A successful career is only worth pursuing if it does not cost you your health and well-being and personal fulfillment.
I keep coming back to this question since it’s Women’s History Month, and I’ve undergone a deep reckoning in my career. I’ve thought a lot about what ambition means for businesswomen who are building companies, raising families, leading teams, and carrying emotional labor at home and at work.
For years, millennial women were taught to lean in, break glass ceilings, take seats at the table, and prove we belonged in rooms that were not designed for us. Many of us did exactly that. In 2024, women started nearly half of all new businesses in the United States, one of the highest rates since 2019. That’s not a retreat from ambition, that is evidence of expansion.
According to the 2024 Impact of Women-Owned Businesses Report commissioned by Wells Fargo in partnership with Ventureneer, CoreWoman, and Women Impacting Public Policy, women-owned businesses collectively generate approximately $2.7 trillion in annual revenue.
We are clearly ambitious, having career success, and critical to economic growth. The question is what the costs of us were getting there.
Are Women Leaving Corporate Jobs or Redefining Leadership?
Women are not simply leaving corporate jobs; many are reevaluating what leadership, success, and sustainability actually look like in their careers. In our move to break the glass ceiling and lean in, many of us followed the playbook that promised progress if we worked harder, climbed higher, and carried more responsibility.
What we are seeing now is a broader reflection happening across industries, especially among women who are balancing careers with caregiving, leadership with life, and ambition with well-being. The question is not simply whether more money or a bigger title is worth the additional pressure to perform, especially for women who are also navigating responsibilities at home, in their communities, or as caregivers. 10 years ago, the answer may have felt clearer for many women in business.
Today the conversation feels more nuanced, which is part of why there has been growing discussion about what some are calling a “shecession,” and whether what we are witnessing is not an exit from ambition, but a recalibration of what leadership should actually demand from women. Some eye-opening events in the last year have really brought this to life with 91,000 women leaving the labor force in December 2025, signaling that the shecession is well and truly arrived.
The media often frames this moment as burnout, workforce decline, or women choosing home over career, but the data tells a more complex story. The 2025 Women in the Workplace annual report, the largest study of corporate women in America, finds that women are getting less support in the workplace and fewer opportunities for advancement. Throw in the price of childcare, the current average cost in 2026 is about $16,692 a year🤯, for just one child, it’s easy to see why women are ‘stepping back’.
When women question corporate paths, it’s not because we lack drive, it’s because we are recalibrating what leadership should require from us.
Why Are Millennial Women Feeling So Conflicted About Ambition and Motherhood?
Millennial women feel conflicted because we were told we could have it all, but we were never taught how to carry it all without breaking.
This is the tension I hear in nearly every conversation with women in my world. We want to build companies and build families; we want to raise capital and raise children. We want to lead teams, land press, close sales, and still be present for bedtime stories and school pickups. We want ambition and softness, power and nurturing, strategy and emotional depth. Those desires are not contradictory, but the systems we operate inside often make them feel that way.
There is a very real wound in chasing dreams while trying to be fully present at home. There is a quiet guilt that creeps in when a business needs you and your child needs you at the same time. There is an internal pressure to be the strong one, the capable one, the one who holds everything together without complaint.
And yet the data shows how common this dual identity already is. Estimates have suggested that approximately 1 in 3 women-owned businesses in the United States are owned by mothers, representing roughly 5 million businesses led by women who are also raising children. More recent survey data from Shopify found that over 60% of the 1,500+ working parents surveyed expressed interest in entrepreneurship as a way to supplement income or create flexibility.
With the cost of childcare at an all-time high, pricing ranging (on average) from $850-1400 per month, many women are leaving jobs because they simply can’t afford it. So millions of women are now actively designing work around motherhood because traditional structures rarely flex enough to hold both.
She was part of my meetings, and I did what I needed to do.
None of us are prepared for the emotional math of carrying career, motherhood, marriage, community, and the weight of the world simultaneously. We honestly were never meant to and that’s why a successful career doesn’t mean what it used to.
