Career Growth Advice from Carol Wilder, AI and Digital Transformation Leader | Career Tips for Women in Business and Tech

2B Bolder Podcast – Episode 145
Featuring Carol Wilder

Episode Title: #145 Carol Wilder: From Corporate Leader to Impact-Driven Entrepreneur

Host: Mary Killelea
Guest: Carol Wilder


Mary Killelea: Hi there, my name is Mary Killelea. Welcome to the 2B Bolder podcast, providing career insights for the next generation of women in business and tech. 2B Bolder was created out of my love for technology and marketing, my desire to bring together like-minded women, and my hope to be a great role model and source of inspiration for my two girls and other young women like you. Encouraging you guys to show up and to be bolder and to know that anything you guys dream of, it's totally possible. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.

Artificial intelligence and digital transformation aren't just buzzwords these days. They're reshaping how companies compete and how leaders build the future. Today's guest, Carol Wilder, has spent her career turning those possibilities into reality. Carol is a strategic business leader and innovation catalyst. Currently partner at Atomic 47 Labs and principal consultant at Product Muse AI where she helps companies implement AI in ways that deliver measurable results. Her career spans the world's most influential tech companies from launching the Alexa skills kit at Amazon to leading generative AI partnerships at Dell and driving product strategy at Intel Puppet and others. Along the way, she's built teams, scaled products, mentored startups, and guided countless innovators to embrace technology with confidence. Carol's story is one of reinvention, resilience, and curiosity. Proof that loving technology can open doors to every stage of your career. Carol, welcome to 2B Bolder. I can't wait to dive into the lessons, pivots, and bold moves that you have shaped your career and what you are going to share with all of us.

Carol Wilder: Hey, Mary. How's it going?

Mary Killelea: Good. Hey, so your career spans Herlet Packard, Intel, Amazon, Dell, and now advisory and fractional product leadership roles. Looking back, what theme ties all those chapters together for you?

Carol Wilder: I think initially in my career, I bubbled around because I was curious about everything, but I didn't think about the impact that I was making for the leadership of the companies. And that was a really important component that I did not understand. So I took on things at Intel specifically that I found personally interesting but had no measurable business impact at all with what Intel was really concerned about. I think as I grew in my career and I think Amazon really shaped this is they were like look you can be curious have fun but if it's not going to be resulting in money in money scale of customers or customer satisfaction or some way that makes it important to us we don't care and I think that made me okay I can be curious but it has to be curious in ways that are actually going to make an impact to what is aligned with the interest of the company or the group that I work for. And I think that's the difference. And so when I looked for projects later in my career or things later in my career, I really looked at what I was curious about, but was it really going to make a difference?

And if it wasn't going to make a difference that I scaled back the amount of brain power I put into it. And I also worked with people who are like, "Oh, but we have to do this." And I'm like, is it really going to be measurable? I will get well in 10 years. I go, yeah, in 10 years, but there's so many pivots from that 10 years. So, I think it's curiosity, but curiosity with impact.

Mary Killelea: Oh my god, that is like gold. We could end the conversation right here, right now. I mean, like so many women need to hear that because I think people one like busy work because I think there's value in showing that you're busy and doing, but when you're not aligned to what matters and what moves the needle for your bosses and the boss's bosses, it's really not worth your time.

Carol Wider: It's not but it took me a long time to understand that. And I would always try to convince them that what I was doing was really important. And it was sort of the and I don't use this word like dumb means that I was uninformed. I got told early by actually I remember a very pivotal conversation with Aisha Evans who is now CEO of Zuks. She was one of my mentors at Intel and she's like, "Carol, they don't care. Stop thinking about this." and that was one of many pivotal conversations where she's like, "You have to rethink what you're doing." And I think that's something that people don't understand. And I go now and I ask people all the time, is this impacting what you're doing? Does this really matter to you? Is this in your priorities? If it's not, then like, okay, why are we spending time on this? So, anyways, go ahead. Sorry.

