I Was Thinking The Other Day – About Transparency (or the making of the sausage)

We all love a good transformation story. but only once it’s complete. The glow-up. The comeback. The polished before-and-after. But what about the messy, honest middle? The part where you’re unsure, where your voice cracks, where you try and fail and try again? The shudder-inducing trial and error moments?

Just as authenticity is a radical act, letting others see you during your evolution—not just after—is one of the bravest, most generous things you can do. It says:

“This is who I am right now. It’s not finished, but it’s real.”

Most importantly, letting others see the transformation breaks the myth that we must arrive fully formed. And, let’s be real here, corporate America is built for you to be fully formed when you show up that first day. It does not want the responsibility, the interruption, of true change. In fact, most corporate training isn’t built to reveal your authentic voice—it’s built to install a system on top of you. It teaches performance over presence, conformity over clarity, and tells you how to sound, lead, and behave in ways that keep you predictable and palatable. But authenticity doesn’t come from adopting someone else’s rules—it comes from knowing what matters to you, and having the courage to lead with that, even when it doesn’t follow the script. Being authentic challenges the performance of perfection and invites others into something far more powerful than polish: process. And when you let people witness your process—with your contradictions, course corrections, and courage to change—it gives them permission to do the same, even as it might make some of them uncomfortable.

This is especially radical for women, who are so often taught to curate, to control, to wait until it’s safe. We’re taught to be the brand, not break the frame. This is even more true for Black women, for whom imperfection is not safe in a professional setting. But as evolution isn’t tidy we must all make room for it. It requires vulnerability, self-trust, and the ability to hold space for uncertainty. And sharing it? That’s not weakness—it’s leadership.

So here’s to the ones who let us in before the script is written.
The ones who share not just what they know—but what they’re learning.
The ones who risk being misunderstood in order to be real.

Women like Michele Obama, Whitney Wolfe Herd, Yayoi Kusama, Chimamanda Ngozi and Marina Abramović, Tsai Ing-wen and Arlan Hamilton. These women say the hard thing even when it costs them. They refuse to perform for power.
They stay close to their roots, communities, or inner truths—even as the world watches, and the let us see how they evolve, not just the polished outcome.

Their authenticity isn’t a destination. It’s a path they walk in public.
And they don’t just find their voice—they teach the rest of us how to use ours, too.