FROM THE HOST
It's Halloween, which means everyone is chasing a good scare and the candy bowl is already suspiciously low. But after recording with these women, I've noticed the haunted house is the easy part. You know it's fake. You know where the exit is. The stuff that actually scares grown women is quieter. None of my guests told me they weren't scared. Not one. What they told me is what they did next.
Dr. Connie Clary's first business was a marketing firm. It went bankrupt.
Sit with that for a second, because most of us treat that word like something you can't say three times in a mirror. Connie told me she was certain at the time that she would never work anywhere again, because surely someone would eventually ask whether she had ever failed in business.
Twenty-six years later she runs a consulting practice and teaches students, in part, the thing she got wrong. She can only teach it because she's willing to say it out loud.
“This journey of life is not what I anticipated it would be, but it's ended up being a whole lot better than what I anticipated.”
Dr. Connie Clary, episode 2
The worst-case scenario happened. It didn't end her career. Eventually, it became part of her credential.
Lauren Fitzpatrick Shanks knew at the end of her first semester that aerospace engineering was wrong for her. She had a 4.0. She went to talk about switching, and was told that no Black woman had ever graduated from that program.
So she stayed. She graduated. She became the first.
That's the part people love, and it should be loved. But the part I keep thinking about is what came after: years in corporate aerospace, partly on the fuel of proving a point, before she let herself ask whether she actually wanted to be there.
“Just because you can do it, just because you're good at it, does not mean you have to do it.”
What people now say to Lauren, and what she says to the rest of us
Sometimes the scariest thing isn't being the first. It's walking away from the thing you were first at.
Danielle Allen learned to drive a fire truck sitting on a stack of textbooks because the seat was built for someone considerably larger. Firefighter, paramedic, commercial pilot, flight instructor, physics teacher, and now nuclear. She has run toward the actually scary things for a living.
“People just assume that you can't do the thing, you're not very good at it. But realistically it's not that you're not good at it. It's literally because none of it was designed for you.”
Danielle Allen, episode 3
Her point wasn't “be brave.” It was sharper than that. We spend a fortune getting girls into STEM and almost nothing examining the rooms we send them into. The gear that doesn't fit. The meeting where an idea lands differently depending on who says it.
Some fear is your nervous system doing its job. Some fear is a correct read of a room that wasn't designed with you in mind. It helps to know which one you're dealing with.
Whitney Daniels ran for county supervisor during COVID, which meant the whole campaign happened online. Her address was searchable. She was on social media constantly. At the time she didn't mind, because she was, in her word, fearless.
What changed it was small and specific. When the world reopened, strangers started greeting her then boyfriend by name, because they'd watched him on her feed. She wanted a family one day, and she could see where that level of visibility was heading.
So she stepped out of the spotlight on purpose, and now does the work from the governor's office without being a public figure. I love this one because it flips the usual script. Sometimes the brave move is the quiet one, and a little fear is just good judgment showing up on time.
Amelia Christofferson graduates in December. When I asked where she's headed, she said plainly that she doesn't know yet, and that she'll have a better idea once she has actually worked somewhere.
You'd be amazed how scary that sentence is to say out loud when everyone around you seems to have a five-year plan. Her approach is to say yes to things she expects to dislike. She went to a finance club meeting and knew immediately it wasn't for her. That's not a wasted afternoon. Ruling something out is progress.
I'm not going to tell you to feel the fear and do it anyway, because I'd like to keep my dignity. Here's what actually came out of these conversations.
Fear isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. It's usually a sign you're doing something.
Happy Halloween. Eat the good candy first.
— Sondra