On this International Women’s Day, I want to share a story about a “trigger moment” in 2013 that made me realize how difficult it could be for women to succeed in male-dominated workplaces and industry.   

At the time, I was working in a very male-dominated industry, but that was changing.  Ironically, I was working for a female and I was very happy to have a small, but effective, team of women on our sales team that I had built the previous 3 or 4 years.  If you saw my previous post, where I consciously built our sales team utilizing a strengths-based approach, focusing on one’s talents, not on their race, sexual orientation, nationality, religion… We were very successful and the women on our team brought a much-needed level of experience and point of view that set us apart in the marketplace and in our management team. 

 In 2013, I had transitioned away from the sales role and into a newly created high-level retail development role.  Shortly after the transition, at a lunch with th...