Women in Leadership Newsletter
December 19th
As December draws to a close already, it is a time for reflection and celebration of the successes of the past year, along with excitement for what is ahead.
Women in Leadership has an incredible year planned, and we are thrilled to share what is coming next.
We will kick off the year by opening applications for our Spring Mentorship Cohort on January 2. We are joining forces with other organizations to create our largest, most vibrant, and truly life-changing mentorship program yet. Please stay tuned for application links and additional details.
February will be a busy and energizing month as we participate in Tech Week. We are planning both a Prompt Engineering Workshop and a Vibe Coding Workshop on February 3 in the Lehi area. Final details are still being confirmed, and we will share updates soon.
In addition, we have a Lunch and Learn planned that focuses on decoding common career patterns that hold us back, along with a community hike to connect, reflect, and recharge together.
Event Spotlight: Designing your Voice with Lauren Mason Carris
At a recent Women in Leadership Lunch & Learn, participants were invited into a different kind of conversation about leadership, communication, and authority.
Most presentations on Voice and Authority focus on confidence, volume and projection, on being more polished, or more performative. Lauren’s session centered on something different, something deeper and often overlooked:
learning to trust your inner voice before the room does.
In her talk, Design Your Voice: Storytelling Patterns, Lauren began with stillness, not slides. She opened with a short grounding meditation, giving the room space to slow down, arrive fully, and reconnect with themselves. The pause served as a powerful reminder that authority doesn’t begin when we speak, it begins when we are present.
Presence, she emphasized, is the foundation of being heard, especially for women who have learned to manage tone, soften language, or shrink themselves to fit someone else’s definition of “professional.”
From there, Lauren introduced a simple yet effective storytelling framework she uses with leaders across industries:
Pain. Problem. Promise.
Pain centers the audience and what they are experiencing.
Problem identifies the deeper cause beneath the surface.
Promise points to what becomes possible when the pattern shifts.
The framework, drawing on human-centered design, helped clarify how leaders can move from sharing information to telling stories that build trust, create alignment, and inspire action.
Lauren applied the framework to rephrase a common myth about Women’s Leadership: imposter syndrome is a flaw.” This reframe, through the practice of the 3P Pattern, addressed something many women recognize immediately, but rarely name out loud:
“Imposter syndrome isn’t a personal flaw, it’s a cultural mirror.”
By reframing self-doubt not as a lack of confidence, but as a response to narrow leadership ideals and outdated definitions of credibility, Lauren ignited a refined sense of confidence, inspiration, and momentum within the audience. By changing the template, we could practice real being the change we want to see.
Her session also explored how posture, breath, and grounded movement shape not only how others perceive us, but how we experience our own authority. When leaders embody their story, they no longer need to convince the room, they invite it in.
One line that resonated strongly throughout the room was:
“Authenticity isn’t a personality trait, it’s a permission structure.”
The takeaway was clear: designing your voice isn’t about fixing yourself or performing confidence. It’s about creating the internal and cultural conditions where your real voice can be trusted.
The session concluded with reflection, leaving participants with a renewed connection to the voice they already have, and a clearer sense of how and when they want to use it.
Because designing your voice isn’t about becoming someone else (that’s the imposter!).
It’s about widening the template, and choosing to speak from truth instead of pressure.