Leading with Heart and Wading Through Fear – How Women Can Drop Control and Embrace Their Power

Women Thrive Magazine, “Leading with Heart and Wading Through Fear—How Women Can Drop Control and Embrace Their Power” by Ingrid Hu Dahl: June 24, 2025.

I am part of a lineage of female warriors. From fighting in revolutions in China, to the glass and bamboo ceiling in Corporate America. I am also part of a lineage of white women in America. When you overlay both of those truths, you find me in-between. Part rebel, but always fully invested in humanity, I’ve carved out a career re-connecting people with their power–their own warrior spirits-anchored in a philosophy of rebellious leadership

The thing is, being a warrior isn’t the archetype: strong, tough and alone. It means in the face of failure, bravely accepting fallibility. It means not pretending to be confident when you feel insecure and asking for what you need. It means choosing your truth and who you are when faced with being pressured to fit in a mold or appease someone else’s expectations.

If I had appeased the expectations of my mother, I’d live a totally different life than what was true to me. I am a sensitive badass who people pleases and struggles being liked. I’m also a bold, driven, proud queer woman–someone the opposite of what family, society and tradition desired. But letting go of acceptance and that pressure, not only freed me–it also freed my mother.

My mother was a tech pioneer in the 1980s and 90s. She was a Chinese woman who came to the States to get a graduate degree. She had an accent that immediately outed her otherness–but her leadership approach and influence was remarkable. She battled discrimination in society and loneliness in being one of the few female leaders, with more obstacles in her path to advancement than any of her male colleagues. [Click on link above to continue reading]