Twenty years ago, I received a phone call that would completely redirect my life—though I didn't know it at the time. An insurance company wanted me to train their sales team on communication skills. My first instinct? Turn it down. I was an actress, after all, pursuing my dream of working in television and film. Why would I take a corporate training gig?

Perhaps it's a creeping awareness that you aren't enjoying your work as much as you did, the role you worked so hard to earn no longer reflects who you are. That rather than expanding you, it feels like it's limiting your influence.

Fear is the catalyst keeping us silent, and it's not okay. The question isn't whether this is happening – it's understanding why and, more importantly, how we can change it.

The brain trusts tone over text. If your voice and message don't align, tone wins. Every time.
This isn't just anecdotal —it's science. Research shows when there's a mismatch between words and emotion, people instinctively trust nonverbal cues first.

Being unapologetic doesn’t mean being aggressive. 


It means being clear, grounded, and confident in what you have to say — without diluting your message to make others more comfortable.

We judge ourselves so harshly that we often forget to enjoy what we're actually doing. And in Sarah's case the stakes were even higher as any mistakes she made happened live, in front of millions of listeners. But as she so wisely put it, “success is built on the foundation of many failures”.

The World Economic Forum’s estimate that we won’t achieve full gender parity globally for another 134 years, until 2158, and the United Nations’ report, “Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2022”, which says that full gender equality may not be realised for nearly 300 years!

That could mean that we women won’t get equality for at least 10 generations. That’s sobering!

Some might misconstrue the word with arrogance or recklessness, but through my lens, audacity is the boldness and confidence to express ourselves with clarity, conviction and purpose.