This episode originally aired on Oct. 19, 2026.
Why are women so reluctant to advocate for what they want in the workplace?
Is it genetic? Are women born to be the more passive sex? Is it cultural: girls are supposed to be nice? Or is it societal: the male hierarchy rules?
It's true that promotions, pay boosts and a place at the table have historically gone to male co-workers – and in many cases still do even with all the advancements of the last few decades.
What if instead of waiting for what they want, women just go for it?
That's the message in a new book that provides the road map. It's titled UP! The Playbook For Every Woman on the Rise.
The book was written by two sisters, originally from Ohio, who are living the advice they dispense on the book's pages. They're also running a company to help other women.
Were talking with Kelly and Katy Mooney on this hour of All Sides.
Guests:
- Kelly Mooney, co-founder and CEO, Equipt Women/co-author, Up! The Playbook for Every Woman on the Rise
- Katy Mooney, co-founder and chief learning officer, Equipt Women/co-author, Up! The Playbook for Every Woman on the Rise
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Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. Why are women so reluctant to advocate for what they want in the workplace? What if, instead of waiting for what they want, women just go for it? That's the message in a new book that provides the roadmap. It's called "Up! The Playbook For Every Woman On The Rise." It's written by two sisters, originally from Ohio, who are living the advice they dispense on the book's pages. They're running a company to help other women. Joining us now is Kelly Mooney, founder and CEO of Equipped Women. She's also the author of Up, the playbook for every woman on the rise. Welcome to all sides, Kelly.
Kelly Mooney: Thank you, Amy, it's great to be here.
Juravich: And also with us, Kelly's sister, Katy Mooney, co-founder and the chief learning officer at Equipped Woman who also contributed to the book Up. Welcome to All Sides, Katy.
Katy Mooney: Thank you for having me.
Juravich: So you're both joining us by Zoom. You live on the West Coast, but your story starts in rural Ohio where you were born. I read in your book that you come from a large family, nine children. Do I have that right, Kelly?
Kelly Mooney: You do, actually, our parents had 10 children, one who didn't survive very long, so ultimately we grew up as a family of nine.
Juravich: Wow. Okay. Maybe Katy, could you tell us a little bit about your Ohio ties, your upbringing, your schooling, where in Ohio you're from?
Katy Mooney: Sure. So we grew up in a tiny little town in southeast Ohio, New Lexington, Ohio, Perry County, and it's about 5,000 people. Like we said, we had nine children, so it was kind of a crazy upbringing, very strict, Catholic, went to Catholic grade school, public high school, and then I went on to Ohio State. Go Bucks. God, we survived our Indiana game on Saturday. And in fact, all my siblings went to college. That was something that was really unique about our family is that not a lot of people where we grew up went on to college, but it was an unspoken expectation among our parents that all of their children were gonna go to college and they...
Juravich: Wow, all right. And then Kelly, tell me a little bit about how being rooted here in Ohio has shaped your early experiences in your career.
Kelly Mooney: Yeah, I mean, I think being from Ohio gives you a groundedness. I think a very strong set of values about what's important and the appreciation of hard work and good people and all those things that, you know, stay with you no matter where you go. And I think in... Growing up, how we did where we did, we had everything we needed, but nothing that we wanted. And so we really learned how to be hardworking and self-reliant and driven in our lives.
Juravich: And, Kelly, you write that your first exposure to workplace injustice came from working at a local pool. Can you tell us that story? Was that in New Lexington?
Kelly Mooney: Yes, it was actually. So the first summer after college, my parents wanted me to come home for one summer, which I did, and we were always required to work. So I thought, well, my brother was the swimming pool manager a few years ago when he was 19, and I worked for him, and I was 19 at the time. So, I thought I'll go get that job he got. And when I applied for the role, the Parks and Recs leadership, the administration said, well, no, you can't do this job as a woman. You would need to have a friend do this job with you and you'll have to split that paycheck. And it didn't really occur to me at the time. I think I was probably surprised and maybe a little dumbfounded, but I needed a job. So I asked a friend to join me and we ran the pool together and we split the same. Paycheck that he received years earlier, as a single man doing the same exact job. So that was my first sort of brush with, wow, it's not really fair how these things work.
Juravich: What? Okay, so the pool manager basically said that it takes two women to do the same job as one man. Is that?
Kelly Mooney: Yeah, the administrator hiring the pool manager said that, yes.
Juravich: Fascinating. Alright. And Katy, did you have any early exposure to workplace injustice similar to Kelly's like that?
Katy Mooney: I can't say I had that exact experience, but I was always in a male-dominated environment. I mean, I started as a lawyer, and so I worked in a large law firm, and my first boss was a male. And he kind of laid it out for me on my first day there and just said, here's what we expect. Show up. This is about when we start, this is about when we end, and if you act like a grownup, we'll treat you like one. That was sort of my first introduction to working in the real world.