Mary Killelea: No. That's great. I've been wanting to have Aisha on, so I'm going to talk to you afterwards about making that connection for sure. Okay. So, tell us about your current focus and your role and responsibilities, kind of like where you've landed now and how you've been selling and living.

Carol Wilder: It's funny. I wrote a post on LinkedIn, I don't know, maybe two months ago or something. And I feel very for people who are being laid off right now and it's hard. I had the benefit of really having money in the bank. So I'm very fortunate. However, I looked at it as okay and my husband said to me, you have a blank whiteboard. What are you going to do? And that got me thinking. It's like, well, I really want to give back. I want to build leaders that are going to make a difference. I want to build companies that are going to make a difference and advise them and I want to be able to have people not waste their time and money on things that are not going to serve them. Be very pragmatic and so that's realistically where I've been spending my time. I work with University of British Columbia and the Okonagan which is in Colona and we have venture mentors and basically what we do is we focus on the leadership skills of founders so that they're not it's not really focusing on how they can get better funding but how can they be better leaders because they're going to go on to to create other other companies.

I meet with different people who are subject matter experts. I have a pharmacy. I never realized that I would be working in Canadian pharmacies, but there's a lot of pharmacy automation. So now we're working on what is some pharmacy automation that will basically lower labor cost, reduce audits, and increase profits for independently owned pharmacies and be able to have that scale and that focus for pharmacies that are smallies and they're not going to get gobbled up by Loblaws or larger Canadian pharmacy chains because they want to stay independent.

And so like I just so it's curiosity again but it's with a purpose and um and then I advise right now non nonprofits and governments government municipalities on their use of AI and how can they be much more pragmatic not just in the policies but also in what their strategic and technical choices are but then also what the cultural changes that have to happen where people rethink their work. They rethink what their creativity is.

They rethink what it is that I'm really walking in the door to do. Is it to do this bustling paperwork, which makes no sense whatsoever, or is it to help the citizenry find out where their best options are for health care, where their best options are for, you know, parks, recreation, memory care units, or things like that really matter. And so that's sort of how I've transformed the kind of what I do.

Mary Killelea: It sounds so fascinating. and so incredibly relevant with the AI and the leadership because I think that's one of the things I mean people individuals as well as companies and any size I don't care if you're a small business to an enterprise level you're so fearful that you're not doing enough with AI yet you don't have a strategy or measurable means in order to checkpoints what like what is your what are you seeing seen as like the biggest trip up that companies have and how do you help them with that?

Carol Wilder: I think and by the way there was an article maybe three months ago in Wall Street Journal from Johnson and Johnson and they basically said “Oh my god we just spent three years working on AI with no measurable results and now we believe that we have to and they did it kind of backwards in my opinion”. They said we have to figure out is our workforce ready? Do we have an educated workforce? Do we have the technology in order to do it? And do we have the business outcome? The first thing you start with is the business outcome. Then you say, okay, where do we have to? And you focus on what is the highest thing that you actually need to automate or you need to get cost out of. I'm always really clear with companies. There's three outcomes. It's very simple. The first one is, are you increasing the market? Okay. Are you increasing market share in some way or your market attractiveness or your which will theoretically increase revenue? Are you reducing some latency or decision time or something recycle time or are you having resource utilization whether human resources technical you know infrastructure resources you know your use of software or something typically what I'm finding now with AI it attacks the last two problem the last two doesn't really give you more revenue but it attacks your cost side and utilization side So you can make like right now in Atomic 47 we have a system right now where we can help consultants and people struggling with strategic decisions to make those decisions faster with better clarity and better data. And so it's like you know that's how I see it. Then I go focus on okay what is it that you're truly how are you measured by your customers both internal and external by your suppliers now what matters to you from a priority okay now let's go figure out what are those cost indicators or issues that you're having and so I go focus people on that and then I come back and I go okay if you want to do this Like I had one I can't say who it was but I one group that I worked with and they wanted this certain part of their their their pro their operations to go faster and I was like well wait a minute why is someone re-entering this data three times there's mistakes that happen blah blah blah.

