AMY BERNSTEIN: Amy G, we’re about the 10th season of our podcast on October 21.
AMY GALLO: Sort of can’t believe it. Ten seasons, it’s great. We’ve been hard at work putting together eight episodes that speak to both the practical and emotional sides of women’s experiences at work.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Let’s tell our listeners about some of what’s coming up.
AMY GALLO: I’d love to do that. OK, so, in our first episode of the season, we’re asking the question, What would it mean for those of us in the U.S. to have a woman as president for the very first time? We wanna understand what at work we stand to gain or lose in terms of status, power, confidence about the future, social policy
AMY BERNSTEIN: We’re also working on an episode about how women are using GenAI to transform the way they do their jobs.
BARBARA: Thanks to this custom GPT, I now manage to solve technical issues that before were, like, totally outside of my expertise. I feel, honestly, it’s very empowering.
ERIN: Formatting, you know, it can just make things flow. So, at work if we are doing a daily stand-up, and we’re trying to go over our project management, we can prompt it, tell it what we’re doing and how we want to do it and who’s involved, then just dump our notes into it, and it’ll format everything for us, which is just incredible,
ANDREA: Rule of thumb: if I’m likely to overthink it, I’m going to generative AI.
JULIE: It wrote me every single piece of code that I needed, told me where to put it, told me how to execute it, helped me get set up with GitHub, I got Google Analytics. I did all of that with my fake team on Claude.
AMY BERNSTEIN: One woman created an entire committee of AI people with different perspectives for use in product development. Absolutely mindblowing. They so inspired me that this weekend, I suddenly remembered I had to write a speech, and writing a speech for me can take hours and hours of agony. I used CoPilot, and it took me 20 minutes and then another 20 minutes of editing.
AMY GALLO: That’s amazing.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah, a little scary, but in the moment, so awesome.
AMY GALLO: I’ll be curious to see if that speech goes better for you than other speeches.
AMY BERNSTEIN: You know what, it happened so quickly, and without any anxiety, and for that alone I am so grateful.
AMY GALLO: Yes. I actually was inspired too, and I’m gonna build a custom AI, an Amy bot, and share what I learned as part of the process.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Will she be our third co-host?
AMY GALLO: She’ll be your only co-host.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Absolutely not.
AMY GALLO: I’m gonna go lay on a beach.
AMY BERNSTEIN: I reject that.
[Sound of seagulls and ocean waves]
AMY BERNSTEIN: We’ll also talk about to some of our listeners and some experts about how anxiety disorders have affected them and how they can find success at work.
AMY GALLO: There is an episode that is very personal to me, which is about why parenting teenagers while working is so much harder than expected, or certainly harder than I expected.
So, we brought back friend of the show Danna Greenberg, Babson College professor, and Danna validated my overwhelm and frustrations and uncertainty about how to be available to my 17-year-old who calls and texts me around the clock about anything and everything.
DANNA GREENBERG: And that availability we know is really hard with adolescents and young adults, right? Because they have these moments where they want to talk. And they want to talk in that very moment. And you can’t say, Oh, let me finish this presentation. I’ll call you back in a half hour. The moment has left .
AMY BERNSTEIN: And then we also turn to the topic of mid-career: How can mid-career women navigate the challenges of switching sectors while leveraging their skills and building new networks?
There’s still time for listeners to contribute to that episode, so if you’re contemplating changing industries mid-career, email womenatwork@hbr.org with any questions you’d like me to ask the guests.
AMY GALLO: All right, so, starting October 21, you’ll hear from us every Monday for the next couple of months. We’re hoping that, by the end of these eight episodes, you’ll feel more confident, equipped, and supported, personally and professionally.
AMY BERNSTEIN: And if you haven’t already, follow the show—like, click the “follow” button on whatever app you’re using right now. That way you won’t miss any of the stories, the conversations, and practical tips that we’re putting together for you.
All right, Amy, saying goodbye until episode one.
AMY GALLO: See you all then.