Juravich: I always, you know, looking at a book, I always try to look at the dedications just because sometimes they tell me interesting stories. And your first dedication is a shout out to Gloria Steinem, herself an Ohio native from Toledo. She passed away earlier this year. Kelly, why did you decide to single out Gloria Steinem and put it in the dedication of the book?
Kelly Mooney: Well, because as we say in the dedication, she asked a question that started everything. So 10 years ago, I was part of a group of women for a nonprofit, the Women's Fund of Central Ohio, who brought her into Columbus to give an inspiring talk to everybody. And as part of that organizing committee, I was able to be part of a dinner party with her afterward. And she just looked at us around the table and said, Why aren't each of you doing more, more for women? And it really just stopped me in my tracks because I hadn't really confronted that question before. And as a women-owned business in business with a woman, Nancy Kramer, a native of Columbus who is very well known in Columbus, and she founded the business and I'd been working with her for many, many years at that point. And we were always just so female-focused and friendly and had great policies for women and moms especially. And so I'd never been asked that question. And when I pondered it, I realized actually I wasn't doing enough and I wanted to do more. And I wanted really get involved in helping women learn the skills for navigating, getting the career they want, building a life they love and all those things. And so it was that question that she posed that really changed everything for me.
Juravich: In reading through the book I learned that there's been a loss of momentum for women when it comes to advancement, an exodus of women from the workforce. Katy, can you tell us what's happening right now with those trend lines? Are women still having to exit the workforce or was that a pandemic-related situation?
Katy Mooney: Well, I think it's both. I mean, 2025 was a really bad year for women. Kelly, correct me if I'm getting this stat wrong, but 455,000 women left the workforce in 2025. And now they're starting to return, but it was either by force or by choice. And so a lot of them were laid off by government layoffs. There was a large swath of them. But some of them had to leave the workforce to take care of children, to take care of aging parents. So that's kind of the state that we're in right now. They're starting to return. But the trend line has been going down for women leaving the workforce.
Juravich: Yeah, Kelly, but is this a continuation of the pandemic? I mean, the pandemic turned workplaces upside down for a lot and women ended up being affected, especially due to the childcare issue that Katy was just mentioning. Are we still seeing that? I mean it's, you know, six years post-pandemic. Are women still impacted from that loss?
Kelly Mooney: Yeah, they are still impacted. And a lot of it comes from the cost of childcare Katy was alluding to, but also the lack of flexible schedules. So there's been in many organizations and in certain industries, a return to office mandate. And so that really dramatically impacts women and their ability to be there at eight or be there until five or six or much later. And so the lack flexibility has really had a big impact on women. And so that's kind of where we are. And that's on top of, Amy, like you were alluding to, that yes, we've made progress. But really, over 40 years, women have outperformed men in earning college degrees. Yet they are still hired, paid, and promoted at lower rates than men at every level of an organization. And so, that's the crust of what we're really trying to.
Juravich: Help women navigate.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We are talking about women in the workforce with the authors of a new book called "Up! The Playbook for Every Woman on the Rise." And we're talking with co-authors and sisters, Kelly Mooney and Katy Mooney. In chapter three of the book, it's titled Experiment a Lot, and you had an interesting statistic about the age at which girls become more cautious. So, either one of you, Can you tell me about? That age and why the so-called, you call it crippling, cautiousness follows women into the workforce.
Kelly Mooney: Yeah, I mean, a lot of research shows that by the time young girls turn 10 or 11 years old, they become increasingly more cautious. And, you know, where when they're younger, they're not afraid to ride their bikes, you know, with a band and they're not afraid maybe to jump off the high board or just to be a little more unbridled in their play. But the societal forces that that that young girls get exposed to through advertising, through messaging, through commentary and their families. It really starts to impact their psyche and they start to pull back and become much, much more cautious.
Juravich: And Katy, what recommendations do you have to encourage, like how to counter that, how to get past, or like, you know, you encourage experimenting and like, how do you encourage people to get pass that crippling cautiousness?
Katy Mooney: Well, to start small with your experiments, you don't have to go out and do something major. I mean, maybe your experimenting is, you know, trying something new on the menu. Maybe you go to the same restaurant every week and instead you go a different one. Or if you go the same one, you order something different on the menue. Or you explore a different part of the city that you live in or the town that you lived in. Or you go different route to work. I mean we're just talking about starting small, so it's not so risky. And that you get used to. Trying something new and experiencing the feeling of what that's like.
