading teams to deliver on important project goals. Over time, it evolved into building successful and engaged operational teams, solving complex business problems, and developing employees for their next best step. Since we spend most of our time working, it was important that we built an environment for collaboration, trust, and fun. I wanted them to like their work. As my career progressed, my definition of impact evolved. As burnout was common with the increasing demand for productivity, I found myself motivated to remove barriers for my teams. My impact was now to ensure my teams were caring for themselves, minimizing unnecessary work while achieving aggressive business goals. They were all highly motivated people, even during the remote working environment of the pandemic. If their well-being wasn't considered, our team would not succeed. Individually, their health would be impacted. As their leader, I also needed to embody this practice. I, too, needed to delegate. I needed to rest and delegate. It was also my responsibility to check in with my employees to ensure I could assess their well-being and needs. I aimed to create an environment of psychological safety to share concerns, wins, and build trust with one another. Trust over competition. My purpose was to help guide my team and employees to be productive AND efficient. To find new ways to leverage their strengths and to delegate tasks. This delegation allowed others to grow. They could begin to reframe delegation as a generative process. As a leadership coach to women leaders, I work with clients to set boundaries, including letting go of perfectionism, and rethinking work that no longer adds value. It's a common theme across industries and professions. Most of my clients feel compelled to carry the emotional and performance loads of their teams. They want to ensure their well-being while trying to maintain their own. Many, like their employees, are the primary caregivers for family members. Without self-care and boundaries, these women will burn out. It's important to take a whole-life view of ourselves, our employees. We need to offer ourselves "permission" to build in time for rest, nourishment, and joy. We need to make time for mindfulness practices so that we can care for those who are important to us, so that we may address the issues of our important professional and personal commitments.
I view influence as a responsibility to spotlight others. In a male-dominated industry, I strategically presented our company to a major philanthropic organization and encouraged potential customers to connect directly with team members based on their expertise, using collaborative leadership to showcase a women-led business. The measure of influence is how well you create space for your team to be seen and trusted.
Impact, for me, is choosing one thing I want to be known for in the next year. I ask, “If I could only be known for one thing a year from now, what would I want people to say I helped them do?” This pulls me out of shiny opportunities, back to identity, and leads to simpler decisions, a cleaner calendar, and lighter work that helps me lead without losing myself.
I used to think impact meant staying sober long enough to keep my accounting business afloat and not embarrass myself in front of clients. I'd schedule meetings in pubs so no one would question my drinking, and I convinced myself that paying bills through direct debit meant I was "functioning." Nine years sober now, I realize impact isn't about appearing functional--it's about the 12% of men and 4% of women binge drinking weekly in Australia who think they're holding it together like I did. The responsibility that comes with influence terrifies me more than my worst drinking days. When someone reaches out to The Freedom Room after reading about me pouring wine into juice bottles to drink at the park with my kids, I can't offer them half-measures. I borrowed significant money for rehab because accessible recovery didn't exist for me--now I've built what I desperately needed but couldn't find. Every person I turn away due to capacity is someone who might not ask for help again. I lead without losing myself by refusing to pretend I'm anything other than a recovering alcoholic who got lucky. I don't have a psychology degree that makes me credible--I have a youngest daughter who used to tip my alcohol down the sink and cause scenes in shops. The Freedom Room works because I stopped trying to be the polished counselor people expect and started being the messy truth they actually need. My team are all in recovery ourselves, which traditional wellness centers would see as a liability but is actually our entire value proposition.
I used to think impact was just solving problems. Now I see it's more about giving my remote team and our clients the space they need to succeed. Keeping a scattered team connected takes work, so we make a point to celebrate every little win. The biggest thing I've learned is that being a good leader doesn't mean sacrificing what you believe in. You can still be yourself.
My idea of impact shifted when I went from one-on-one therapy to designing healthcare programs for the whole country. When things get hectic and everyone wants numbers now, I have to remind myself what we're actually trying to change. Women leaders should hang onto what they care about most personally. Those decisions usually last longer than the ones made just to please someone upstairs.
Leading Bell Fire and Security changed how I see my job. I used to think my impact was all about technical solutions. Now I know it's more about how we handle pressure as a team. When regulations shifted, we found that just being honest about what we didn't know kept everyone's trust. My advice for other women: stop trying to look polished. Your instincts and values are what people actually respect.
I used to think impact meant winning the custody case or getting the best property split. Twenty years in, I've learned real impact is whether a seven-year-old still feels safe with both parents after the divorce is final. One client called me three years after we settled her case--not because something broke, but because her ex-husband just walked her down the aisle at her wedding. That's when I knew we'd done it right. The biggest responsibility that comes with influence showed up when I started handling surrogacy cases for LGBTQ+ families in 2008. North Carolina didn't have clear law on this, and every agreement I drafted became precedent for the next family. I couldn't afford to get sloppy with a comma, because that comma might determine whether a child has legal parents when they're born. I've handled maybe forty of these cases, and each one carries the weight of the families who'll come after. I stay grounded by doing my own intake calls instead of handing them to staff. After three decades I could delegate that, but sitting across from someone whose spouse just emptied the bank account reminds me why I skip the scorched-earth litigation. My MBA taught me to run the numbers on high-asset cases, but those intake calls taught me that most people just want their kids to be okay and enough money to start over. Every collaborative case I settle instead of taking to trial is one less family spending their kids' college fund on attorneys.
I used to measure impact by how many water tanks we built. Clean numbers: 500 tanks, 1,000 families served, done. Then I watched Isabella--a woman told she was "too uneducated" to matter--win a government contract to build school latrines after our training. She didn't just build infrastructure. She shattered what her entire village believed women could do. That's when I realized impact isn't the tank. It's the 34,000+ women our initial 12,700 trainees went on to teach without us in the room. The weight of influence hit me hardest with our finance program. We were celebrating a 98% loan repayment rate in our women's cooperatives--better than most banks. Then Emily, one of our trainees, told me she used her soap-making income to buy land after her husband died. Her neighbor Hamisa copied her model, bought a juicing machine, became self-sufficient. I realized every woman watching Emily wasn't just learning soap recipes. They were learning what's possible. When you're the proof of concept for someone else's dream, you can't half-ass it or disappear when it gets hard. I almost torched She Builds Power trying to sound like traditional development organizations. Wrote grant proposals full of phrases like "capacity building" and "stakeholder engagement" because that's what I thought funders wanted. Our funding was flat. Then I said screw it and wrote: "Women aren't a vulnerable population--they're an underestimated force." We tripled our income that year. Turns out the leadership style that works is the one that refuses to pretend the emperor has clothes. I stopped trying to fit into development-speak and started saying what I actually see: when 62% of our women double their income and 36% triple it, that's not empowerment theater--that's wealth redistribution.