So I'm like, look, let's put in a process for optical character recognition. Let's basically have one database, don't have three, have one database and migrate those databases. And I gave them basically an automation process that basically they could do. And then I'm like, do you want me to technically implement this for you because I have a whole bunch of technical resources that I work with, or do you want to? And they're like, no, we got it. We know what has to happen. And I'm like, yeah. And so I was like this is how you do database migration but it had nothing to do formally with AI. Then they can add AI onto the databases in order to say okay what is what's going on? But they had these issues. So it's fascinating.

Mary Killelea Yeah. You know it's like someone a kid running down the hallway with scissors, you know, like you got to calm the chaos. Let me ask you this and I know we're going to get back to some of the questions we talked about, but yeah. Do you think some of these companies are quick to downsize before really thinking through the needs of human people? Because I feel and correct me if I'm wrong in your view that yes everyone's getting laid off now but there's going to be a pendulum where they're they're going to be brought back.

Carol Wilder Yeah. I think well let's I mean I'm just guessing we're both from Intel. I saw what happened. Accenture is taking over marketing at Intel. They're going to deploy AI. I was like, "Really?" Okay, I get why you're doing it. Okay, I get why they took it a long time ago at Intel and moved it offshore. I get why you're doing it. However, you're missing the bits and pieces and the history of why we did certain things and that creative spark of what that was. You are now going to get a very bland platform that will do the job but it won't be creative. And so the question is because has that creative part like many times I walk through the cafeteria at Intel much to the chagrin sometimes of my assistants because I was always late for meetings and they and I would get stopped and someone would say hey I've got an idea and I would sit down with a piece of paper because I always had my notebook and we'd start drawing for like 15 20 minutes and would get to the next point which was spark creative. about was I the sole reason why they were no but just that creative conversation and now with people not there to have those conversations I think that's going to be a problem and have that backlog of like one of the things that helped me at Intel helped me at Dell helped me at Puppet was my network you don't have those networks anymore to say “Hey I think John did something or Betty did something couple years ago on this. I think they shelved it, but you know what? Maybe you want to go talk to them about blah blah blah”. It's gone.

Mary Killelea: Through my conversations with women leaders, I've learned just how urgent the need is for AI strategies that actually make sense. It's not about adopting tools just to keep up. It's about building a smart foundation. That's exactly what Beyond Soft is doing. Go check out their data plus AI playlist on YouTube to learn more.

Well, you know what? And then that takes me on a whole sorry another tangent about agism because I think the some of the companies are letting go the higher demographic of employees but yet they have no value or idea what knowledge is walking out the door that's so valuable to the younger generation that you could mentor and just that historical knowledge I mean that's is costly. It's so costly.

Carol Wilder: Yeah. When I was in my last 10-15 years of work, I think I spent 20-10 to 20% of my time mentoring. And even now just privately um most of the Dell people come back to me. Some Intel people, their children from Intel came to me. And I was at dinner the other day. We were in Palm Springs, California, and I was at a dinner and there was an 18-year-old girl, and I just looked at her and I said, and she's like, she's graduating high school and d and I said, the only key piece is don't do something you're passionate about. Go work on something you're really good at. Passion's great, but save that for a hobby. Find what you're really good at and do that and expand from there. And but I but you know I freely give my time for mentoring and I mentor these students on one of their startups right now. I've been doing it for a year and a half. They've done twists and turns and the good news is they aligned me into the conversation and I'm old and I mean old old but you know and I'm there and I think that there is a lack of how could you possibly understand? Oh my god. There's so many times I'd be at Dell and I'm like, "Yeah, been there, done that." And I people would be freaking out and I'm like, "There's nothing to freak out." And everyone knows my biggest thing I always would say is nobody's going to die based on what you do. Chill.

Mary Killelea: Okay. So, you launched Alexa skills kit, led generative AI partnerships at Dell, and now you guide startups and pragmatic pragmatic AI implementation. Which of these experiences would you say stretched you the most and why?