Katy Mooney: Yeah. Go ahead, Kelly. Instead of trying to be a perfectionist, I think that young girls and women get saddled with this perfectionism. And so when you're experimenting a lot, you're also learning that you don't have to be good at everything all the time. And this was a conversation I had with the CEO of the Girl Scouts as part of the research for this book is that they realized that they had to bring that learning and that experimentation in at a much, much younger age so that they weren't feeling like I had to be perfect to get this badge. And getting that notion of always having to be good at everything and changing that at an early age.
Juravich: So, in the Boy Scouts, the boys don't feel like they have to be perfect to get a badge? Is that, like, tell me more about that, Kelly.
Kelly Mooney: Well, I can't really.
Juravich: Boy Scouts.
Kelly Mooney: But I don't know that most men suffer from perfectionism. And I think that a lot of women relate to that of having the perfect home and the perfect outfit and the body and all those things I think that get, you know, message to young girls and then women over time. And it's really hard to undo it.
Juravich: Yeah, I asked the question at the beginning of the show about whether women are born to be more passive. Are they conditioned by society to basically play second fiddle to men? Katy, why did this happen? Why aren't women more assertive?
Katy Mooney: Well, I think you're asking like, is it nature? Is it nurture? And it's probably a little bit of both, but I believe that the socialization that girls and women are raised in and continue to live in is a huge part of it. And social media obviously plays an enormous role. The bar for women of how they're supposed to look, what their body's supposed to looks like, their hair, their skin, are they allowed to age? It's so different and so much higher for women and girls than it is for boys and men.
Juravich: Yeah, and Kelly, how does that translate into the workplace? I mean, how do what Katy just described impact why women aren't more assertive at work?
Kelly Mooney: Well, because I think we've been socialized to keep our heads down and not speak up and not speak out. It's not often rewarded when we're younger. And so I think that's what women do. They work really hard. They think if they do a good job, that the promotion and the pay increase is going to come. And that's actually not how it works. And I think that what we're trying to advocate in the book is how to be heads up, not heads down, and how to speak up, and how do it with skill. And how to know what you want and advocate for that without being braggy or boastful or any of those things. And so what we're realizing is that the themes for women that we've seen for decades haven't really changed that much. So we wanted to give them the playbook and the actual practical tips to navigate this workplace dynamic that they might not even be fully aware of.
Juravich: Yeah, and before we take the break, Kelly, I wanted to pivot back to something you mentioned earlier because you write about how women are more educated than men, but that doesn't translate into opportunities, upward mobility, it doesn't translate into the workplace. I mean, how did that happen? Because I think that when you're applying for a job, you wouldn't know that you have more of a degree than the colleague you, you'll know that after you accept the job, I guess, right? So, yeah, how does this happen that the, you know, the degrees you have don't translate into the job?
Kelly Mooney: Well, I think what happens is that women are quite good at school. So they know how to read a syllabus, study, get the A, that the rules are a little more clear. There's more of a meritocracy. And when you get into the workplace, the rules aren't written, they're often invisible and women don't really realize like, oh wow, I could have asked for more or oh, I need to prepare for my one-on-one so my manager is not gonna just direct my work. I need be proactive in communicating my contributions to the organization. So there's a ton of things that women haven't been fully aware of that they need to be doing that is more natural to men in a boys' club and men who have been cultivating other men. And they just bring them up more naturally where women have had to go out and find sponsors, for example. Not just people who are mentoring them and giving them good advice, but a sponsor is somebody who is a senior person. Behind closed doors who will advocate on your behalf because they've had visibility to your work. And so helping women realize, how do I get visibility? How do I ask for stretch assignments? How do get a sponsor advocating for me? Those are all the things that need to be learned.
Juravich: You are both coming to Ohio, so you're coming home, for a book event on November 4th at the Drexel Theater. It's hosted by Gramercy Books. Did you want to take a second to tell me more about that? I mean, are you basically going to be giving advice like this?
Kelly Mooney: Well, we'll see. So we're very excited. Linda Kass and her team at Grand Misty Books have put this on at the Drexel Theater. We're very exciting to do it. Kelly Grosmer, who's the CEO of the Women's Fund, is going to be interviewing us. And so I think we're going to talk a little bit about some of the things you raised today, but really a little more actionable advice that we have for women who are navigating careers, but also probably a little about what it's like to be two sisters writing a book together. Yeah.
