The Strength Within: Beyond Imposter Syndrome with Shelley Zalis
about the episode
How Do Women Overcome Imposter Syndrome? Shelley Zalis on Confidence, Leadership & Self-Worth
In this episode of Innovate and Elevate, Sharon is joined by Shelley Zalis, Founder and CEO of The Female Quotient, a media and experience company that advances gender equality in the workplace. Shelley is a pioneer in online research and the first female chief executive ranked in the research industry's top 25.
The importance of mentorship and community building is a central theme of Shelley’s career. She shares powerful advice for young women who are starting to build up their careers and addresses the concept of imposter syndrome, emphasizing how important it is to recognize and own your value.
Shelley reflects on her journey as a self-proclaimed "Chief Troublemaker" and discusses how breaking rules has led to her success. She isn’t afraid to ruffle feathers and encourages everyone to practice self-advocacy, create new norms in the workplace, and challenge the status quo.
Shelley highlights the need for better data and storytelling to change narratives around women in business and VC funding. She discusses her efforts to challenge existing statistics and uncover more nuanced data about female founders and diverse investors. This approach, she argues, is crucial for shifting perspectives and driving change in the industry.
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“If you actually let your confidence voice be louder than your insecure voice, you would realize how amazing you are. Look to yourself and say, ‘I got this.’”
About Shelley Zalis
Shelley Zalis is the CEO of The Female Quotient, an equality services company that creates platforms for women and solutions for organizations committed to closing the gender gap in the workplace. Through its signature Equality Lounge® at key industry conferences around the globe, Zalis and the FQ are connectors for the largest global community of mission-driven business leaders. Zalis is a pioneer for online research, becoming the first female chief executive ranked in the research industry’s top 25. Today, Zalis works with Fortune 500 companies, impact organizations, and conscious leaders to advance equality in the workplace. Zalis authors a Forbes column that provides virtual mentorship for women in middle management.
Episode Outline
(01:27) Chief Troublemaker
(06:12) Shut That B***h Up in Your Head
(09:27) Data Driven: The Power to Tell New Stories
(13:40) Together We Rise: Closing the Mentorship Gap
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Sharon Kedar 00:02
Behind every pioneering idea, method, and device is a fellow human or humans, a trailblazer who is daring enough to ask the questions that push the boundaries and make the impossible possible. I'm Sharon Kedar, co-founder of Northpond Ventures, a multi-billion dollar science-driven venture capital firm, and the host of "Innovate and Elevate." In each episode, we'll have candid in-depth conversations with top doctors, scientists, and innovators about leading-edge discoveries and how they impact our lives. It's time for all of us to innovate and elevate. I am welcoming the amazing Shelley Zalis. Shelley Zalis is the CEO of The Female Quotient, a women-owned business working with companies and conscious leaders to curate experiences, thought leadership and solutions designed to achieve gender equality in the workplace and beyond. Shelley is a pioneer for online research becoming the first female chief executive ranked in the research industry's top 25. She also works with Fortune 500 companies, impact organizations, and conscious leaders to advance equality in the workplace. Shelley authors a "Forbes" column that provides virtual mentorship for women in middle management. Shelley, welcome to the podcast.
Shelley Zalis 01:21
Oh gosh, thank you.
Sharon Kedar 01:27
Is your title chief troublemaker?
Shelley Zalis 01:30
Yes.
Sharon Kedar 01:31
So can you tell us a little bit about, you know, and I know most people know you, but the evolution. How did you get here? How dare you? You know, why are we here and where are we going?
Shelley Zalis 01:43
So when I gave myself the name chief troublemaker it gave me permission to break all the rules that made no sense and create my own. I think that everybody in a company is important and valuable and has a role to play and everyone is equal. And it gives you that agency over yourself, not this hierarchical command-and-control structure. So that's why I think everyone is a chief blank officer and put your middle name in the middle and give yourself that accountability. So that's why I assigned myself my own title.
Sharon Kedar 02:14
As chief troublemaker, which is super awesome, I've never interviewed a chief troublemaker. I've never met a chief troublemaker who's been so open about it. If there were three rules that you wanted to break as chief troublemaker, what would they be?
