Inside our August WIT Technology Uncorked
The August WIT Technology Uncorked brought together five women who have each, at some point, had to decide whether to stay, push back, or walk away from a role that looked good on paper but didn’t add up in practice. The theme: responsibility without recognition, and what to do when you’re handed the work but not the title, the trust, or the pay to match.
Our moderator opened with a story a lot of the room recognized immediately: being “promoted” in name only, more than once, by the same company. It set the tone for a conversation that wasn’t about complaining. It was about the moment of clarity that comes right before a real decision.
How do you know if it’s still worth it?
The first question of the night set up the whole conversation: how do you evaluate whether your organization still deserves your investment?
The answers converged on three things worth checking for, whatever stage of your career you’re in.
Peace of mind. Not just satisfaction with the work, but the ability to actually stop thinking about it when you walk away from your desk. If you’re doing your best thinking at 3am, that’s a signal, not a badge of honor.
Sponsorship, not just mentorship. One panelist drew a sharp line between the two: mentors give you advice in the room. Sponsors talk about you when you’re not in it. If leadership isn’t doing the second one, the first one doesn’t count for much.
Investment in the work itself, not just in you. A team can champion you personally and still starve your project of funding. That gap is worth watching.
Culture came up as its own category entirely, and the panel was clear that it isn’t one thing. There’s the culture of the company, and there’s the culture of your specific team, and they can be completely different animals. One panelist described watching a strong, inclusive culture quietly erode after the leader who built it moved on, and not seeing it happen in real time. “When you’re in it, you don’t see it,” she said. “Later on you’re like, that was a full force hurricane.”
Advocating from the inside
The conversation shifted to what it actually looks like to push for change without leaving. The advice was less about big speeches and more about specificity: figure out exactly what you need, ask for it directly, and frame it in terms the business understands.
One panelist described telling her manager plainly that she’d be gone certain afternoons for her kids’ games, and that the tradeoff was a better, more present version of her at work the rest of the time. Another described asking her provost for a salary adjustment based on public pay records, being turned down, and using that as the push to leave for an opportunity that nearly tripled her salary.
The through-line: know your own value before you ask anyone else to recognize it, and be ready to act on what you learn either way.
Investing in your own career, on your own terms
By the end of the night, the room had moved from strategy to something more personal. Several panelists talked about reaching a point where they stopped waiting for someone else to notice their work and started asking for more of it directly, whether that meant more responsibility, a renegotiated role, or a title that finally matched what they’d already been doing for years.
One panelist summed up the throughline of the whole evening: find the work you’d want to keep doing even if no one were watching, and then make sure someone is.
The evening closed with a moment of quiet reflection, giving everyone in the room a chance to write down what had landed for them, and where they might be carrying work that isn’t being recognized in their own careers right now, before moving into table conversations to talk it through with each other.
Meet the panel
- Kerri Sauer (Moderator), FinTech & Technology Leader
- Dorren Schmitt, Ph.D., VP of IT Strategy and Innovation IT & Cybersecurity, Allen Media Group (parent company of The Weather Channel)
- Akhila Gullapalli, VP of Data and Tech, Fiserv
- April Lake, CIO, Novelis
- Leanne West, Chief Engineer of Pediatric Technology, Georgia Tech; Chief Research and Innovation Officer, Shriners Children’s; President, International Children’s Advisory Network
- Windy Nicholson, former VP of Product M&A, Salesforce; Tech Executive & Nonprofit Board President
Women in Technology (WIT) creates possibilities for more women to explore, pursue, persist, and lead in technology. Learn more at mywit.org.