Career Confidence

Pink-collar jobs, admin, customer service, reception, teaching, and nursing are overwhelmingly held by women. They're also the roles most exposed to AI disruption right now. And the data shows women are using AI less than men.

That's the leapfrog risk. And IBM's Chief Technology Officer for Australia and New Zealand wants every woman listening to understand it before the gap gets bigger.

In this episode of AI Ready Women, Georgie Hubbard and Lou Compagnoni sit down with Angelica Veness, the CTO who openly says she can't code, and built her career through human-centred design instead. Angelica breaks down what's actually happening in the AI economy, where women are getting locked out, and the exact steps to move from AI-cautious to AI-curious to AI-queen… starting this week.

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✨60 Day Bold Move Career Accelerator✨

Learn More here 👉 https://www.georgiehubbard.com/bold-moves

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📚 The Bold Move: https://www.theboldmovebook.com

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Connect with Me:

🔵 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgiehubbard/

🟪 Instagram: http://instagram.com/georgielhubbard

♦️Website: https://www.georgiehubbard.com

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Connect with Lou Compagnone:

🔵 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loucompagnone/

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Connect with Angelica Vaness:

🔵 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelica-veness-9866519/

🟣 Free AI Learning: https://skillsbuild.org

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In Today's Episode:

→ Why "I'm a CTO who can't code" is a strategic position, not a confession

→ The pink-collar exposure: which roles are most at risk and why women hold most of them

→ The leapfrog problem — graduates are entering the workforce already AI-fluent. Mid-career women cannot afford to wait.

→ Why the gender gap in AI isn't about coding skills anymore. It's about who's typing the prompts.

→ The "moments that matter" framework for designing AI that makes work better, not just cheaper

→ How IKEA retrained its entire contact centre as interior designers — and built a $1.4B revenue line doing it

→ Why rigid hiring practices are locking capable women out of the AI economy — and what needs to shift

→ How IBM and Food Ladder are using AI to put healthy food in front of hungry Australian kids

→ The exact starting move: one tool, one buddy, one week. How to begin before you feel ready.

If you've been waiting until you feel "AI ready" before you start, this episode is the reason to begin now.

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CHAPTERS

[00:00] Cold open — "I'm a CTO who can't code"

[00:30] Welcome to AI Ready Women

[01:50] From gym sales to IBM CTO: Angelica's non-linear path

[06:00] Why design thinking is the AI superpower

[09:30] The obligation to use AI, not just design it — and why LLMs are learning male questions

[12:30] SIGNAL 1: Dr Tara Behan's warning — concentrating pain into the human part of the system

[18:30] The moments-that-matter triangulation: executives, employees, customers

[20:00] Lou's Uber nightmare: what bad AI design feels like as a customer

[22:30] Expertise atrophy — what happens when humans stop using the muscle

[25:30] SIGNAL 2: How IKEA reinvented its contact centre as interior designers

[30:30] Pink-collar exposure: what women in task-based roles need to do right now

[36:00] The hiring problem: rigid briefs are locking women out of the AI economy

[42:30] SIGNAL 3: IBM × Food Ladder — AI for good in Australian schools

[48:50] AI Cautious → AI Curious → AI Queen: how to make the shift this week

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If this episode helped you, the kindest thing you can do is share it with one woman who needs to hear it — and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's how more women find the show. Your bold move is waiting. Go make it.

Georgie 💜

There are career lessons that change everything. And most women don't learn them until it's too late.

You've worked hard. You've stayed loyal. You've done everything right. But somewhere along the way, the rules changed. And nobody told you.

This episode is the live recording from Fearless & Future Ready, our Sisterhood Social event featuring three of Australia's most influential women in business and AI.

One of them has never had a set career plan. One spent 26 years at Telstra before becoming a CEO. One is driving AI adoption across 10,000 people. And all three sat in a room and told the truth.

This is the conversation most women don't get access to until it's too late.

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🟣 Want to Work With Me?