Shelley Zalis 02:29
I mean, I've broken so many. I mean, I think I left the corporate world because the rules didn't work for me. I was tired of being the exception to the rules. I wanted to create the new norm. So, you know, Oscar Wilde says, "Be yourself because everyone else is taken." And when you look at complying or conforming to corporate rules, it's the nine to five, or in my day and age, it was coming in at eight in the morning and staying until nine o'clock at night being the goody-two-shoes. But what corporate handbook actually says, "You can't have a life outside of work. You can't pick up your kids"? But you would look over your shoulder no one else was leaving early so you're not supposed to leave early. So what rule did I break? I actually started the new trend and I left to pick up my children with no apology. Sorry, not sorry. That's what I needed to do. When I was 25 years old I thought I was the perfect employee and I was walking into my review thinking I'm going to get a raise and being applauded for being perfect. And the first three lines were the niceties that I'm smart and I'm a good team player, but the rest ripped me to shreds that I took too many clients to lunch, which I thought was a good thing, and that I pushed the team out of their comfort zone because I would say yes to clients and not just, you know, be an order taker. And apparently that was a bad thing. I was supposed to just follow the rules. And at the end of my review, you know, tears came down my eyes because I was not used to not being the A-student, you know? And my boss said to me, "Okay, sign the review form that you agree with your review." And my head said, "Sign," because I need this job. You know, my husband was a resident and you know, we were making no money at all. And my heart said, "No, I'm not going to sign. He's wrong." And I said, "So I'm not going to sign this review. I don't want to be an order taker. I actually want to grow this company and expand." And so as a result, I got demoted and this woman got put ahead of me and he said to me, "We're a research company and she's a researcher."
Sharon Kedar 04:40
You gave me chills. You gave me chills because I feel like so many women have that story that you got demoted for speaking out.
Shelley Zalis 04:46
But I was, I really didn't get it. I did not understand and it's actually quite funny, because we stayed friends, and years later, I was interviewed in this article, and and they, I told them this to. Worry about this review. And they said, Well, do you feel bad that you did that? And I said, No. I said, Well, let's call bill, and I want to ask Bill if he feels bad about giving me that terrible review. So we called bill and we interviewed him, and I said, Bill, do you feel bad about that terrible review you gave me? And he said, No. And I said, why? He said, Well, look at where you are today.
Sharon Kedar 05:23
Wow. That's the enlightened view.
Shelley Zalis 05:26
And you know, and it's so funny because I always say, there's two types of people, those that see what they see, which is status quo, what's in a textbook, what has been there before them, you know, you know what you know, rule followers. And then there are those that can see the possibilities. And to see the possibilities you need to sometimes color out of the lines. You know, it's the coloring book. You color in the lines, it shows you where to color. But then there are those people that are abstract artists that just want to see the possibilities but that's kind of scary.
Sharon Kedar 06:12
You have three kids, I have three kids but when we think about where we are, I mean I came off of, you know, my most recent episode, interviewed a now 17-year-old girl and, you know, my daughter who's almost 10. And it's like they're still dealing with, you know, some of the factors that will sort of ripple through to the workplace. So as chief troublemaker, like what three rules do we need to break now, like over the next 10 years or even year?
Shelley Zalis 06:40
Number one, don't follow your head. Follow your heart. Number two, there's always a solution. You just have to find it. So I never take no for an answer. There's always a yes. Number three, and this is from Sarah Jessica Parker, but she says, "Trying to be a man is a waste of a woman." So, you know, bring your feminine, don't hide it. And the other thing, you know, what rule do I own is there's no such thing as imposter syndrome. And I'm going to say this because my girlfriend Wendy Clark told me this. But she says, "You just got to shut that bitch up in your head and own it." And so the other day I wrote an article which was, let's get rid of the word empower. We don't say it with men.
Sharon Kedar 07:48
So speaking of real, Shelley, so I love this. Shut that bitch up in your head. Meaning are you basically saying that just because of where we are as a society, that there's this voice that most of us have when we've gotten to a certain point that doesn't go away and you just have to sort of take the leap and you know, bring her with you but like, have her be quiet.
Shelley Zalis 08:15
No, listen, we all, you know, first of all, men and women have that voice in their head. Men just in general tend to ignore it and women let that voice get louder. And that's just the insecurity that we have or that we've been conditioned to have. And we could go into the story because there's so many reasons we're conditioned to have that insecure feeling. And so you just got to shut that up because if you actually let your confidence voice be louder than your insecure voice, you would realize how amazing you are. Which is why I like the "you're in power." Instead of feeling like, "Oh, I have to wait for permission, I need a male ally." No, you need a leadership ally. Let's stop putting that gender role, like you said a minute ago, in place. Instead look to yourself and say, "I got this." Look in the mirror and say, "You go, girl. I mean look at how amazing you are and all the things that you are doing." But we always think we need to co-author, give someone else the credit. We never brag about ourselves like, you're badass.
Sharon Kedar 09:27
Shelley, like, I never see the no. How are we going to fix this? Like what do we do? And like why are we accepting this? Like why is this okay and how do we get rowdy enough to change it?
