B The Way Forward

B The Way Forward

B The Way Forward is an action-driven conversation about systemic change—how it happens, who drives it, and what it really takes to make an impact. Hosted by AnitaB.org CEO, and battle-tested leader in tech and equity, Brenda Darden-Wilkerson, the show gives listeners the tools they need to step off the sidelines and shape the future themselves. B The Way Forward Season 2 kicked off with a central question: do you change the system from within, or do you have to break it to build something better? Now, in our second half of the season we'll celebrate something women often feel they can’t admit to in the tech world - failure. Through candid conversations with leaders at the top of the tech industry the audience gets authentic, actionable advice that they can apply to their own careers. Thoughtful, incisive and full of Brenda’s warmth and humor, B the Way Forward is human conversations in a digital world. --- At AnitaB.org, our mission is to enable and equip women technologists with the tools, resources, and knowledge they need to thrive. Through innovative programs and initiatives, we empower women to chart new paths, better prepared to lead, advance, and achieve equitable compensation. Because when women succeed, they uplift their communities and redefine success on their terms, both professionally and personally. --- Connect with AnitaB.org Instagram - @anitab_org Facebook - /anitab.0rg LinkedIn - /anitab-org And for more ways that you can be the way forward visit anitab.org --- Our guests contribute to this podcast in their personal capacity. The views expressed in this interview are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology or its employees (“AnitaB.org”). AnitaB.org is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of the information provided in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute legal or other professional advice or services.

Episodes

It’s Not the End - How Nina Sossamon-Pogue Turned Life’s Worst Chapters Into a Playbook for Success

September 3, 2025 • 39 mins
Nina Sossamon-Pogue was a member of the US National Gymnastics Team, an Emmy-winning news anchor, and a tech executive who helped guide a startup to a successful IPO.But Nina’s incredible career wasn’t a straight line - it was a series of reinventions born from a series of devastating setbacks.  An injury that ended her athletic career. A layoff at the height of her popularity as a newscaster. A tragedy that made being in front ...
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The 24 Year Overnight Success - Lisa Gelobter on Delayed Degrees and Disrupting Systems

August 20, 2025 • 40 mins
Silicon Valley loves the story of a College Dropout Founder - the genius who was just too brilliant for school. The implication of these stories is that of course they could graduate if they wanted to… it just wouldn’t be worth their time. But for every one of those, there are countless others who leave not because they want to, but because they have to. Computer scientist, Technologist, and tEQuitable Founder, Lisa Gelobter was...
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Fear is Just an Emotion - Betsy Tong on Resilience, Reinvention and Finding Your Voice

August 6, 2025 • 44 mins
Disclaimer: This episode includes brief use of strong language. As part of our mission to support real, lived experiences in tech, we’ve chosen to preserve the authenticity of this conversation. 2023 was not a great year for Betsy Tong. Only three years after losing her mother to cancer, Betsy found herself navigating a series of personal challenges - a sick father, the end of a long-term relationship - and sudden unemployment at ...
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From Micro Failures to Success - McKinsey & Co’s Lareina Yee on Succeeding After Setback

July 23, 2025 • 45 mins
Lately, we’ve been talking to some of the most incredible women in Tech about some of the most non-incredible moments in their careers - stories of setbacks, mistakes that felt unrecoverable, and outcomes that seemed like failures.  We’ve been doing this because we want all of you in our community to know you’re not alone - this happens to all of us. We truly believe that you can learn some of the most important lessons from the ti...
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Maybe These Systems Shouldn’t Exist - AI Researcher Dr. Timnit Gebru Asks the Questions Others Won’t - Part II

July 9, 2025 • 44 mins
Welcome to B The Way Forward Interludes - a series of conversations that don’t necessarily fit in our regular season, but are just too good to not share. Dr. Timnit Gebru is one of the leading voices in AI research calling for more responsible and inclusive AI systems.  Or, as she puts it - “a technological future that serves our communities instead of one that is used for surveillance, warfare, and the centralization of power b...
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“It’s All Marketing” - Dr. Timnit Gebru on the Smoke and Mirrors of AI Hype - Part I

June 25, 2025 • 35 mins
Welcome to B The Way Forward Interludes - a series of conversations that don’t necessarily fit in our regular season, but are just too good to not share. Heard something about AI Lately? Have those two letters shown up in just about every app you use - whether you want them to or not? Yeah. Same. These days, it seems like  you can’t go an hour without hearing that Artificial Intelligence is going to radically remake our world. B...
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Do We Fold or Do We Fight - A CEO’s Lessons from One of Her Earliest Setbacks

June 11, 2025 • 44 mins
At 16, Shellye Archambeau already knew she wanted to be a CEO. And early in her career at IBM, after closing a massive deal with RiteAid, it felt like she was well on her way. But then, at the last minute, the deal fell through. Shellye felt utterly defeated - until a conversation with her husband helped her realize that there had been a failure … but that didn’t mean she was a failure. Shellye went on to have a thriving career ...
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You Can Walk Away - How Amanda Bickerstaff Found Her Way Back From Burnout

May 30, 2025 • 34 mins
Amanda Bickerstaff had a plan and a goal.  When she transitioned from being a teacher in NY to working in Ed Tech, she knew she wanted to make it to CEO - and that the only jobs she’d take would be the ones that would get her one step closer to the C-Suite. In the fall of 2019, at only 39 years old, she moved to Australia to make that goal a reality as the newly minted CEO of an Ed Tech Company whose founding CEO had needed to step...
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Not Everyone Gets a Seat at Your Table - How Dr. Rebecca Andersen Said Goodbye to Imposter Syndrome