The 60 Day Bold Move Career Accelerator: https://www.georgiehubbard.com/bold-moves

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✨ Grab the Book

📚 The Bold Move: https://www.theboldmovebook.com

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Connect with Georgie:

🔵 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgiehubbard/

🟪 Instagram: http://instagram.com/georgielhubbard

♦️ Website: https://www.georgiehubbard.com

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Connect with Pam Caldwell:

🔵 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loucompagnone/

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Connect with our Panelists:

🔵 Fiona Hayes — CEO, 7-Eleven Australia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fiona-hayes-a80718b/

🔵 Julie Watkins — CPO, UniSuper: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-watkins/

🔵 Erin Ashton — AI Enablement Leader, EY: https://www.linkedin.com/in/efogg/

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What You'll Discover:

🟣 None of them felt ready when they got the role. They said yes anyway, and what made the difference wasn't confidence. It was the support network around them.

🟣 The real answer to the question every ambitious woman is afraid to ask, do you have to sacrifice everything to reach the top? Three C-suite women answered it honestly in the room.

🟣 How women stand out during uncertainty, and why the professionals who get noticed aren't always the hardest working, they're the most visible and the most willing to own a problem.

🟣 How these women created roles that didn't exist by making themselves known, speaking up, solving problems nobody asked them to solve, and taking ownership before they were given permission.

🟣 Julie Watkins has never had a set career plan. What she has instead — and why it's worked better than any plan ever could.

🟣 Fiona Hayes spent 26 years at Telstra, including 12 on the executive team, before becoming CEO of 7-Eleven in 2024. What she learned about making yourself impossible to overlook.

🟣 Erin Ashton is driving AI adoption across 10,000 people at EY. What she's seeing inside Australia's biggest organisations right now — and what it means for your career.

🟣 How Australia's biggest companies are thinking about AI — and what it actually means for the women inside those organisations.

🟣 Why your support network is not a nice to have. It is the career decision that changes everything.

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Meet the Panellists:

Fiona Hayes — CEO & Managing Director, 7-Eleven Australia 26 years at Telstra including 12 on the executive team. Appointed CEO of 7-Eleven in 2024. A leader who built her career by showing up, solving problems and making herself impossible to overlook.

Julie Watkins — Chief People Officer, UniSuper Senior executive across sectors, geographies and boards. Has never had a set career plan. Passionate about the role executive women play in shaping the future of work.

Erin Ashton — AI Enablement Leader, EY Oceania Driving AI adoption across 10,000 people at EY. Helping organisations move from talking about AI to actually using it with confidence and impact.

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If this episode resonated, share it with one woman in your life who needs to hear it right now.

The future belongs to the women who are ready for it. Let's make sure that's you.

Georgie 💜

AI is changing every career, and the CEO of Microsoft just told us something that should change how you think about yours. Plus what the CEO of 7-Eleven, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, and the Head of AI at EY are really saying about the future of work, AI for women, and staying relevant in the age of AI

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✨May’s 60 Day Bold Move Career Accelerator✨

Learn More here 👉 https://www.georgiehubbard.com/apply/may

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In this episode, Georgie and Lou debrief two major events: Lou's experience at the Microsoft AI Tour, where Satya Nadella delivered a keynote on the future of agentic AI, and Georgie's 10th Sisterhood Social featuring Fiona Hayes (CEO of 7-Eleven Australia), Julie Watkins (Chief People Officer at UniSuper), and Erin Ashton (Head of AI Enablement at EY).

What they discovered was fascinating. And a little bit unsettling. Because while some women are confidently experimenting with AI and feeling ahead of the curve, others are quietly falling behind, confused about what tools to learn, overwhelmed by the pace of change, and wondering if they're about to become irrelevant.

This episode is about understanding that gap. It's about knowing what's actually happening inside organisations right now. It's about where to focus your energy. And it's about making sure you don't burn out while trying to keep up.

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Timestamps

00:00 The CEOs you need to hear from right now

00:45 Inside Georgie's Sisterhood Social: Fiona Hayes, Julie Watkins & EY

03:37 The two types of women in every AI conversation

04:47 Adopting AI vs adapting because of it (Lou's framework)

07:13 Why most organisations are still scratching the surface

11:10 The cognitive load crisis: why AI is leaving women exhausted

15:59 What Georgie's wearable revealed about AI and sleep

18:21 Satya Nadella: AI is the new fax-to-email shift

19:57 The New Zealand Telehealth story: AI holding people while they wait

23:45 Why human skills now matter more than technical skills

25:59 The question that made the whole room go silent

31:15 Microsoft, neural implants, and resisting becoming machines

32:51 Why your zigzag career is your greatest asset

35:05 Why sticking with one AI tool is the smartest move

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📚 The Bold Move: https://www.theboldmovebook.com

