Leading Women in Tech Podcast

"If I wanted someone who would commute, I could have hired a man from New York."
That's what a private equity partner said to Kimberly Williams while offering her first CEO role. She took the job anyway, delivered results he couldn't argue with, and changed how he saw women in leadership.
Kimberly is Chairperson and CEO of Absorb Software, and before that grew CST Holdings more than five-fold in seven years, taking it from fifth in its market to first. In this episode of Leading Women in Tech Kimberly shares the career advice that took her from a strategy role at Boston Consulting Group to the CEO seat — including the single piece of guidance she gives every ambitious woman, why asking for help builds supporters rather than doubts, and how she thinks about AI transformation as a sitting CEO.
What we cover:
Why one small comment from anyone in your life can change a trajectory, positively or negatively
Boston Consulting Group as the first true meritocracy she'd worked in
The accidental route into running a business: a $4.3 million business case
"If I wanted someone who would commute, I could have hired a man from New York"
The importance of your support network, and why this may be the most consequential move you make in your career
The career advice Kimberly gives every woman: fight for roles that carry numbers
Why asking for help creates supporters — the cognitive dissonance effect
Humility as a CEO strength: your job isn't to have the answers
AI transformation: why AI serves your strategy rather than being your strategy
Pick projects that could make your company great, not 1% more profitable
Testing agentic outbound sales outside the core business
Useful Links
Connect with today's guest and sponsor, Kimberly Dolan Williams, on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlydolanwilliams/) and find out more about Absorb Software at https://www.absorblms.com.
This episode was sponsored by Absorb Software. Thank you Kimberly and Absorb for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community!

There's a question a surprising number of senior women in tech carry quietly for years: could I actually be a coach?
Sometimes it surfaces after the promotion that didn't feel like you thought it would. Sometimes it's the realization that the mentoring conversations are the part of the week you actually love. Sometimes it's simpler: twenty years of hard-won experience, and a growing desire for work that's more yours.
In this episode of Leading Women in Tech, Toni Collis takes that question seriously. What a coaching second act really looks like, inside your company, alongside your career, or as the next chapter entirely, what it pays, what it demands, and how to know if it's for you.
 
What's covered:
➡️  The quiet question — why so many senior women in tech wonder about coaching, and why the instinct deserves more respect than "maybe someday"
➡️  The three shapes of a coaching practice — the internal coach-leader, the portfolio builder coaching alongside her career, and the full second act, and why you don't have to choose today
➡️  What you already have — why decades in tech are an asset most career coaches would kill for, and the credibility math nobody tells you about
➡️  What you don't have yet — the honest gap: mentoring instinct is not coaching skill, and why the leap from "good with people" to professional coaching needs structure, practice, and feedback
➡️  The "can I really do this?" objection — answered properly: no prior coaching experience needed, practice hours built in, mentoring from Master Coaches
➡️  The business reality — what building a paying practice actually involves, and the brand-new How to Build Your Coaching Business / Side-Hustle bonus announced today for the September Ignite Coach Academy cohort
➡️  The timeline — enrollment closes Friday 11 September, cohort starts Monday 14 September, certified and practicing by year end
 
If the question has been sitting quietly in the back of your mind, this is the episode that takes it out and looks at it properly.
 
Useful links
Ignite Coach Academy — final enrollment for the September cohort closes Friday 11 September: tonicollis.com/ignite-coach-academy
Book a complimentary chat with Toni about whether Ignite is right for you: tonicollis.com/lets-chat

When a client goes quiet, most leaders assume everything is fine. Alisha Esmail would tell you silence is the clients exit ramp — because it's far easier to disappear quietly than to tell someone you're leaving.
Alisha is the founder of Latch AI, an AI-native client retention engine, and her path to tech was anything but conventional: seven years in international development across Haiti, South Africa, Nepal, Jordan and Panama, followed by building an award-winning coffee company with direct supply chains across three countries and a micro-loan program supporting female-owned farms.
In this episode, Alisha and Toni make the case that retention is not customer success's problem — it's a leadership problem that belongs to everyone. They get into what AI is genuinely doing to the retention landscape, why cutting CS teams has backfired badly for some companies, and the practical diagnostics any leader can run this week regardless of function.
What we cover:
Why every leader — engineering, product, sales, commercial — should care about retention
How AI is reshaping the retention landscape, and "the war on clients"
Bells and whistles vs boredom: when do customers actually leave a working product?
No news is bad news — why silence is an exit ramp, not a sign of satisfaction
The four-part retention framework: detect drift, score clients, run the safe play, capture the win
Why "expansion ready" is the most missed category in most businesses
Usage metrics: the data engineering leaders aren't capturing but should be and how it helps executive decision making
 
Useful Links
Connect with today's guest, Alisha Esmail, on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisha-esmail/ and find out more about Latch AI at https://www.yourlatch.com.
This episode was sponsored by our guest, Alisha Esmail. Thank you Alisha and Latch AI for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community!