May 14, 2025 • 46 mins
Today, as leader of the Talent Strategies program at the Berkeley lab, Dr. Rebecca Andersen has a thriving career in professional development. But back when she was in the middle stages of her career, a toxic work environment, and its effects on her, nearly derailed it all. On the one hand, from a job performance standpoint, she was killing it. She was at the top of her game, giving talks, winning awards, and leading her team to...
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Forget Failure, It’s All an Experiment - Vlada Bortnik on How Marco Polo Approaches Big Choices

April 30, 2025 • 40 mins
Marco Polo CEO, Vlada Borthnik, almost said no to being on our podcast. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a fan of AnitaB.org or didn’t believe in its mission, it was that we’d asked her to talk about failure… and Vlada almost totally rejects the notion of “failure” on principle. Instead, Vlada advocates for throwing away the binary lens of “success” and “failure” and instead to reframe things as experiments and their outcomes.  Because...
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When Your Dream Job Becomes a Nightmare - What April Christina Curley Learned From Being Let Go

April 17, 2025 • 42 mins
In 2014, former teacher turned recruiter, April Christina Curley, got offered her dream job - a major tech company asked her to come on board specifically to create a talent pipeline for overlooked tech talent at historically black colleges and universities. Without hesitation, April said yes, packed up her things, and moved from Baltimore to NY. At first, things were great - the program April helped create was a success. She was d...
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Seeing Things Through (Even When You Think You Failed) with Karen Catlin, Author of the Better Allies® Book Series

April 2, 2025 • 36 mins
The second half of season 2 is all about the view from the bottom: what does it feel like to fail, and more importantly, how do you come back from it? We’re creating a safe space for women tech leaders to talk about the worst day of their career — a project gone wrong, a lay-off that came out of nowhere, a startup that shutdown — and how they got through it. Because we never learned anything from the days it all went right.  To ki...
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The Secret Origin of AnitaB.org - Telle Whitney on Friendship with Anita Borg and Founding AnitaB.org

March 20, 2025 • 41 mins
Welcome to B The Way Forward Interludes - a series of conversations that don’t necessarily fit in our regular season, but are just too good to not share. This week, a very special episode for Women’s History Month.  Telle Whitney was already a trailblazing woman in the field of semiconductors when she moved to  Silicon Valley in the 1980s. Anita Borg had already made a name for herself in systems. The two met at a party and became...
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Be Fearlessly Authentic, Not a Jerk - Jeanne Sparrow on How to Communicate for the Good of All

March 12, 2025 • 41 mins
Over the first half of Season 2, we’ve been exploring the best ways to create meaningful change - and whether it happens within our systems or on the outside. But no matter which approach you take, you have to be able to effectively communicate with others  - and that can be hard, especially when you need to speak up in spaces that may not seem as open to hearing from you.  How do you read the room and communicate more strongly to...
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The Art of the Pitch: How BāKIT Box Founder Shelley Gupta Crafts a Winning Pitch

March 7, 2025 • 40 mins
Welcome to B The Way Forward Interludes - a series of conversations that don’t necessarily fit in our regular season, but are just too good to not share.  Today, we’re bringing you a conversation with one of our favorite kinds of people; A BFF. No, not a “best friend forever,” a Badass Female Founder.  Shelley Gupta took her own culinary and cultural curiosity and channeled it into BāKIT Box, a unique subscription service deliver...
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Coming Up on B The Way Forward: The Best Things I Learned From the Worst Day of My Career

February 26, 2025 • 1 min
It’s never been easy being a woman in tech. But now? When top tech execs say there’s "not enough masculine energy" in “the culture?” It’s a lot. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a show where women who’ve “made it” can share their inspiring success stories?  Sure. But this is not that show. Because we don’t need “nice,” we need honesty. And, if we’re being honest, failure can teach us even more than success. In the second half of B Th...
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The Environmental Impact of Your Chatbot Habit - Why it Might Be Time to Say Bye to the AI

February 12, 2025 • 46 mins
Here’s a question; how much water do you think a single query of ChatGPT consumes? What about Carbon Emissions? How many round trip flights between New York and San Francisco equal the Co2 emitted by training one Large Language Model? And maybe this is the most important one - how would you even figure those numbers out when the big AI companies don’t make them public? Concerns about AI’s impact on Climate Change aren’t new, but a...
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Is AI Going to Take My Job? Unpacking How Workers Are Fighting to Protect Their Careers

February 5, 2025 • 46 mins
Let’s start with the obvious - There is no putting the AI genie back in the bottle. And frankly, as an organization run by technologists and dedicated to advancing women in tech, we wouldn’t necessarily want to. We believe in the promise of technology. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot to be concerned about with how AI has been developing so far.  Near the top of that list for almost everyone is the question “Is AI going to...
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The Revolution Will Be Democratized - How the Working Families Party Uses Data and Tech to Fight for Change

January 29, 2025 • 38 mins
We started this season by asking what’s the best way to create real change - inside or outside of the established system? But sometimes it feels like the systems we’re trying to improve are just too entrenched; it can be hard to imagine any approach being successful. And there might not be anyplace where that feels more true than in our politics. But Jennifer Knox, the National Director of Organizing and Tech for the Working Famil...
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Being the Way Forward in the Face of Change - Brenda’s Advice for All of Us

January 22, 2025 • 32 mins
When Americans went to the polls in November of 2024 it felt like in many ways, alongside the presidential candidates, tech was at the top of the ticket. So what will advocacy in this world look like as Donald Trump begins his second term? And what can be done to ensure that the change we’ve worked so hard to create for women and non-binary folks around the country isn’t reversed?    To unpack those questions, and explore how activ...
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