http://www.beyondthebarriersacademy.com/

Beyond the Barriers Academy, London (2026)

11/06/2026

Female founders do not under-ask because they lack ambition.

They often under-ask because they have been conditioned to carry more and expect less.

Less funding.

Less support.

Less visibility.

Less permission.

Less room to take up space before they have proved themselves beyond question.

And for female founders, that conditioning has commercial consequences.

It shapes the raise.

The pricing.

The pitch.

The negotiation.

The room she enters.

The size of the opportunity she allows herself to claim.

This is why visibility is not vanity.

And asking is not arrogance.

They are commercial infrastructure.

When female founders are underfunded, under-networked and under-sponsored, telling them to be more confident is not the answer.

The ecosystem needs redesigning.

And the internalised beliefs shaped by that ecosystem need to be rewired.

Because structural barriers do not stay external.

They become the story a founder tells herself about what is possible.

Not because she is not capable.

But because she has learned to ask from the version of herself that had to survive.

Not the version of herself that is ready to lead, build and own more.

Where have you seen this play out?

In the ask, the pitch, the price or the room?

10/06/2026

On Monday evening, I had the privilege of attending the launch of the UK Chapter of Women4Cyber Foundation at the Luxembourg Embassy in London.

It was an inspiring evening bringing together leaders, innovators, allies and advocates committed to increasing the representation of women in cybersecurity and technology.

One of the highlights for me was finally meeting Patrícia Souza in person after years of being connected through our shared EY network. It’s a reminder that some of the most meaningful professional relationships can begin online and grow into genuine connections.

A message that resonated throughout the evening was one I often share in my leadership and inclusion work: diversity is not a nice-to-have. It is a business imperative.

Diverse teams challenge thinking, drive innovation and help organisations identify risks and opportunities that others may miss. Yet women’s representation in cybersecurity is declining, and that should concern us all.

I was particularly struck by the discussion around AI and emerging technologies. If we want to reduce bias in the systems we build, we need more women involved in creating them.

Thank you to everyone who organised such a fantastic event and to the speakers who shared their insights. It was wonderful to connect with so many passionate leaders, including Patrícia Souza, Monica Stancu, Asim Khwaja, Karo Voss and to hear the support of HRH Crown Princess Katarina of Serbia for initiatives that empower women to lead, innovate and shape the future.

Progress doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when people come together, create opportunities and actively champion inclusion. That’s exactly what I witnessed on Monday evening.

09/06/2026

Thank you Faust and Founders Rise for creating such a powerful and insightful report.

https://therisereport.co.uk

The Rise Report 2026 is important because it does something many reports don't.

It listens.

Not just to the numbers, but to the lived reality behind them.

2,225 female founders contributed to this report, representing over £1 billion in turnover and 9,300 jobs. That is not a small sample of ambition. That is a serious economic force.

What stood out to me most:

Female founders do not need fixing.

The ecosystem needs redesigning.

The data shows women are ambitious, commercially focused and building businesses with real potential. 53% define long-term success as stability and profitability. 38% define it as scale and exit. 28% include social impact. 21% include flexibility, wellbeing and self.

That is a sophisticated definition of success.

Not smaller ambition.

A more integrated one.

And yet, the barriers remain deeply structural.

45% identify access to funding as a primary barrier. Public and private funding processes are described in the report as opaque, time-consuming, biased and misaligned with the realities many women are navigating.

Childcare, caregiving, network gaps, visibility and loneliness are not side issues.

They shape capacity.

They shape decision-making.

They shape how much energy a founder has left to build, raise, lead and scale.

This is where the conversation needs to deepen.

Because structural barriers do not stay external.

Over time, they can become internalised.

They can start to shape what women believe is available to them, how much they ask for, how visible they become, and how much pressure they carry alone.

That is why spaces, networks and communities matter so much.

Not because women need more fixing, confidence-building or encouragement.

But because women need environments that stop making them carry structural barriers as personal limitations.

The report makes one thing very clear:

Female founders are already building.

Already leading.

Already creating economic value.

The question is not whether women have what it takes.

The question is what becomes possible when the systems, capital, networks and rooms around them finally match the scale of their ambition.

04/06/2026

On paper, everything looks right.

The numbers. The team. The market.

And there is a level just beyond the one you are operating at that you cannot quite step into. A round you keep almost going for. A visibility you keep almost claiming. Something keeps holding it half a step away.

For years, the explanation was the glass ceiling. Something above you, built by someone else.

Part of that is real. But there is a second ceiling, and almost nobody names it.

It is not above you.

It is inside you.

It is the identity that formed across every room you had to earn your way into. The one that learned to over-prepare. To wait until you were certain. To soften the ask.

I watched this pattern form in the women I worked alongside at . I see the same pattern now in the female founders building extraordinary businesses today. Women who have built something most people only talk about building, and who still expand, then quietly contract back to what feels safe.

That identity got you here. It is not a flaw. It worked.

But it has a ceiling built into it. And no amount of effort lifts it, because effort was never what held it in place.

A ceiling someone else built is hard to move on your own.

A ceiling inside you is yours.

It was never permanent. It was only ever familiar.

And what is familiar can be rewired.

If this names something you have been carrying, my DMs are open.

19/05/2026

Seven questions. Seven minutes.

And for most women who take the Identity Lag Audit, one immediate realisation:

Something is not adding up.

Because they have done everything that was supposed to help.

The leadership programmes.
The coaching.
The qualifications.
The frameworks.

And still, they keep arriving at the same invisible ceiling.

Not because they are incapable.

Because their success has outgrown the identity that created it.

That is what identity lag looks like.

The audit is not designed to tell you what is wrong with you.

It is designed to show you where the gap is between the leader you have become and the identity still driving you from the inside.

Because you cannot shift what you cannot see.

