The Brain Race is Rigged
Why parity can’t wait—and what real progress requires
In the evolving AI-first always-on economy fueled by data, speed, and machine intelligence, we’ve learned to adapt to fast. AI models evolve in months. Tech cycles close in weeks. Products iterate overnight.
And yet, .according to the latest Women in the Workplace 2024 report from McKinsey & Company), it will still take forty-eight more years for women’s leadership in corporate America to achieve equal representation, parity with men, in senior leadership roles.
Forty. Eight. Years.
My daughters are twenty-one and sixteen. They’ll be sixty-nine and sixty-four.
We’re not talking about a distant future. We’re talking about their entire working lives.
That’s not modernization. That’s malfunction.
The “brain race”—this century’s competition for innovation, impact, and institutional trust—isn’t about who’s smarter. It’s about who’s allowed to lead. And right now, too many of the best minds are still blocked by outdated systems and unconscious bias.
Bridging the Gender Gap at AI Speed
In this short video, I ask if we can create AGI this year, why can’t we solve the gender leadership gap in corporate America.
We’ve optimized performance, but not permission.
And it starts early.
The broken rung is very real. According to The Broken Rung: The State of Women in Corporate America, the latest research from McKinsey and LeanIn.org, for every 100 men promoted from entry level to manager, only 81 women are. That first step up is where equity breaks—and careers get stalled before they even start.
It’s 2025 … and some reports suggest that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) could be here before year end.
But at the current rate of change supporting equity for women in the workplace, it will be 2073, the year I turn 100 years old, when we get there.
Why?
The old boys network. That’s why.
We live in a society where systems have been built by and for men.
I lead a Customer Experience organization where seventy-six percent of our team are women. My leadership team includes three women, one black man, two white men, and a woman chief of staff. Our success isn’t accidental. It’s built on collective intelligence—and it proves what happens when we design systems that reflect the world we actually live in.
So let’s stop calling equity a side initiative. Let’s stop “celebrating women” in March only to overlook them in every promotion cycle. Let’s stop solving for sentiment when what we really need is structural change.
If performance is genderless, opportunity should be too.
Parity isn’t a gesture. It’s a lever. A growth strategy. A signal that we value not just what women contribute—but how they lead, how they decide, how they transform companies from the inside out.
The More Effect outlines what it means to truly live and lead in a modern world—with emotional clarity, structural integrity, and human-first systems. At its core is a simple truth: progress happens when people feel seen, trusted, and empowered. When we deny women access to leadership, we don’t just stall careers; we erode the emotional fabric that holds our institutions together.
This is the first in a new monthly series. Not just to highlight the gap—but to name the systems that caused it. To challenge what we’ve inherited. To build better. Faster. Fairer. Because
Achievement knows no gender.
Yet Corporate America still acts like it does.
Let’s fix that. Now.
This is the first in a new monthly series: Parity Now.
Published on the first Wednesday of each month, I’ll explore the systems holding women back and spotlight the leaders redesigning them. We’ll name the barriers, yes. But we’ll also spotlight the builders.
Along the way, you’ll hear directly from women inside the workplace—rising, leading, and pushing through it all. Because parity isn’t just about policies. It’s about people. And their stories deserve a permanent place in how we lead forward.
Because achievement knows no gender. Yet Corporate America still acts like it does.
#PARTIYNOW