Carol Wilder: They all stretched me in different ways. I'd say from a personal stretch, the Alexa skills kit stretched me the most. And here's kind of what happened. I remember it very very well. I tell the story too. I told it walking in an elevator on a Tuesday morning and Monday they had had a meeting with Bezos and I was in the Alexa building and I look up at a VP his name is El Lindsay he's very tall and I'm very short and I go hey I heard Bezos said Friday let's launch the skills the Alexa skills and I go was that a she let's try it or was that a do it he goes Carol what do you think I god do it he goes I said Okay. And I said, "Well, we've got two engineering teams. One's in the forming stage and one has been working together for years, but they don't have responsibility for skills. I want to use the one that's been together forever because I don't think that the forming team has the right thing right now." And I was the product manager for it. And he goes, "But the software development manager for the formed team was on a three-week vacation." And I go, "What do you want me to do?" He goes, "Well, it looks like you're going to be a software development manager, so have fun." And I went, "What?" Like that. I was like, "What?" and so it forced me to go into a role and align and coordinate in an area that fundamentally I had no business touching and the team did not sleep from Tuesday to when Bezos we waited for Bezos's feedback on can we launch on Thursday night at 5. We always had to say we were going to launch and we waited for him to get off an airplane and test it. And I'm going to the one guy that knows his voice on Alexa on Echo. Like he was because it was obviously very strictly controlled. Did he try it? Did he try it? Did he try it? He tried it. No. The latency is 40 seconds to do this. It's not good enough. It needs to be 30 or below. Great. I said, "Everyone go home and sleep." You know, we're done. Then we tried the next week, but I said, "We're not doing it overnight." You know, and I got them finally hired who's still a friend to this day, this one guy, and they hired him or brought him over from another part of Amazon to be the software development manager. And to this day, he and I still communicate all the time. And I'm like, "Oh, thank God you handle this because I am that." But it taught me that I can step into a role that I'm completely unfamiliar with. And in three weeks, we launched eBay with an internal skill eBay and there was one more. And that was the beginning of the skills skill stuff. And it was July of 2015 and it was one of the most stressful things, but it taught me that I had a lot more than I could.

Mary Killelea: I think there was a pivotal decision in that and that was the initial one of wanting to go with a solid team that works well together rather than forming and spending the time and taking the risk with the other team. I mean that right there I think was so pivotal in the success of you know the start of your week. What do you think the conviction was in you or what gave you that conviction to make that call?

Carol Wilder: Because Bezos's bottom line was done. And I was like, and I went to the other team and I said, "Look, you have a full stack of features that we need in the future. Please continue to build these because I need you to be on the road map on getting this stuff done. We will need everything that you're doing, but to get over this launch with an MVP and get it done, I need to use this team. And I went to them in a very vulnerable, humble, and I was like, I realize that this is not what you want to hear, but this is a judgment that I'm going to make. And they were fine with it. And I said, it doesn't mean I think less than it's just not time right now. And I think that was one of the keys. And I at Amazon, well, Amazon was a very trying experience. But at Amazon, it taught me how to communicate in a way that was very direct, that was very result oriented and that was bottom line and it was very helpful for my career.

Mary Killelea: Gosh, this is such a fun and interesting conversation. I am loving this. All right. Okay. So, you've been successful in pivoting between big tech startups and consulting. How do you decide when it's time to reinvent yourself or take on a new leap?

Carol Wilder: I think there's three things. One is when your environment gives you no option, such as Dell basically calling me and saying, "We don't want to change. You're we're going to like, you know, like, okay, great." you know, okay, let me figure it out. Two is getting very helpful feedback, which I got in 2011 2012, which was very helpful from people that didn't like me. They were like, we don't want you in our group because of these traits that we see in you. And I was like, wow, really? And I didn't see myself that way, but they saw myself that way. And if it puts me on a path of wait a minute, how am I going to be perceived differently? And so that was something that was a part of reinvention. And then the other is what am I going to stand for? What impact am I going to stand for? And what am I not going to stand for? And what are my value sets? And how do those values align? And it's those three things when you're kind of given an opportunity where you have to stop and reflect. And the first two are stop and reflect and the third is really like okay where am I going to go? What am I going to do? What am I going to be known for? What am I not going to be known for?