And once you can see it, everything changes.

Comment IDENTITY below.

I will send it to you privately.

18/05/2026

For the first time in eleven years of McKinsey research, women are less interested in promotion than men.

The headline is being read as an ambition problem.

It is not.

The same report shows something the headline buries.

When women receive the same support as men - sponsorship, manager advocacy, access to stretch opportunities - the gap disappears.

Which means the ambition was never missing.

What changed is the calculation.

Sixty per cent of senior-level women are experiencing burnout.

Not because they care less.

Because they have spent years in environments that required them to prove what their peers were simply assumed to deserve.

The extra scrutiny when they were new.

The higher standard that never quite moved.

Work that was excellent, and still had to prove itself again tomorrow.

At some point, the body keeps score.

And when a senior woman finally slows down, steps back, or quietly opts out, it gets filed under ambition.

Of lack thereof.

It should be filed under evidence.

Evidence of what it costs to operate at the highest level inside a system that was not built with you in mind.

The organisations that understand this distinction are the ones building cultures that retain their best people.

The ones that don’t will keep calling it a pipeline problem.

And losing their pipeline in the process.

Source: McKinsey and LeanIn.Org, Women in the Workplace 2025, published December 2025.

Follow for more on what the evidence actually says about women, identity, and leadership.

15/05/2026

The Identity Lag.

It is the gap between the leader you have become and the identity you are still operating from.

You have done the work.

Hit the targets.

Delivered at a standard that was never in question.

Earned the rooms, the title, the respect of the people around you.

But internally, something has not caught up.

You still over-prepare for meetings you could lead in your sleep.

Still qualify what you say before you say it.

Still feel the pull to justify taking up space that is already yours.

This is not imposter syndrome.

It is not a confidence problem.

It is a lag.

The external evidence has moved.

The internal story has not.

And at senior level, that gap is not just uncomfortable.

It is the invisible constraint on everything you are trying to build next.

The good news: a lag can be closed.

Not through more proof.

Not through more effort.

Through identity work, at the level where the story was formed.

The subconscious.

Save this if it names something you have been carrying.

14/05/2026

A belief is just a thought you've thought a lot.

Not a fact. Not your personality. Not who you are.

A thought you've repeated - often unconsciously - until it felt like truth.

For high-performing women at senior level, the belief running loudest usually sounds something like this:

I need to keep proving myself, even though the evidence is already there.

I am not ready yet - even though I have been ready for longer than I know

If I slow down, my ambition will be questioned - so I keep going until there is nothing left

These beliefs didn't come from nowhere.

They came from environments that rewarded them.

Rooms where you had to earn what others were simply assumed to deserve.

Standards that moved when you got close.

Work that was excellent, and still had to prove itself again tomorrow.

The belief formed as a survival strategy.

And it worked.

You got the results.
The title.
The rooms.

The problem is that the belief is still running.

And at the level you're now operating at, it is no longer protecting you.

It is the ceiling.

12/05/2026

You are in the room. You have earned the room.

And you are still waiting to feel like you belong in it.

I know that feeling. Not because I’ve researched it

Because I carried it for years.

And I have spent years since then working with some of the most accomplished women I have ever met.

Senior Partners. C-suite leaders. Founders who have built things most people only talk about building.

The same pattern appears, almost without exception.

The achievement is real.

The evidence is undeniable.

But there is a gap between how far they have come and how fully they own it.

They sit with decisions longer than they know they need to.

They prepare for rooms they have already earned as if they have not earned them yet.

They hold back from visibility that would only accelerate what they are already building.

They expand, then quietly contract back to what feels safe.

Not because they are not ready.

Because something inside has not yet caught up with where they actually are.

There is a name for this.

Identity Lag.

It is what happens when your external success outgrows the identity still driving it from the inside.

Not a confidence issue.

Not imposter syndrome in the way most people use that term.

Something more structural. More specific.

And far more solvable than either of those labels suggests.

Because I kept seeing this pattern in the women I worked with, I created something to help locate it precisely.

The Identity Lag Audit.

Seven questions. Seven minutes.

Not to tell you what is wrong with you.

To show you exactly where the gap is, in your decisions, your visibility, your leadership, your wealth.

So you can finally see what has actually been running the show.

Because you cannot shift what you cannot see.

Comment IDENTITY below and I will send you the link privately.

11/05/2026

Workplaces are not meritocracies.

Most of us were never told that directly.

We were told: work hard, deliver results, and progression follows.

So we worked hard. We delivered. We were exceptional.

And we quietly wondered why it still felt more effortful, more uncertain, more contingent than it seemed to be for others around us.

The research tells a different story.

Harvey Coleman spent years studying what actually drives career advancement. His findings:

Performance accounts for 10%.

Image accounts for 30%.

Exposure accounts for 60%.

I have spent years inside some of the world's most respected organisations, leading cultural transformation and watching how advancement actually worked at the highest levels.

The research is correct.

But there is something the headline numbers do not capture.

Image and exposure are not just parallel drivers of progression. They are also what determine whether high performance gets seen, recognised, and rewarded in the first place.

You can demonstrate outstanding judgement in spaces where your judgement is not yet assumed.

The 10% does not operate in isolation. It operates inside a context shaped almost entirely by the other 90%.

And here is what nobody says alongside the data.

Those percentages do not operate equally for everyone.

Image and exposure are navigated very differently depending on who you are, what you look like, and whether the systems you are moving through were designed with you in mind.

Understanding this is not defeatist.

It is the beginning of navigating with intention rather than working harder at something that was never the whole equation.

The question is not whether the system is fair.

The question is whether you are navigating it with an accurate picture of how it actually works.

Source: Harvey Coleman, Empowering Yourself

Which of these three numbers changes something for you?

Beyond the Barriers Academy

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