Shelley Zalis 09:39
Yeah, but that's why The Female Quotient our tagline, which to me is our headline is "Change the Equation. Close the Gap," and that's how you do it. You know, my whole career I've either been told, "Oh, you know, you're not qualified" or "it's not possible," or, "no one's done it before" or, "it's not the right time" or, you know, "it's too ahead of itself." And you kind of wonder, "well how would you know? You've never done it."
Sharon Kedar 10:12
That's innovation. But that's innovation generally. Like for any kind of innovation, say initially like "You're crazy." And then once you're adopted you have many, many people who take credit for that.
Shelley Zalis 10:25
Exactly. And, you know, it's the same thing when you look at VC funding and you keep seeing the headlines that women only get less than 2% of VC funding and women of color get less than 1%, 2%, 1%, 2%, 1%, 2%. You see that headline over and over and over and over and over and over again. My point is that no one, up until we started writing about it, questioned that number.
Sharon Kedar 10:56
They still don't question it enough. They still don't question enough.
Shelley Zalis 10:58
Okay, of course not because the data isn't there. So I call PitchBook and I say, "How did you come to these numbers? Where are they coming from?" Because actually when you look at female founders, they outperform male founders. You don't see those stories. I don't think it's conscious, we just keep repeating those numbers because that's the numbers that are out there. So when I went to look at the data, what I found was, A, women are more successful, female founders, than men. But the check writers, 95% plus of check writers are men. And so it's a natural default of where the check writing is going. And so when I said, "Show me the data by diverse check writers and what percentage then is going to women and women of color," that number is incredibly higher. But they don't break the data by demographics. There is no data. PitchBook doesn't look at it that way. That's why they don't have that data. And so actually I then wrote a paper because I write for "Time" and I write for a lot of articles and it just said, if you actually, I said we're asking the wrong question. The question to me is, if we know that female founders outperform male founders, why are we giving the power of the pen, the check to the men that are investing in the wrong companies? And you wouldn't then see the 2 and the 1%, you'd see 30% to women and women of color. And so it all is how you tell a story because you can pull any data you want. And so these are the kinds of things when you talk about consciousness and you talk about, "mice don't menstruate," we need to start reinforcing these stories over and over and over again. They just weren't told. And that is why storytelling is so important. And that's why AI is so important because right now junk in, junk out, or the intensity of the data, where we put the data, where the data's coming from is so important. Which is why we coined the phrase algorithm for equality because the algorithm in AI also matters. And so the more we have scientists that are, by the way, I don't want to say just women, but that have unbiased mindset, the more robust our data sets will be and the more conscious we'll be and the more we'll start seeing the articles around "mice don't menstruate" and start designing the right research and protocols and outputs around that.
Sharon Kedar 13:40
My belief is that we have a huge, and I know you do mentorship, but we have a huge gap in sort of the knowledge of mentorship and what does it take to start a company. So if I went back to my 20-year-old self and I was starting a company and you offered me, and this might sound crazy, but if you offered me a hundred thousand dollars or a year of Shelley Zalis, a year of Sharon Kedar, I would take the mentorship from what I know now. You know, I just think we have a huge gap in general for that mentorship and specifically when it comes to women. But I don't really see a lot of that mentorship happening. But it seems when we talk about the art of possibility, like the most important part to fill this gap of women-led companies.
Shelley Zalis 14:28
I've built three big movements, you know, I'm a movement maker and the way you build a movement is by always bringing everyone with you at the same time. Because, you know, you could be building something, but if you're alone, you're going to lose. And so when you have this idea and you bring everyone at the same time with you, you go forward and you go faster and you go further. And that's always been what I've done. Whether I was right or wrong, I brought everyone with me.
Sharon Kedar 14:56
I feel like let's do it together to your point. And that's the other thing, Shelley, like I always subscribe to Madeline Albright's, you know, of course, you know, the special place in hell for women that don't support other women. But honestly, along the journey there were women who were not like that. And so for me, I feel like it's all genders. You know, it's about doing it together. Like I think my business partners, you know, hugely feminist and it's about bringing everyone along.
Shelley Zalis 15:26
that's why, you know, we don't call them male allies. We call them leadership allies. Or why I say it's conscious leaders. It's not about gender, it's about doing it together. And for Madeleine albright's quote, we twisted it a little bit and just said that women that support other women deserve a place in heaven. Instead of talking about the negative, we always go to the positive.
Sharon Kedar 15:47
I love positivity. Me too.
Shelley Zalis 15:49
That's elevation. It's what you're all about. Elevating.
Sharon Kedar 15:53
Yeah, I love it.