Mary Killelea: This is a leadership foundational MBA right here. Okay. AI is evolving at lightning speed. What excites you most where AI is headed and where do you see the biggest real world opportunities for career women?

Carol Wilder: I think AI what excites me about AI is the fact that you can take work and be more productive and not have to fuss about the stuff that you used to have to fuss about like comparing documents. I mean give me a break. um you know and you can be more creative in where you are creative. And I think that's what excites me the most. Back when I was at Dell, I was at an EY conference and Ernston Young EY conference and they had this one guy on and I can't remember who he was but I remember him talking about how we have no choice but to use AI for productivity. and he did the world's statistics on births. We are not replacing ourselves in most countries, even Africa, whereas in the 70s Africa was like eight nine children. There was a lot of population growth and it was still slowing in the EU and America was slowing down. Now it's not going to China. China has I think people who are going to be over 60 years old is going to be 55% of the population in the next 10 years. So you haven't and when you look at gross domestic product it's two things population growth and productivity growth and we are challenged in most countries in both of those AI is your only option and the world economic forum did a great future of work report and showed what those automation things look like and they they did it by country they did it by by product areas or or industrial areas. It was a fascinating report. But the bottom line is you need AI to do that. Now, what I think for women specifically is how do I get impact faster? How do I show truly and authentically what I can do authentically? I know a lot of people that are great at marketing themselves, but they don't authentically do anything. When I used to look at résumés at Intel and a couple people tell you this, they would give me a stack of résumés and I've been there so long. I would go, "Oh, okay." And I'd go, "Okay, gerbble. Gerbble gerbble. Oh, this one's good. Gerble gerbble." Finally, the guy stops me. It's a very close friend of mine. He goes, "What's a gerbble?" I go, "Oh, those are the people that get on the wheel in the morning and don't do anything. They think they're doing something, but they're not doing anything." I said, 'You don't want those people. These are the people you want. And so, how is someone who specifically is a woman going to go and say, "I made this impact and this is what moved this forward authentically." And AI will allow you to be more productive and turn down the noise of stuff that doesn't matter that you can just automate and get rid of it and turn up the noise of, “Hey, this is how I'm going to make a better decision. This is how I'm going to impact or influence something else. This is how I'm going to do these things that make a difference”. That's what I think.

Mary Killelea: And then it's on each of us to articulate those in a powerful way on our resume on one-on-one networking opportunities um when we see you at events or you know visibly go on to podcasts as guests and do what we do in personal branding. What habits or mindsets help you stay adaptable?

Carol Wilder: I read everything. That's one thing. And I also know co for me was a mixed bag. I know it may not seem like it but I'm an introvert. So for me I really like the fact that I could be an introvert. , but on the flip side, getting ideas and sitting down with people and getting brainstorming or getting group think or sitting down and sketching stuff out on paper real time. That for me is the most powerful thing to do. And I think that's something that I think people have to focus on getting back out there. Scott Galloway, whom I love, he's big on getting out. Don't spend your time in your apartment. Don't, you know, get out and talk to people. And I think that's very true. And that's what I try to do. I don't always do it real well. But I, you know, I sit there, I can tend to be a wallflower and go like, you know, but I still am like, okay. And I try to have three or four questions in my brain that I can just ask that will be engaging. And I'm going to a conference in Montreal next week for all AI allin. It's a big scale AI conference and I'm gearing myself up with my partners. These are the 10 questions we want you to go ask people. I'm like okay, I got it. You know that helps a lot.

Mary Killelea: Well, and I think that's so important because there are a lot of women who either by, you know, like myself, I'm an introvert, even though I do some extroverted type things, but having a plan when you're about to go network or when you're putting yourself at your day job is so critical to giving you kind of comfortable purpose, if you will if that makes sense?