How Does This Pressure Show Up for Women Founders and Leaders?
This pressure shows up as exhaustion masked as competence and ambition carried without adequate support.
In my 5th year as a business owner, I have felt this personally. Only 6 weeks into my maternity leave that I created and paid for myself; I had to jump back into the business for major client and team issues. I remember sitting in a hair salon chair trying to feel like myself again when I received the call that pulled me back in. Clients were struggling, and I believed leadership meant holding everything together perfectly, no matter the cost.
In that moment, I felt like I was failing as a mother and failing as a leader at the same time. I need to support my family financially while creating space for myself. This is why we burnout and become victims of our circumstances.
And yet women continue to build. We continue to start businesses, we continue to show up in boardrooms and on stages. The issue is not drive, the issue is the system, and it makes me want to scream, while also pushing me to say the truth, because I know I am not alone here! Right!?!
How Can Women in Business Actually Get What They Want?
It’s difficult, but possible for women in business to find professional flexibility and mental, emotional and financial support throughout our career journey. This Women’s History Month, equity still matters deeply. Closing funding gaps matters, representation in leadership matters, but what I want most for women is freedom.
🟣Freedom to move between seasons of intensity and seasons of rest without shame.
🟣Freedom to design businesses that align with our energy.
🟣Freedom to lead without carrying the entire emotional and operational load alone.
🟣Freedom is not opting out, freedom is building differently.
For me, the question shifted from “What should I build next?” to “How do I want to feel while I am building?” If I want to feel energetic, purposeful, passionate and powerful, I need to feel ownership in what I create and feel supported throughout that journey. I need systems and a community that pushes forth my greatest gifts, instead of putting me into a box or telling me all the things I ‘should’ be doing.
This is where community becomes essential. I often think about horses in a field and how they watch over one another with strength and awareness. They are powerful individually, but they are safer together. That is the energy I believe women need more of right now. Less competition for scraps and more collective support, less proving and more partnering.
Maybe this season is not about leaving corporate or rejecting ambition, maybe it’s about shedding perfection, shedding martyrdom, and shedding the version of success that required us to fracture ourselves to maintain it.
We are not less ambitious than we were a decade ago, we are more conscious. And the most radical question we can ask this Women’s History Month is not whether we are capable of doing it all, but whether doing it all in the way we were taught is actually worth it.
Because success that costs you yourself is too expensive. 💜
💜 ICYMI:
If you’re thinking about implementing a thought leadership strategy with your company, I’d love to connect with you more. And if you’re ready to focus on your own personal brand strategy that reflects your truth and builds real impact, I’m soooooo excited to open up space in our new LinkedIn Brand LaunchPad.
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💜 ICYMI: JOIN US WEDNESDAY MARCH 18TH! From Invisible to Investable: How to Build Your Founder Personal Brand and Attract Investment
Your founder brand isn’t your logo, your pitch deck, or your company page. Investors are vetting you long before you ever get the meeting, and when markets get competitive, your credibility either stacks in your favor or starts working against you.
On March 18 at 12PM CST, Joshua B. Lee , Maryam Taheri, and I are hosting a LIVE conversation: From Invisible to Investable: How to Build Your Founder Personal Brand and Attract Investment. We’ll talk about how founder visibility impacts fundraising, how to build authority without looking performative, and what experienced founders understand about protecting their reputation while scaling.
Maryam has built and sold 3 startups to public companies, and brings firsthand experience navigating fundraising, hypergrowth, and acquisition. If you’re raising capital, planning to raise, or building inside the startup ecosystem, this conversation is for you. Join us
💜 ICYMI: I’m honored to be speaking at Igniting Excellence with The WIT Network in San Diego, March 10–12
I will lead a 90-minute interactive workshop, YOUmanize™ Your Authority: Building Trust, Visibility and Opportunity on LinkedIn in the AI Era. We will refine profiles in real time and unpack how visibility, positioning, and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) are changing professional discovery. I would love to see you there.
📍 Town and Country Resort
🗓️ March 10–12