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Connect with Me:

🔵 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgiehubbard/

🟪 Instagram: http://instagram.com/georgielhubbard

♦️Website: https://www.georgiehubbard.com

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Connect with Lou Compagnone:

🔵 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loucompagnone/

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🟣 What you'll learn:

Why Satya Nadella compared AI to the shift from fax to email — and what that means for your career

Adopting AI vs adapting because of it — Lou's framework for where you actually are right now

What Fiona Hayes, Julie Watkins, and Erin Ashton (EY) said about staying relevant in the age of AI

The cognitive load crisis: why AI is leaving women exhausted, and how Georgie's wearable proved it

Why human skills now matter more than technical skills — especially if you don't come from tech

The question that made the whole room go silent: can you have a family AND a senior career?

Why sticking with one AI tool beats jumping between them

The uncomfortable truth: why your zigzag career might be your greatest asset

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Your Next Step:

If this episode resonated with you, reach out to Lou and me on LinkedIn. Let us know your biggest takeaway. Share what you're learning. Tell us how you're positioning yourself for the future.

And if you know an incredible woman working in AI, tech, or digital who should be on this podcast, send us her name. We want to amplify women's voices. We want representation. We want you in the room.

The future belongs to the women who are ready for it.

Let's make sure that's you.

Georgie 💜

The people struggling at Shopify weren't behind on the tools. They had lost the ability to think clearly.

We're doing more than ever before. But there's a cost. And women are paying it first.

Rachel Garrett spent seven years inside Shopify's AI transformation leading 800 people across 12 countries through one of the most aggressive AI adoptions any company has ever run. What she found changed how she thinks about work entirely.

In this episode, Rachel joins Georgie and Lou to talk about AI Brain Fry, the cognitive burnout that's quietly hitting the highest AI users hardest. Why the judgment layer is now the most valuable skill you have. And why the future belongs not to those with the best tools, but to those with the most humanity.

This is the conversation your organisation isn't having. Yet.

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✨60 Day Bold Move Career Accelerator✨

Learn More here 👉 https://www.georgiehubbard.com/bold-moves

____________

📚 The Bold Move: https://www.theboldmovebook.com

____________

Connect with Me:

🔵 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgiehubbard/

🟪 Instagram: http://instagram.com/georgielhubbard

♦️Website: https://www.georgiehubbard.com

🌀Pivotr: https://www.pivotr.com

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Connect with Lou Compagnone:

🔵 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loucompagnone/

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Connect with Rachel Garrett:

🔵 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-garrett-38717522/

♦️Website: https://herefortherightreasons.com/

⭕️ AI Level -Up Course - https://skillsbuild.org/ai-level-up

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In Today's Episode:

🟣 Why Anthropic is now hiring people with humanities backgrounds over technical skills, and what that signals about the future of AI careers.

🟣 AI Brain Fry: the new term from BCG describing the mental fatigue, fog, and slower decision-making caused by cognitive overload from excessive AI use.

🟣 Why marketing, HR, IT, and finance professionals are experiencing the highest rates of AI Brain Fry, and what that means for women in those roles.

🟣 The paradox of AI: how it promises to ease our workload but is actually creating burnout at unprecedented rates.

🟣 Why the action layer has been replaced by AI, but the judgment layer must remain sharp, and how that's creating entirely new cognitive demands on senior leaders.

🟣 Why 95% of people think they're self-aware, but only 10–15% actually are, and why that gap is costing organisations billions.

🟣 The business case for humanity: 22% higher revenue and 34% higher profitability from leaders who are self-aware.

🟣 The concept of consciousness hygiene, why social media and AI are hijacking our inner world and what to do about it.

🟣 Rachel's story of how shortening her workdays actually led to promotion after promotion at Shopify, not career stagnation.

🟣 Why 70% of AI transformations fail because of people and process, not technology.