Juravich: And we'll get into that. Coming up, we're going to continue to talk to our guests. Kelly Mooney and Katy Mooney are staying with us. We're going to explore some of the advice they cover in their new book. The book is called "Up! The Playbook for Every Woman on the Rise," and All Sides continues in just a moment on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides, I'm your host Amy Juravich. Why are women so reluctant to advocate for what they want in the workplace? Is it genetic, born to be the more passive sex? Is it cultural, girls are supposed to be nice? Or is it societal, the male hierarchical rules? It's true that promotions pay boosts and a place at the table have historically and still often go to male coworkers. But what if... Instead of waiting for what they want, women just go for it. That's the message of a new book that provides a roadmap. It is called "Up! The Playbook for Every Woman on the Rise." And it's written by two sisters, originally from Ohio, who live out the advice they dispense on the book's pages. They are running a company to help other women. Still with us is Kelly Mooney, founder and CEO of Equipped Women, and she's the co-author of "Up! The Playbook for Every Woman on the Rise." Thanks again for being here, Kelly.
Kelly Mooney: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: And we also have Katy Mooney, co-founder and chief learning officer at Equipped Women. Thanks for being here, Katy.
Katy Mooney: Great to be here.
Juravich: I wanted to delve more into your book. It's very user-friendly. The chapters are quick. They pose questions. They have prompts like, what are your values? And then there's a list for you to consider. So let's talk about those values. How does identifying your values help women get ahead? Kelly, do you wanna take that?
Kelly Mooney: Yeah, so when you know what you stand for, it's easier to make day-to-day decisions. And so what we found in the programs we've run, and Katie can elaborate on this, but that a lot of women maybe hadn't spent time really thinking about that and clarifying that. And when they do, it's very eye-opening. About oh, when I really believe this, I really believed in creativity or something like that, that changes the environment that you want to be in or what you'll excel in. So a value is something not just that you believe but that's really important in your life and you're gonna make decisions based on those values.
Katy Mooney: And the thing I would add too, it's a very powerful exercise to go through identifying your values, because you have them even if you're not aware of them, and they're driving your behavior even if your not aware it. And so when you become aware of what your values are and reflect on them you can be more intentional about the decisions that you wanna make, and it affects everything. It affects where you work, who you work for, how much you work. The friends that you hang out with, where you live. It really affects everything, and what I have observed and experienced personally is when you're clear on what you care about, your values, decision-making becomes easier. So for example, if I get an opportunity to move abroad, and one of my values is really being close with my family, that might change the decision, versus if I just say, oh, I'm gonna, yeah, sure, I'll gonna do that, whatever opportunity comes my way. If you're not rooted in what you care about most, your decision-making can be a little bit.
Juravich: Kelly, Katy just gave us an example of the kind of value and how it impacts work Can you give me another example maybe from even from your own life? Like what's a value you hold that has impacted where your career went?
Kelly Mooney: Yeah, and maybe I picked creativity a moment ago because that has always been one of mine. And growing up and going to school for industrial design, I knew I wanted to be in a creative environment. I wanted it to be with very eccentric people who were doing future-focused work. And so that really drove who I worked with, where I worked, the kind of work I was doing, because it was so in... Bedded into what I thought was really important. And so that's one that really has shaped me and it shapes like who I hang out with now. It shapes what my home looks like. It shapes how I approach things. You can even see my books are in color coordinated. Yeah, behind her, her books are very organized. It's all color coded because it's again, my creativity that's coming out and how I live my life.
Juravich: Yeah, and Katy, I mean, you just mentioned your example that you just gave was like moving abroad for a job, but if you want to stay near your family, that won't work. Is that from your own personal experience or did you just pick one? If you want pick one of your own values.
Katy Mooney: I picked one and because I saw that with a client that I was coaching, I mean one of my favorite stories that I have told in the past is about when I was working with some executives and we did this values exercise and we spent quite a bit of time on it and there was a break and the guy, a gentleman that was part of the exercise waited for to kind of leave the room, and he said... I want to ask you a question. And he said, we did this exercise and like, I'm really clear on my values. It's like power and influence and wealth. And he's like, I have all those things, but, and he's kind of looks around. He's like I'm just not happy. And he says, what do you think's going on? And I said, maybe those aren't your values. And it was like a light bulb went off for him. And he had never really considered that because one of the things that's very important when it comes to values is what your values really are versus what you think they should be. And for women especially, that's a very hard thing to discern and tease through. And so that's why we put it in the book. It's the very first chapter in the books. Yeah.
Juravich: Well, and so, Kelly, just based on what Katy just said, I mean, obviously the book is tailored to women, but can men learn a thing or two in this book as well?
Kelly Mooney: That's been one of the biggest compliments we've received is while this was written for women and the stories have been synthesized from other women men are telling us that they're like oh wow this is super helpful and I had a major CEO of a big organization text me last week and said I just bought this for my three sons who are in their 20s so I like to think too that you know when I was building my career, all the books were written by men. So Tom Peters, John Maxwell. You know, all these guys, Jim Collins, and so I had to contextualize their stories and their examples to be relevant to me. And so I'm hopeful maybe men will contextualize our stories to be helpful to them.
