SUSTAINABLE GROWTH FOR HIGHLY AMBITIOUS WOMEN

All my life I’ve been extremely ambitious. By ambitious, I mean that while men are thinking about the Roman Empire, my mind was usually busy figuring out how exactly to hustle to achieve what I want (and I want everything and immediately :)). The expectations placed on myself have always been extremely high, and the bar kept rising almost every second.

Many ambitious women probably recognize this feeling. When things become difficult, the instinct is to push forward even harder and believe that with enough effort, persistence, and creativity almost anything can be figured out. That mindset can be incredibly powerful. It helps build careers, move countries, start new projects, and create opportunities even in moments when everything around you feels uncertain (which, honestly, is happening pretty much all the time :)))).

But at some point something subtle begins to shift. Whatever you achieve quickly becomes the new baseline, and instead of enjoying the results you worked so hard for, the mind is already focused on the next step. The pressure to do more, perform better, move faster, and take on more responsibility starts to feel almost natural — as if constant acceleration is simply the price ambitious people have to pay if they want to build meaningful things.

Over time that pressure starts affecting parts of life that have nothing to do with work. Health begins to suffer in quiet ways, starting with small habits like eating poorly and ending with moods that fluctuate depending on how the day unfolds. Relationships begin to feel the impact as well, because when the mind is constantly racing toward the next goal, it becomes difficult to truly be present anywhere else.

At that point a question appeared that I had never seriously considered before. Becoming less ambitious was not the goal, and giving up on the things that matter deeply never felt like an option. The real question was whether those ambitions could be pursued differently.

When this question started coming up in conversations with women around me — founders, executives, creators, friends — it became clear very quickly that this experience was far from unique. Many incredibly capable and driven women quietly feel the same tension between ambition and sustainability, yet very few spaces exist where that tension can be explored for real.

Rather than approaching the topic only from a personal perspective, I wanted this conversation to bring together different kinds of knowledge. I invited two academic voices who study decision-making, leadership, and human behavior — Professor Sheena S. Iyengar, S.T. Lee Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and one of the world’s leading authorities on choice and innovation, and Aitong Li, PhD, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and People Analytics Researcher at Google. Their work explores how people make decisions in complex environments, how leaders navigate pressure, and why the ability to choose well often becomes the foundation of sustainable success.

At the same time, I invited two founders who have built real companies and experienced the reality of growth from the inside — Stephanie Gottlieb, founder of Stephanie Gottlieb Fine Jewelry, a luxury brand worn by Taylor Swift, Hailey Bieber, Selena Gomez, Jennifer Lopez, and many others, and Deepti Sharma, entrepreneur and founder of FoodtoEat, who built a company supporting immigrant-, women-, and minority-owned food vendors and helped deliver more than 500,000 meals to food-insecure New Yorkers during the pandemic.

Researchers from universities like Stanford and Harvard have spent years studying the relationship between ambition, performance culture, and burnout, and their findings consistently point toward the same insight: sustainable growth rarely comes from simply doing more. Instead, it emerges when ambition is supported by the right structures — systems that protect our energy, improve our decision-making, and allow us to grow without gradually exhausting ourselves.

During the evening we will explore what sustainable ambition actually looks like in practice, how leaders can recognize when growth begins to outpace their personal capacity, and what kinds of structures allow ambitious people to continue evolving without sacrificing their health, their clarity, or their relationships in the process.

The event will conclude with a guided working session designed to help all of us reflect on our own growth trajectory, identify what is currently supporting our progress and what might be quietly draining it, and begin thinking about how ambition can be carried in a way that strengthens rather than destabilizes our lives.

And if you decide to attend, come prepared with your questions for our speakers, because the most meaningful conversations rarely start on stage — they start with the questions we bring into the room. 

You might also enjoy our previous newsletter: The Art of Asking Better Questions.