Shelley Zalis 15:54
And it's all of us supporting one another. and that's how we go to the next level. And it's just so, it just feels so good. And it's why I started with the Girls' Lounge just to be, you know, the opposite of boy is girl, the opposite of club is lounge. If there's a boys' club now there's a Girls' Lounge, because I never had girlfriends in business. You know, in my age we all stuck our heels in each other's heads and pushed each other down because it was such a scarcity of jobs at the top. And I just want to give back with generosity what I wish I had my entire career, which was girlfriends in business. I mean, that's just, that's joy, you know? Whether it's competitive categories or not, to have girlfriends supporting each other and to get advice from women who have been there, done that, bits and bites of advice is the best thing you could ever ask for. I mean, look at how we found each other.
Sharon Kedar 16:53
Yeah, I love it. And the first big event that I went to with a lot of women was when I was at the stock exchange for the investor panel and I almost didn't attend, you know, and I'm sure there's other women out there too who are like hiding for various reasons. For me, it was like, I just stood out too much and it was like, three kids, this job, it's like, it just became harder to be in that role. So I adopted the hiding pattern, but I really felt like I found my people, like my soul sisters at the stock exchange. I still think, by the way, I said, you know, to be continued, but I said on the stock exchange floor that I give us an F when it comes to women's health. The moderator asked and everyone laughed. But it's like, you know, one thing that I know about you too is like keeping it real and also leveling up because women deserve better. And I always say that women's health is everyone's health. Everyone has, you know, a mom, everyone has, you know, someone in their life who is female. But I just am so grateful. This is like the best birthday present ever to interview you. I don't think I'll ever forget it. I appreciate you. I hope to spend more time with you and you know, just thank you for doing what you do so that when people like me wake up, you know, for whatever the reason is, we can find you and know that like we're not alone. And it's so, so special and appreciated.
Shelley Zalis 18:16
And I just want to say thank you because I feel so much better for having you in my life. And so you are a special gift to me. So thank you so much for having me today, but every day in your life.
Sharon Kedar 18:33
Thank you for tuning in. Please connect with me, Sharon Kedar on LinkedIn for additional innovative content. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to like it and don't forget to subscribe to the channel by clicking the button below this video. The views and opinions of the hosts and podcast guests are their own professional opinions and may not represent the views of Northpond Ventures.
About Your Host
Sharon Kedar, CFA, is Co-Founder of Northpond Ventures. Northpond is a multi-billion-dollar science-driven venture capital firm with a portfolio of 60+ companies, along with key academic partnerships at Harvard’s Wyss Institute, MIT’s School of Engineering, and Stanford School of Medicine. Prior to Northpond, Sharon spent 15 years at Sands Capital, where she became their first Chief Financial Officer. Assets under management grew from $1.5 billion to $50 billion over her tenure, achieving more than 30x growth. Sharon is the co-author of two personal finance books for women. Sharon has an MBA from Harvard Business School, a B.A. in Economics from Rice University, and is a CFA charterholder. She lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband, Greg, and their three kids.
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FAQs
What is imposter syndrome?
On Innovate & Elevate, Shelley Zalis discusses imposter syndrome as the experience of doubting your abilities or feeling undeserving of success despite evidence of achievement. The conversation explores why high-performing women often experience these feelings.
Why do successful women still struggle with self-doubt?
On Innovate & Elevate, Shelley Zalis explains that self-doubt can affect even highly accomplished people. The discussion explores how cultural expectations, workplace environments, and internal narratives can shape confidence over time.
How can women overcome imposter syndrome?
In this Innovate & Elevate conversation, Shelley Zalis encourages women to challenge limiting beliefs, recognize their accomplishments, and become more comfortable owning their expertise and experience.
Is imposter syndrome really the problem?
On Innovate & Elevate, Shelley Zalis questions whether imposter syndrome itself is always the root issue. The discussion explores how systems, expectations, and messaging can influence confidence and belonging.
Why do women hesitate to speak up at work?
On Innovate & Elevate, Shelley Zalis discusses how workplace dynamics and social expectations can affect whether women feel comfortable sharing ideas, taking risks, or advocating for themselves.
How does confidence affect leadership?
In this Innovate & Elevate discussion, Shelley Zalis explains that confidence often influences decision-making, visibility, communication, and leadership opportunities.
What role does self-worth play in professional success?
On Innovate & Elevate, Shelley Zalis discusses how self-worth can shape career decisions, ambition, and willingness to pursue opportunities.
Why are conversations around women and leadership changing?
On Innovate & Elevate, Shelley Zalis explains that more women are redefining leadership, challenging traditional expectations, and creating space for more inclusive conversations around success.
What can women do to build confidence over time?
On Innovate & Elevate, Shelley Zalis encourages women to focus on action, community, and recognizing progress rather than waiting to feel perfectly confident before moving forward.