08/03/2026
She walked into her CEO’s office and said, “I’m done. I can’t do this for one more minute.”
Single mother. Director of marketing at IBM. First master’s degree under her belt. Dream job by every measure. And she was completely burnt out.
That moment became the turning point for everything Megan Dalla-Camina has built since.
Because when she started to rebuild, she started asking a different question. Not “what’s wrong with me?” but “what’s wrong with this system?” She looked around at the corporate structures she’d spent 18 years navigating, structures designed by and for a world that no longer exists, and she saw what so many women feel but can’t name.
So she named it. In four books. In a global organisation called Women Rising that has now worked with over 10,500 women in 68 countries. And in a conversation with me on Beyond the Keynote that I think every person, woman or man, needs to hear.
She said something that I haven’t been able to shake: “Once women realise it’s not just them and they’re not the problem, everything shifts.”
That’s the moment. That’s where the empowerment actually begins. Not in fixing yourself. In seeing the system clearly for the first time.
And Megan is quick to say: men aren’t the problem either. She runs a male allies program. Hundreds of men come in and say the same thing: “I just didn’t know. I couldn’t put words to it.” The system is the problem. And it takes all of us to change it.
This International Women’s Day, the theme is Balance the Scales. Megan has spent 13 years doing exactly that. Her voice is one you want in your ear.
Beyond the Keynote. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Link in comments.