Juravich: There are, throughout the book, there's these shaded sections that you call IRL, the in real life sections, and they're anecdotes from real women that you interviewed. One early on in the book features a woman named Leah, who is 27, who gets talked over in a meeting by older men who have worked at the company for years longer than she has. Can one of you tell me what advice you would give someone like Leah in that situation where she gets talked over top of in meetings.
Kelly Mooney: Yeah, and that, interestingly enough, the example you picked, while there are examples from all over the world, that one's from Ohio, Cincinnati, Ohio, more specifically. I'm drawn to it.
Juravich: I'm drawn to a Buckeye, yes.
Kelly Mooney: And the guidance is to really have a private conversation and to pull that person aside. And one of the phrases that we use in our coaching program is you might not be aware. You might not aware it's been hard to get heard in this meeting. You might be aware that I have ideas to share. And so there's a little bit of a directness of a conversation that. When it's had privately, it's less embarrassing and less humiliating. And to say, hey, I want this to be successful. I want to be effective in this meeting. Help me lead this meeting in a way that has a better outcome for everybody. And so you're inviting them to be a partner. In a new way of having this meeting unfold. And what we have found is some people just have no idea that they're talking over somebody all the time. So that's a few tips. Katy, what would you add?
Katy Mooney: I mean, I love what you're saying about inviting them to be part of the solution and also making them aware that, oh, I wanted to contribute something because it's going to build on the idea that you were offering as well. Some of this also comes down to the people leading meetings and making them aware of, you can say in advance, oh I really want to contribute to this part of meeting if you receive the agenda in advance. Or you can say, oh, before we move on, I wanted to add this point. Or building on other people's ideas is also very effective. You know, Joe said ABC, and that made me think of XYZ. And so inserting yourself in those ways, it's not combative or you're not creating conflict, you're building on what is already part of the conversation.
Kelly Mooney: And sometimes it's also to be able to say in the moment, hold that thought, I'd like to finish my own first. And so teaching women that it's okay to do that instead of just having to just be blunted in the meeting and then never recover. So those are some of the things we guide on.
Juravich: You have another in real life with Marty. Can one of you tell us about how she found a way to help coworkers who are anxious about AI in the workplace? Because I've done many shows about people who are worried about AI taking their jobs. Tell me about this.
Katy Mooney: I'm not remembering the details of that story. Can you say more about Marty?
Juravich: Um, let me see it. Well, it's on page 239. Do you, Kelly, do you remember it?
Kelly Mooney: Anybody who's anxious about AI, which is nearly everybody now, is, is you know, natural and, and quite honestly, practical. And so I think that when you're thinking about AI you have a lot of options, you know. There's some people that are just saying, I'm not going to get involved. I'm going to participate. And that's not a very productive or practical approach. So instead, I think you have to figure out Okay, what are the AI tools that I need to learn to be effective in my role? And how can they take away the tediousness? How can they get rid of the things I don't even enjoy doing that are tedious and time consuming and draining? And then it frees me up to be more solution oriented, more creative, I can focus on building relationships. And so seeing what are the upsides for having more time that can be allocated to more high value things. And so I think that you have to really embrace it and quite honestly, maybe even become an expert in some of the tools and then you'll become more valuable to your employer.
Juravich: Yeah. And Katy, I mean, basically in the book, she creates lunch and learn sessions and include senior managers because she wants, basically it's helping everyone understand the ways AI can be helpful, current applications, future possibilities without, but everyone being involved in the conversation. So without feeling like AI is going to take your job, that you're a part of discussion. Is that? Yeah.
Katy Mooney: I mean a lot of people think that AI is going to take their job and the truth is AI is a tool and some people say that well I'm not interested in AI because they think about AI in terms of software development or the the technical development behind the scenes but how AI affects the role that you're in or the department that you are in or the industry that you re in. Those are the things that you it's happening, it's changing, even if you don't want it to. And to, as Kelly's saying, embrace it as a tool to make your job easier so that you can focus on higher value.
Juravich: Things with your time. You're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about women in the workforce with the authors of a new book called "Up! The Playbook for Every Woman on the Rise" with co-authors and sisters Kelly Mooney and Katy Mooney. You also write in the book that once you realize that work is a game and those who play tend to win more often, you kind of jumped in and had more information. So can you elaborate this idea like of how deciding that work as a game shifted you're thinking a little bit.
