How to Finally Get Ahead at Work

You thought you'd figured it out.

Everyone told you the same thing: the workplace is a level playing field. Work hard, keep your head down, prove yourself, and your work will speak for itself. Do that long enough and you'll have earned the recognition, the advancement, and enough leverage to build the flexibility you need.

So you did. You worked harder than anyone. You proved yourself over and over.

The problem? Year after year, the goalposts keep moving.

The recognition goes to someone else. The bias, the microaggressions, the quiet hostility show up anyway, daily, no matter how good your work is.

Maybe you know exactly what that looks like:

• Being interrupted, talked over, or ignored in meetings
• Watching your idea get repeated by someone else and praised
• Being seen as "difficult" for things others do freely
• Managing your tone and your likability constantly
• Holding your tongue out of fear of backlash
• Worrying that flagging a problem would mean retaliation
• Being passed over for opportunities you'd earned

And when you name any of it, you get some version of: "That's just how it is. You can't change the system. There's nothing you can do."

If you'd known you'd spend this many years, and this much energy, building a career that still leaves you exhausted, overlooked, and questioning yourself, you'd have done something different a long time ago.

This is exactly where I was ten years ago. No matter how much career coaching I did or how many books I bought, I couldn't crack the code on surviving a hostile workplace, advancing anyway, and having anything left over for the rest of my life.

Maybe you feel the same way. Maybe you've tried:

• Working twice as hard to be undeniable
• Changing jobs, hoping the next place would be different
• Reporting to HR or leadership
• Pushing through and just enduring it
• Productivity systems and better time management
• Confidence work, affirmations, "fake it till you make it"

You've tried everything, and none of it worked. So at some point, you mostly stopped trying.

And here's what I need you to hear: that isn't a personal failure. It's a predictable result.

None of that advice worked because none of it was aimed at the real problem. It all assumed the system was fair and you were the thing that needed fixing: your confidence, your work ethic, your boundaries. But it isn't you. It never was you. It's a workplace that isn't built for you.

After trying so many "solutions," I almost walked away from a career I'd spent 15 years building.

Until one day, the surgery chairman interviewing me for a job threw my resume across the table and said "You've accomplished nothing over the past six years," simply because I asked about workplace flexibility. I had every other offer on the table rescinded the moment they found out I had five children. This was after years of being told that what I was aiming for, having children while becoming a surgeon, was "impossible." It took a mere six years for the "impossible" to become "nothing."

That's when I realized no amount of working hard and proving myself was ever going to be enough. I was navigating a system that couldn't see past my identity and my values, and no stack of accomplishments was going to overcome that.

So I stopped trying to be undeniable, and started being strategic.

If I wanted to reap the benefits of the career I'd spent 15 years building, I couldn't keep playing a game whose rules I'd never actually been taught. So I leaned on the complex problem-solving skills I'd built as a surgeon and approached my workplace the way I'd approach a hard case: as a system to be understood. I studied how workplaces actually function, and how we, as women and people of color, fit into them.

And I had a breakthrough.

The following year, I interviewed while eight months pregnant with baby #6. I spoke openly about my five children at home and my need for schedule flexibility. I told them I'd be wearing a hijab in the operating room. This time I had multiple offers, and I negotiated my schedule, my moving expenses, and a sign-on bonus. These weren't standard offers. They were terms I shaped.

And when I later walked into a hostile workplace where I was written up constantly and had my leadership questioned, I didn't crumble, I didn't leave, and I didn't put a bigger target on my back. I navigated it strategically, without ever compromising my patient care. I stayed 4.5 years and worked alongside some of the best trauma teams in the country.

Ten years later, I still practice full time. I have time for my children's ever-growing list of activities, including the speech and debate competitions they talk me into judging. And I get to pursue my passion for teaching and public speaking.

Here's what most people get wrong. They'll tell you the system can't change, that all you can do is adapt, endure, or leave. That's the story I was handed too.

But that isn't the case. When I got strategic, some of those workplaces actually changed. I negotiated a schedule they said wasn't possible. I set terms on my first day that shifted how I was treated. I walked into hostility and, instead of absorbing it, I moved in ways that changed the dynamic around me. The system isn't as fixed as it wants you to believe. It just requires you to understand how it works before you can move it.

That's the difference.

Most career advice works on you: your confidence, your mindset, your willingness to work harder. It assumes the system is fair and you're the variable that needs fixing. But you already know that isn't true. What no one teaches you is how the system actually operates, so you can stop only adapting to it and start making it adapt to you. That's the missing piece. That's the whole game.

• Imagine walking into any workplace and knowing how to read it, no matter what it throws at you.
• Imagine not being blindsided by hostility, but recognizing it early and being ready to handle it.
• Imagine never having to choose between advancing your career and having a life again.

As I started sharing this journey from the stage, women began asking me to help them do the same. So I built a space to teach them exactly how.