Walking on Broken Glass : Navigating the aftermath of the glass ceiling

Nobody is coming to save us – so we’ll lead a revolution to save ourselves.

The ‘glass ceiling’ was just the first barrier – now comes the ‘glass cliff’ and the takedown playbook. The global rollback of DEI programs, the literal deletion of women in leadership and the entrenched assumption that only white men are competent leaders make one thing clear: institutional bias isn’t going anywhere and, in fact, is likely to go backwards.

In short, nobody is coming to save us. If women want to drive real change, we must claim our power and take control of our own destiny by banding together to make progress. The science is clear: more diverse teams drive better business outcomes.

Shannon Nutter and Julia C. Carreon know this from first-hand experience. They climbed to the C-suite at some of the world’s largest financial institutions while staying true to who they are. They built careers that weren’t just successful, they were fully their own. And along the way, they learned that what women really need isn’t another set of instructions for how to change themselves, it’s a playbook for how to identify and prepare for bad behavior, from women with lived experience of it.

Shannon Nutter is a global executive and board director. She has over two decades of leadership experience at organizations including Vanguard, Deloitte and General Motors.

Julia C. Carreon is a financial services executive with a reputation for technology transformations and execution excellence. She has led wealth management and advisor tech at Citibank and Wells Fargo.