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Timestamps:

00:00 Open — what Shopify's AI transformation really did to people

00:45 Welcome to AI Ready Women — today's theme: Humans First

01:30 Meet Rachel Garrett — 7 years inside Shopify's AI revolution

05:15 How AI showed up inside Shopify — and what nobody expected

07:00 Signal 1 — Anthropic is hiring for humanity, not technical skills

09:10 How leaders should be supporting exhausted teams right now

11:10 The Human.AI framework — the 7 dimensions that actually matter

12:20 Signal 2 — AI Brain Fry and the BCG report changing everything

13:25 The judgment layer — why senior roles just got cognitively harder

15:15 Georgie's honest confession — doing more, resting less

16:10 What actually works for decompressing your brain

19:55 Signal 3 — Is AI hijacking your consciousness?

22:00 The bath house moment — are we too addicted to dopamine?

23:50 The stress stat that reframes everything

25:20 Seasons of work — how to structure for sustained performance

31:15 Practical micro-moments to protect your cognitive performance

35:25 Why stopping work made Rachel get promoted faster

37:25 Rachel's honest AI tool recommendations

40:20 Final thoughts — humans first, always

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Your Next Step:

If this episode resonated with you, reach out to Rachel, Lou, and me on LinkedIn. Let us know your biggest takeaway. Share what you're doing to protect your cognitive performance. Tell us how you're building your human operating system alongside your AI skills.

And if you know an incredible woman working in AI, tech, or digital who should be on this podcast, send us her name. We want to amplify women's voices. We want representation. We want you in the room.

The future belongs to the women who are ready for it.

Let's make sure that's you.

Georgie 💜

Most ambitious women haven't touched their LinkedIn profile in years — and then wonder why opportunities aren't coming their way.

They think they need to post more, apply more, hustle harder. But that's not the problem.

After 12 years in recruitment, reviewing thousands of profiles, I can tell you: recruiters can't find you. And when they do, your profile is telling them the wrong story.

In this episode, I'm showing you the 4 signals that actually determine whether you show up in recruiter searches, and what to do when you don't.

By the end, you'll know exactly how to check your own LinkedIn visibility score in 60 seconds.
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🔵 LinkedIn Visibility Tool

Find Out Why Recruiters Scroll Past You 👉 https://www.georgiehubbard.com/linkedin-audit
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✨Grab the Book
📚 The Bold Move: https://www.theboldmovebook.com
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Connect with Me:
🔵 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgiehubbard/
🟪 Instagram: http://instagram.com/georgielhubbard
♦️Website: https://www.georgiehubbard.com
🌀Pivotr: https://www.pivotr.com
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What You'll Discover:

🟣 Why your LinkedIn profile is probably working against you, and how to fix it before it costs you your next opportunity.

🟣 The 4 LinkedIn Signals Framework: Clarity, Keywords, Signal, and Delivery. What they are, why they matter, and which ones you're most likely missing.

🟣 Signal #1: Clarity. Does your profile immediately communicate who you are and what you do? Not just your job title or company, but your actual value.

🟣 Signal #2: Keywords. Does your profile contain the language that recruiters are actually searching for? Why internal jargon and company specific titles are making you invisible.

🟣 Signal #3: Signal. Does your profile communicate the seniority level you're targeting? Why your profile needs to be written for the role you want, not the role you have.

🟣 Signal #4: Delivery. Does your profile say what you deliver, not just what you do? The difference between describing tasks and demonstrating impact.

🟣 Why 80% of profiles fail the visibility test, and how to know if yours is one of them.

🟣 The real story of a senior woman with 15 years of experience who hadn't heard from a recruiter in over a year. What was wrong with her profile, what we changed, and why two recruiters reached out within three weeks.

🟣 How to access the free LinkedIn Visibility Tool that scores your profile across the 4 signal framework and gives you a personalised diagnosis in under 60 seconds.

🟣 The three questions you need to ask yourself right now to know if your LinkedIn profile is holding you back.

🟣 Why this isn't about capability, it's about packaging. And packaging is fixable.
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Open your LinkedIn right now. Look at your headline. Ask yourself: Does it say what I deliver or just what I do? If a recruiter searched for someone like me, would these words come up? Does this sound like the level I'm ready for, or the level I'm at?

If you answered no to any of those questions, your profile is probably working against you. And the good news is, it's fixable.

Use the free LinkedIn Visibility Tool in the link below. Paste in your headline and the first few sentences of your about section, and get your personalised diagnosis in under 60 seconds.

The right opportunities are out there for you. But if your profile isn't visible to the people making the decisions, they will never reach you.

You are not behind. You are just under-positioned. And we can fix that.

Georgie 💜