Kelly Mooney: Yeah, there's something about, I just always knew it, or maybe once I got into my later 20s, I started to figure that out. I can remember a moment where Katie was working for a large retailer. And I remembered she was just feeling so frustrated and running on the hamster and a boss knot, you know, men getting promoted over her. And I remember saying, you're not playing the game. And she was like, what? And so I think that we have recognized that in the women that we worked with across the globe when they're frustrated and not getting promoted and seeing men getting promoted over them, getting paid less than men in the same role and realizing that, oh, these are women that actually are on the sidelines. They actually don't really realize that there is a game underway. There's a lot of players on the field. There's lot of unwritten rules. And if you aren't really paying attention, if you're really only doing your job, you're actually gonna be really frustrated and you're not likely to advance. And so this was one of the parts when we were getting feedback from a lot of readers. They're like, ah, do you really have to call it get in the game? Like, ah. And so I think women have that like ick feeling. But what we're trying to portray it as is like a practicality. This is a reality. You don't have to have. You know, make it icky to participate. You can do it with integrity, you can do with skill, you can it by using your own voice and being authentic. But if you think that the workplace is not a game, then you're missing out on a lot.
Juravich: Well, that's why I was going to just ask so men men all know it's a game, right?
Katy Mooney: For the most part, I think it's like one of the biggest takeaways. If you take one thing away from listening to this interview, it's that work is a game and it's not a meritocracy. And it was the hardest lesson that I had to learn because I did really well in high school, college, law school, no problem. You know, I could outwork anybody. And that's how I approached work for a long time. And it became very clear in my thirties, like, oh, I just thought like promotions happened and my work would be recognized. And it all would just would, you know, I would just advance with somebody championing me. And I didn't realize one, that it's a game. And part of that game means, yes, you have to do good work. But you also need relationships. And Kelly alluded to that earlier. You need a manager that is advocating for you and they need to know what you want them to advocate for. They need to what you what. You need sponsors within the company, other relationships, senior people who have visibility to you, what you're doing, what your contributions are, and that they advocate for you behind the scenes. So that is just such a hard thing for a lot of women to accept.
Juravich: The truth. Before we take the break, I want you to tell us a little bit more about your company. I've mentioned it a few times when giving your title, so Equipped Women. What does your company do to help women in the workplace? Yeah, I'm sure this book is a compliment to it, but tell me about equipped women, Kelly.
Kelly Mooney: Yeah, we have been partnering with a lot of large organizations who want to have a diverse leadership pipeline, where maybe they have invested in women who are mid and above senior level people, but not mid and below. And so we created programming, eight week live virtual program cohort based that really teach the fundamentals of what we call self leadership. And so that's what we have been doing with a lot of different organizations to really develop their early talent maybe before they're considered high potential talent so that they have more confidence, more skills and are more interested in staying engaged with the company and staying employed there. So that's a big piece of what we've been doing. We also have a lot of programs for women individually that are self-guided around understanding how to get promoted, understanding how get good with money. And then I write a weekly newsletter that's free, that's on Substack and it's called Get Equipped and it a lot about the skills that we teach in the book.
Juravich: And Katy, you're sisters, you work together, you wrote a book together, you live in the same city. Is there any sibling rivalry going on, any tensions? How is it working with your sister on all this?
Katy Mooney: You know, I think it's amazing how many dimensions that Kelly and I have to our relationship. And we socialize together, we walk together, we go out to dinner together, and we've been collaborating on Equipped Women, and then she asked me to write the book with her. So I think we have a complimentary skill set. Kelly's a visionary, and she is incredible at generating content and ideas and putting them on paper. And I'm really good at reacting and editing and crystallizing and synthesizing and saying, how can we make this more clear? So I think, you know, in a creative collaborative process, there can always be some tense moments, but I think the foundation is that we have a lot of respect for each other, and I admire Kelly tremendously. And I think we brought really different perspectives to the book and I think that's why it worked out the way it did.
Juravich: Kelly, you have your other seven siblings in the background there, too. Just the two of you here are doing this part, yeah.
Kelly Mooney: Yeah, just the two of us. But of course, when you have a big family, it's like a built-in focus group on a lot of levels. So that's always valuable. But I think, to Katy's point, that for me, I just love a white sheet of paper. I love a blank screen. And I can just go and go really fast. And when I produce something, I think oh, this is very obvious. It's very clear. And Katy would look at it and say, well, actually it's not clear. So she would be able to make it more clear for somebody else. And so that was a great combination of our skills. But also Katy's been an executive coach, licensed coach, and has been working with executives for decades, two decades, and being able to translate some of that learning that you don't often get until you're much more senior in a company. And making that more accessible to people earlier and younger in their careers.