Carol Wilder: Yep. Yeah. And then the other thing is people would always like when I was going into a customer meeting even at Intel um at puppet even though I was online anywhere I always this is going to sound maybe this is my age or whatever but I would wear makeup as much as I could and I wore a dress or I wore nice clothes okay and it wasn't for them it was for me to feel good about myself and more confident. It wasn't because I went in like when I was at Amazon, if you dressed up, people like interviewing. But when I was at um you know, but but but when I went back to Intel after Amazon or even when I was at Dell, I always walked into the plant somewhat dressed up because it made me feel more confident. It made me feel more presentable. And I think that may be my age and maybe it doesn't matter to people anymore, but like you know I think it it was and when I would get on stage I would try to wear something that was purposeful. I remember one time I was at a conference and I wore a purple dress and everyone remembered the purple dress and it was a bright purple.

Mary Killelea: I love that. But I recently read something that women who wear makeup get paid like 30% more. So I mean this is not just a personal thing. I mean while I 100% agree and I think it does even for these podcasts I usually you know will put on a pair of high heels that I won't wear around. It's just kind of a powerful thing for me mentally. So I think that's great advice. What's a common challenge you see among early stage founders? And how do you coach them through it? Because I think so many people that have been recently left off or are trying to take advantage of the AI tech boom are instantly becoming founders and creating something. What advice do you have for them?

Carol Wilder: Be resilient. You know, don't fall in love with what you're doing. I have many people that I coach and I'm like, look, how do you know? How do you know that this is going to work out? How do you know that this is what you should be doing? What are your customers saying? I had one um one company that I've been coaching and they had one idea and then now literally they've pivoted and they're doing something there. And one of them was a very strategic conversation I had. Your value isn't in your service. The value is in your data. And they were like, "Really?" I'm like, "Yes, really." And they were like they didn't understand what their value was. So really, I tell founders all the time, I'm like, "What do you think your true value of your business is or your idea?" and then let's talk it over because that's where the money is. And don't get wedded to any one thing. And realize that just because you don't agree with someone or you don't align with someone or whatever doesn't mean you can't do business with them.

Mary Killelea: Yeah, I know that that's so valuable. So one thing that I did when I was in Intel and just beyond customer centric is thrown around by companies left and right. Oh, we're customer centric. We're customers but no one really knows what that means. Tell me what customer centric means to you and how you help companies actually get there.

Carol Wilder: Yeah. Being a product manager, everybody was my customer and I treated everyone whether it was a manager, whether it was engineering, whether it was this, whether it was that, I didn't care. You were my customer. My employees were my customers. And so I value it and say how am I going to take my ego, put it on the side and take on your ego or what you need as what is the most important thing for me and that's customer obsession. And it was not what my aspirations were for you. I was looking at some paperwork or a contract that was sent to a friend of mine in Colona um, last week and he sent it to me and I said, "There's no mention of what your aspirations are in this contract on what you're trying to get out of this $200,000 you're about to spend. This is wrong." And I'm actually seeing the person who wrote the contract in Montreal next week and I'm going to say, "This isn't right. But it's like what are the aspirations that you're trying to do, not what my aspirations are and how can I align with you to amplify and multiply what you need. And that's what customer obsession is.
Mary Killelea: I know we only have a limited time left, so I'm going to move on to a couple of these last questions. for professionals who want to futureproof their careers in AI and product management. I want to talk about skills or experience that they should prioritize because I recently saw that I think it's Open AI has this new certification and that they've got deals with Walmart and others kind of like a feeder program. What are your thoughts about skilling up and all these different certifications where I mean there's so much out there it's overwhelming for people to know where to start.

