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Ep. #104: Alli Young, CEO of The Forem, Gets Women Further, Faster

Written by Eryn Johnson

“I want women to run the world. I’m excited for our future because I think there’s so much good that we could do.”

In this episode of the Women Killing It! podcast, host Sally Hubbard introduces us to CEO of The Forem, Alli Young, a 20 year tech executive and ex-Google leader. With Alli at the helm, The Forem is an organization dedicated to helping women accelerate their careers, getting them further, faster.

Through her work, Alli has found that women are falling behind men at the very first promotion point, even though they don’t typically perceive the gap until they get up to middle management.

“Everywhere I went, I saw women who are incredibly smart— a lot of times, the smartest person in the room— and she was almost never the most senior. And she’s always stuck in middle management.”

Her work at The Forem helps women build critical skills to accelerate their careers and break past middle management into executive roles.

In this episode, Alli shares the 5 key skills that help women accelerate, the role of unconscious bias in organizations, the importance of networking, and balancing work with home responsibilities in a world where most women are still the primary caregivers.

“I very much so believe that we can change the world if we have women in leadership.”

Alli shares that the best leaders have skills that many women innately have— high emotional intelligence, high self-awareness, and good listening skills. So why aren’t more women in leadership?

“Women are entering the workforce at this point at higher numbers than men, but men are still accelerating. Why is that happening? I truly believe most of it has to do with unconscious bias.”

Sally and Alli dive into this issue, covering how women are multipliers in their jobs and communities, and the importance of negotiating for perks like learning and development. They also discuss the importance of investing in yourself and how Alli took the leap from her tech career at Google to being an entrepreneur focused on helping women.

“There are resources for women. We need to understand that. And then also we have to carve out that time to invest in them. If a woman works 2 hours with a coach to work on refining a keynote so she can get up on stage and talk to hundreds of people that don’t know her, it’s getting up on that stage and delivering that keynote that will actually change the entire trajectory of her career. So spend the time there. That’s where it needs to be spent.”

Learn more about The Forem at theforem.co and on Instagram @theforem.co.