Juravich: Uh, both of my guests are going to be coming back to Ohio for a book event. It's November 4th at the Drexel Theater and it's hosted by Gramercy Books. Listeners can learn more. There's a link at our website and also, of course, you can go to the Gramerci Books website to register for that event. Coming up, we're going to talk about things to think about when you chart your next move in the workplace. That's when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Women have always been playing catch-up in the workplace. It's a tale as old as time. But what if, instead of waiting for what they want, women just go for it? That's the message in a new book that provides a roadmap. It's called "Up! The Playbook for Every Woman on the Rise." It's written by two sisters, originally from Ohio, who are living the advice they dispense in the book's pages by running a company to help other women. Still with us is Kelly Mooney, founder and CEO of Equipped Women, also the co-author of "Up! The Playbook for Every Woman on the Rise." Thanks again for your time today, Kelly.
Kelly Mooney: You're welcome. Thanks Amy.
Amy Juravich: And we also have Katy Mooney, co-founder and the chief learning officer at Equipped Women. Thanks for being here, Katy.
Katy Mooney: Thanks, Amy.
Juravich: So the book feels like a real life how to handbook. It's a how to guide. And there's a feature called Think About It. It has like a light bulb meant to spark your ideas. In the chapter called "Cultivate Champions, Build Your Own Board, Then Think About It" features the feature says it asks you to name one person who has championed you in the past and what did their support what impact did their support have on you so can you both talk about that I mean what does it mean to like you know think like what name pops into your head to have a champion in your life.
Kelly Mooney: Yeah, I mean, for me, it really started with my first boss out of college, and this was somebody who was inviting me to CEO meetings, who was giving me assignments bigger than my skill set, was giving the context of what was happening in the business so that I could actually make a good decision and not just be, you know, somebody fetching coffee or running errands. And so when you have somebody like that, who then. Goes to tell somebody else like, oh, this is what Kelly did for us on this project. This was the difference she made. That changes everything. Like I literally think that one person changed the trajectory of my career. And then as I grew in my career, I had many, many more champions. And in the book we call it, Build Your Own Board, and all the kinds of people that you need. That are positively, constructively supporting you. They're not always agreeing with you. They might challenge you, but they help you get better and they help stay positive and they push you into the future instead of maybe lamenting around something that didn't go so well. So that's a really important chapter, I think, for anybody trying to build a career.
Juravich: And Katy, you mentioned earlier this idea of sponsors. So not just like, it's not your boss, but it's other people at work. I mean, tell me more about that word sponsor because I wanted to circle back to that word. Is that kind of like building your own board? It's like other people you work with who are in your pack.
Katy Mooney: It's kind of like building it internally. A sponsor is somebody typically that's more senior than you, that is well regarded, that has influence, that may or may not even be in your same department, but that when decisions are being made at senior levels, they might be telling stories about you or spotlighting you. To make other people aware of how great you are or the contributions that you've made or like, hey, we might wanna be thinking about Katy for this, or I really noticed how she did X, Y, and Z in this meeting and we could use her here. Have you all thought about that? So it's somebody that's championing you that has influence. That's a really important thing is that they have influence. And it's different than.
Kelly Mooney: Being a mentor, so a lot of what you'll hear from us is that women are over-mentored and under-sponsored. And the McKinsey research plays this out quite a lot, where they found that for every sponsor a woman has, so again, a senior influential person inside the organization, for every sponsored a woman has her chances of being promoted are increased by 10%. And so four sponsors are going to increase our chances by 40%. And so this is an under-leveraged strategy for many women in the workplace.
Juravich: Yeah, in that chapter, there's a section called Make a Move, and it's an exercise that tells you what to do to kind of like move toward this. So it tells you to list six people who would be ideal members of your personal board. So actually like figure out who these people are. And then it recommends drafting an email. So can you tell it like, what would that email say? Like if you're asking someone, I don't think I would, I guess I wouldn't use the phrase if I was emailing someone, it was like, would you be on my board or would you be my sponsor? Like, what am I saying?
Kelly Mooney: Yeah, you might not use that expression and I think it always depends on who you're talking to. But to say, I'm really looking to grow in my career. I would really love to learn from you in this way. I would love feedback from you because you're so experienced in this industry or this skill or something like that. And would you be willing to meet with me for coffee once a quarter, just to help me continue tracking in my career and serve as a sounding board. So again, those aren't always the perfect words and you have to, and we give some examples in the book of what scripts might work and we have more scripts on our website that we suggest to people that you have to fine tune so it works for that person and works for you personally, but that's the spirit of how I would ask.
Juravich: Katy, do people on your board need to be in your company or can they be outside influences just to help advise you to?