Carol Wilder: Yeah. I mean I think one of the most effective things is um Andrew M's deep AI or something like that. I forget what it's called but you just go look and he has a company and I think that's one of the best places to go. I think if you want to go do canned courses, I think Coursera is probably the cheapest place to go. When I was going back and relearning Python and relearning a whole thing, I went to Corsera and I actually did University of Michigan's uh, Python course. And it was really helpful for me to relearn Python. I learned Python when I was at Amazon um, and then I didn't use it and now I'm using it again. I think a lot of people are focusing on how I can get agents up working fast. Yeah. But ultimately you have to understand the programming. You have to understand the LLM. You have to understand how models actually work and how AI kind of works and I think that's really important and I think the basis is programming and then you know how to go from there. That's my personal opinion, but I'm also a technical person. I was always more of a technical product manager versus a marketing product manager. I want to know how things work. So then I can explain it. That's my bend. There are other courses like for instance um short courses from Harvard and you know there's any number of them. If you can afford it, getting that brand name on your forehead is always helpful. Stanford, you know, any of those, but those are minimum $5,000, sometimes $20,000. And I don't know if it's going to pay off. Yeah. If it's in person, there's a lot of people there, then you're going to make networking and contacts, that might be worth it. But I vote for Coursera. Deep learning AI is the name of Andrew's company. If there are some that say, hey, you know, the certification gets you into Red Hat or gets you into certain companies that you want to go to, then that might be worth it as well.

Mary Killela: Awesome. What would you give your younger self advice-wise for a career? F

Carol Wilder: Focus on impact and focus on for a very very long time I didn't know what I was good at. I didn't know and I also was a and I didn't give people enough grace and probably didn't give myself enough grace, but I definitely didn't give people enough grace and patience. And that's what I would focus on now. And really try and the other skill set that I think is really important is listening. And I always tell people the higher up you go in the company, the less you talk. The more you have to listen.

Mary Killela: The name of the show is 2B Bolder. What does 2b bolder mean to you?

Carol Wilder: I think it's really to think outside the box and be I think one of the boldest things I ever did was to be vulnerable with people around me and there was one point I was at puppet and it was a particularly very difficult day for some strange reason I don't remember why but I basically told my team I said I'm not doing well a day. I'm going to go watch House Hunters for the next three days, three hours, okay? Because it's three houses. It's deterministic. And this is what I need right now. And I'm sorry if I'm not there right now, but I need a reset right now. And I had never been that vulnerable. And they were like, "We get you. We got you. We're here to help you." And I think for me that was the boldest thing that I had ever done because I didn't usually show what I considered weakness. And I realized that by doing that I was showing strength.

Carol Wilder: That's incredible advice. And I was going to let you go after that, but I've got one more question for you. Okay. So LinkedIn has changed from just a job board platform to more of a social network now. And speaking of vulnerability, you know, I like to help people kind of gain visibility on LinkedIn um through posting. What is your philosophy? I mean, that's kind of how we connected. So, what is your philosophy or advice to women out there who are holding themselves back from engaging in conversations?

Carol Wilder: Oh, I have a very difficult time because my husband's always like, "Why don't you put that on LinkedIn?" I'm like, "Oh." so I'm not that vulnerable. I think people should post things that are relevant. I try not to take particularly divisive things, but I try to offer questions to help people think about things in a very different way. And I think that's a way that you can be engaging without being divisive and getting people to think. Many times when I left meetings where things were dicey and I wanted people to think a different way. I would leave the meeting, I'd ask a question. I go, "Oh, we're all out of time." I'd say, "Whoa, you know, you might want to think about a different way to do this." And then I'd say, "Oh, we've run out of time. See you." and thinking people will think about their question and take it as their own and come to their own conclusion. It may not be where I was, but at least get people to think critically and that's what I think LinkedIn should be doing and what we should be doing.

Mary Killelea: Carol, it has been a pleasure having this conversation with you. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for the opportunity. How can people connect with you? Oh, I'm on LinkedIn, Carol Wilder. I have two, we've got Product Muse, which is my own company, and then Atomic 47, where we're a consultancy venture lab. We basically help subject matter experts, basically get their ideas into companies.

Mary Killelea: Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Carol Wilder: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Mary Killelea: Thanks for listening to the episode today. It was really fun chatting with my guest. If you like our show, please like it and share it with your friends. If you want to learn what we're up to, please go check out our website at 2bbolder.com. That's the number 2 little bbolder.com.