You have "coaching conversations" with your team. Career chats, problem-solving sessions, one-to-ones where you share your experience and point people in the right direction.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: most of those conversations aren't coaching. They're mentoring. Powerful, well-intentioned, and the wrong tool for what you're trying to build. Because advice creates dependence, and coaching creates capability.
In this episode of Leading Women in Tech, Toni Collis breaks down the difference, why it matters more than almost any other leadership skill gap, and how genuine coaching skill transforms your team, your calendar and your career.
 
What's covered:
➡️  The mentoring trap — why the conversations you call coaching are almost certainly advice-giving, why that's made you the bottleneck, and the test that tells you which one you're doing
➡️  Advice creates dependence, coaching creates capability — the mechanism behind why your team brings you the same problems over and over
➡️  The Ignite Framework: Reverse, Neutral, Forward — the diagnostic at the heart of real coaching: "Reverse is 'this is happening to me'. Neutral is 'this is what's happening'. Forward is 'here's what I can do about it'. Same facts, three completely different relationships to them."
➡️  The two counterfeit states — False Neutral (calm that's really collapse) and False Forward (a plan laid over an unaddressed feeling), and why missing them is where most well-meaning leadership conversations go wrong
➡️  The 5-minute coaching conversation — you don't need an hour; you need the diagnosis and three good questions
➡️  What changes when you lead this way — the team that solves its own problems, the calendar that comes back to you, and the leadership reputation that follows
➡️  Where Ignite Coach Academy fits — the September cohort, the certification path, and the Self-Coaching + Coaching in Your 1:1s bonus module built for exactly this
If you're tired of being the answer machine, this is the episode that shows you the way out.
 
Useful links:
Ignite Coach Academy — enrolling now for the September cohort (starts Monday 14 September, enrollment closes Friday 11 September): tonicollis.com/ignite-coach-academy
Book a complimentary chat with Toni about whether Ignite is right for you: tonicollis.com/lets-chat

Burnout is not caused by too much work.
That's the argument at the heart of this episode — and Yana Carstens has earned the right to make it. After 12 years in the design and tech space, and her own burnout behind her, Yana shifted into executive coaching, where she now focuses on burnout prevention and authentic leadership for women in tech.
In this conversation, Yana and Toni get into what taking radical responsibility for your own wellbeing actually means — and why most of what we call "wellness" is polishing the car while nobody looks under the hood. They dig into hyper-responsibility, the reflex that makes everything your fault; why rest is a prerequisite for success rather than a reward for it; and how leaders who model genuine wellbeing quietly reset the culture of everyone around them.
If you're stepping into a new role, carrying everyone around you, or wondering why the vacation didn't fix it — this one is for you.
What we cover:
◾ Why tech-native executive coaches are so rare — and why coaching skills spread naturally through teams
◾ The three reasons wellbeing is a leadership issue: modeling, leading from your center, and preventing burnout
◾ Burnout is not caused by too much work — the root causes nobody talks about
◾ The Ferrari analogy: you're built for speed, but without the pit stops you break down
◾ Why unlimited PTO and spa days are polish, not maintenance — and what "under the hood" work looks like
◾ Rest is a prerequisite for success, not a reward for it — and how that belief shapes team culture
◾ Hyper-responsibility: the high-achiever trait that makes everything your fault
◾ Observe, don't absorb — and Toni's version, hold, don't carry
◾ The client story: the boss's bad mood that had nothing to do with her
◾ Moving from hyper-responsible to "response-able": pause, clarify, build the internal boundary system
◾ The honest truth: this pattern comes back under stress — and that's okay
◾ Worst advice Yana ever received (from another coach): "you need to put on an act"
◾ Best advice: if you believe things will work out, you see opportunities — if not, you see obstacles
Useful Links
Connect with today's guest, Yana Carstens, on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yanacarstens/) and sign up for her monthly newsletter at https://realignandthrive.com/newsletter.
Ready to learn to coach — for your self-coaching, your leadership toolkit, or a business of your own? Ignite Coach Academy is open for enrollment. Doors close September 11: https://tonicollis.com/ignite-coach-academy
This episode was sponsored by our guest, Yana Carstens. Thank you Yana for helping to bring Leading Women in Tech to this community!