Katy Mooney: Definitely want a cross section of people and we talk about that. So we talked about the sponsor and the mentor. So the sponsor is inside your company. The mentor could be inside or outside of your company, you also want like an industry peer that you can share war stories with or hey, here's how it's going for me. How's it going for you? And that could be inside your or outside your company depending on how large your company is. You also might want a coach. If you can afford it and there's a lot of affordable options now through digital platforms and things like that, who can give you an outside perspective, but also can help develop you. That's what coaching is really about is widening your perspective and then helping you develop skills and attributes to show up in new ways. And then you also want like a support system and that could be a roommate. They don't have to know about your industry or your job. But it's more like the emotional support of being in your corner. So it's a cross-section of people that play different roles, and they probably never interact with each other, but that you can go to at different times, depending on what's going on in your career or your life.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about women in the workforce with the authors of a new book called "Up! The Playbook for Every Woman on the Rise." And we're talking with co-authors and sisters, Kelly Mooney and Katy Mooney. Another thing that you write about is called the invisible talent problem. Why do companies often overlook kind of the entry level or the more of the mid-level workers? And how can those workers work to make themselves more visible? You know, how do these people end up as invisible talent?
Kelly Mooney: Well, they are often invisible because they're heads down and they're just doing the tasks that need to be done on any given day. They aren't paying attention to the relationships maybe in the department that they're working in, figuring out how to bring their contributions in front of their boss. So they're really just heads down and a lot of companies have these. And I even had some HR leaders as part of this book tell me that, oh yeah, that's the sticky floor. That's where we have women who just do the work and they never really gonna advance and that's very purposeful. And that's just sickening to me. And so I think if women can be aware of what can happen in an organization when you stay heads down, then they'll start to cultivate skills that are teaching them to be heads up and teaching them how to show up for. A one-on-one with their manager or to request a one on one with their manger or how to properly prepare for a performance review. And those are all the things that really changed the game. But I think a lot of organizations aren't paying attention to that talent because they're just expecting that they're not gonna rise or they're gonna leave. And so a lot organizations don't invest in that talent because they view it as to... Transient, that they're just gonna move on to another job, so why would I invest in them if they're not gonna stay? But here's the funny irony, that's not really funny, but the catch here is that the number one reason people leave their jobs, at least for the Gen Z, is they're no growing. They want career growth opportunities, and so they want somebody who sees them and is investing in them and is taking action to help them grow.
Juravich: I would say that whenever I was younger in my career, the book "Lean In" by Sheryl Sandberg was really big. And as a mom of two young kids, I took a little bit of issue to the leaning because I was leaning in so far I fell flat on my face, right? Because I didn't have a cook or a nanny or someone to drive my kids around. She had a lot more money than me, so I took a little bit of issue to the leaning in. What do you say to women who just feel like I simply can't do it all and the workplace is not helping.
Katy Mooney: Yeah. One of the things that we say and Kelly's smiling about "Lean In" because we also take up bridge with that because it was sort of rooted in privilege as you allude. I think one of the big messages from this book is that everybody has a unique path. And everybody has a unique pace. And so you don't have to follow somebody else's timeline. That's why it's really important to figure out the career and life you want so that you can make choices, intentional choices and moves in order to create what you want. And so when, Kelly, you can talk about when you had kids and the choices that you made.
Kelly Mooney: Yeah, I mean also I think you would appreciate this Amy we say it's not about having it all and we kind of grew up with That monitor it's really having what matters to you And so that's what we're using this book to help women figure out what matters To them and so for me, you know when my kids were more born and little I made a really big decision to say you know what I can't do all of this and my husband couldn't either and what Was more important and what we valued back to what we talked about at the beginning was family And so both of us actually worked four days a week for an 80% paycheck so that we could each be home and only have childcare for three days a weak. And so being again, very intentional and conscious about your choices, that's really what we're advocating. And that's not gonna work for everybody, but it worked for me. And then fast forward from raising kids to now, the book was really conceived more like a parenting book. So I had two books, "Raising Our Kids," that I went to again and again and again, like this happened, now what do I do? And so if you look at the table of contents of "Up," it's really designed more like a parenting book, or at least the ones I used and valued, so that you can either go through the whole thing, front to back, or you can really go in and be like, okay, this is what's happening. How can I learn to speak up? How can learn to self-advocate? How can learned to know my value? And so. It's meant to be very solution-oriented for very specific situations.
Juravich: Well, unfortunately, we're out of time, but I have enough time to say that you'll both be in Ohio. There's an event on November 4th at the Drexel Theater hosted by Gramercy Books. Learn more at the Gramercy Books website. Thank you, Kelly Mooney, co-author of "Up!, The Playbook For Every Woman On the Rise." Kelly, thanks for your time.
Kelly Mooney: All right, Amy, thank you.
Juravich: And Katy Mooney, co-founder and chief learning officer at Equipped Women. Katy, thank for your time.
Katy Mooney: Thank you. Thanks for having us.
Juravich: You're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich.